I very recently had the honour of being asked to make my first commissioned piece of jewellery. For me, it was a big honour, as it was a 19th birthday present to a fellow taekwon-do student from her parents. I knew it had to be special! Perhaps, you can judge for yourself?
A Bit about Taekwon-do
If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll probably have heard me mention taekwon-do more than once! I love taekwon-do and have been practising this martial art for about two years now. In fact, our whole family practises taekwon-do! My husband started learning taekwon-do when he was about 13 years old, and practised until his university years. Then he took a break for 20 years, before returning a couple of years back. He recently passed his black belt, and we couldn’t be prouder! I think it’s a big source of inspiration for my daughter, who has been learning taekwon-do since she was four. My younger son started just before Christmas, also, at the age of four.
Taekwon-do is a Korean martial art and as cheesy as it sounds, it’s very much a way of life. Definitely for the four of us, anyway! One of the things that we learn about is the “Five Tenets of Taekwon-do”: Courtesy, Integrity, Perseverance, Self-Control and Indomitable Spirit. I love the five tenets as I think these are great principles to live your life by. We try to teach our children to follow them, too. Perseverance is probably the tenet I relate to the most, especially when it comes to jewellery making!!! (It certainly applied to the making of this ring!)
So, with taekwon-do very much a core part of our lives, I’ve had it on my mind to design a few taekwon-do inspired pieces for quite a while. Luckily for me, the opportunity came up for me to put one of the designs into practice. And for one of the loveliest black belts that I know!
The Design
For this ring, I met with Ma’am’s mum to confirm the design and materials. Incidentally, we call everyone “Sir” or “Ma’am” in taekwon-do, to show respect to one another. It’s a bit strange at first, but you soon get used to it. If my children see taekwon-do students when we’re out and about in town, they don’t hesitate to shout “Hi Sir!” or “Hi Ma’am!”. It’s ingrained in them now!
Making a commission is very different from making something for yourself. When I make something for myself, quite often, I don’t mind if I can still see the solder seam. But when you make something for another person, you want it to be as perfect as possible! I’d shown Mum a few sketches, and we’d agreed a rough design – we wanted the ring to look like a taekwon-do belt. Here’s the sketch:
Mum had asked me whether I could put some Korean Hangul (writing) on the ring. I’d recently started experimenting with etching onto silver, again, so I felt that I could manage it. Eventually, we decided that I would etch on the Korean Hangul for “Integrity” and “Perseverance”, the two tenets that Mum felt most applied to her daughter. Ma’am’s birthday was in about four weeks, so I set to work.
Making the Ring
To make the ring, I started with a piece of 4mm wide x 1.3mm thick sterling silver, rectangular wire. I measured the right length (if you need help working out the correct length for a ring band, check out my post on how to measure a silver ring), but I left a few millimetres on either end so that I could cut it down to size later.
Given I have no idea how to engrave, and my Korean handwriting is worse than my Chinese handwriting (a five year old’s would be better!), I had a hunt on the good ol’ Internet for a decent image of the two sets of characters that I needed. Once I found the right one, I inverted the black & white image, and then flipped it horizontally (very important, otherwise the words will be backwards on the ring band!). Then I printed it out on blue scan n peel paper (check out my post on etching for more details on that process!) and positioned them onto the ring.
For this ring, I knew that I was going to be soldering the “taekwon-do belt” to the top of the ring, which had to be on the opposite side to the solder join. Otherwise, when I attempted to solder the belt on, I’d end up popping the seam – the last thing I wanted! To manage this, I measured and marked the centre point of the ring and then positioned the two sets of character cut-outs either side of the mark.
It took me several attempts and the best part of a day to iron on the characters. But, once I was happy with the clarity, I taped the ring to a piece of polystyrene and popped it in some Ferric Nitrate for four hours.
Four Hours Later…
After four hours, this was the outcome. The words were pretty clear, neat and tidy! So, I was happy!
From this point, I bent the ring shank around a ring mandrel to start shaping it. I slightly overlapped the ends and sawed through the ring shank along the measurement marks. I’ve found this technique works well for getting a neat and tidy join without lots of filing! Then I soldered the join together with hard solder.
Sizing the Ring
Sizing the ring was probably the trickiest part of the whole process! Since this was a birthday present and meant to be a surprise, Ma’am was not allowed to see the ring design! But, we needed to make sure the ring fit! So once the ring band was ready, I covered the whole thing in masking tape and brought it along to our next training session. At the time, we were still in the middle of UK lockdown measures, so training was taking place outdoors. In a field. In the rain. And the ring didn’t fit (which I was half-expecting as Ma’am had measured up between two sizes and I’d erred on the size of smaller, rather than bigger)!
Still, I avoided panicking. I took the ring home, and annealed it again. Then I popped it on the mandrel and tapped with my rawhide mallet (vigorously!). Eventually, I got the ring to the right size!
Making the Taekwon-do Belt Bezel
I kept the design relatively simple and opted to just solder the belt piece directly onto the top of the ring shank. There are other designs you can try, like a “v” shape to support the belt, such as the one I did for my Lapis Lazuli ring, previously.
I needed to try and keep things simple for this ring, as I needed to be able to give it a beautiful finish. So I made a bezel from fine silver bezel wire for a small black onyx cabochon. The cabochon measured 8x6mm. I’ve had a lot of trouble making oval bezels that fit in the past. So I was not taking any chances. I used a formula to calculate the perimeter of the oval:
p = the perimeter length, a = radius of the “major axis” and b = radius of the “minor axis”. The major axis is the longest line through the centre of the oval; the minor axis is the shorted line through the centre of the oval.
I actually made the bezel twice… all I’ll say is, don’t forget to measure the height of your stone before you cut and solder you bezel together!
Soldering the Bezel
Again, keeping things simple, I opted to solder the bezel to a piece of thin sterling silver sheet before trying to shape the belt. I figured this way, I wouldn’t have to make sure the bezel didn’t slip or slide from it’s allocated position. I’m glad I did it this way.
NB: If you’re confident with soldering, then put your solder on the inside of the bezel. It’s much easier to clean up the ring this way. But if like me, you’re soldering needs practice, then put the solder on the outside of the bezel – this way, you won’t end up with clumps of solder that just won’t flow and stop the stone from sitting flat on the bottom!
Once I’d soldered the bezel on with medium solder, I drew on the taekwon-do belt ends. I sawed the whole piece out, then filed around the bezel until the edges were flush with the bezel.
Incidentally, the belt ties are way too long in this drawing! I only realised this after I’d soldered the belt to the ring!
From here, I filed the top of the ring flat, just where I wanted the belt to make contact. Then I flipped the belt over on my soldering block and used a third hand to position the ring shank on top. I soldered the two pieces together with easy solder.
Finishing the Taekwon-Do Belt
As I mentioned, the belt was too long! I was slightly afraid of attempting to take the belt off again, so I tried sawing the ends to make them shorter. It was a bit awkward to try and saw the belt without sawing the ring. Given how long the ring shank took to make, there was no way I wanted to damage that! Eventually I managed to get one side of the belt down to the right length… of course, when I tried to do the other side, I cut off too much! And that was how, I ended up making the whole belt piece all over again!
Anyhow, after my second attempt was completed, all that was left to do was pickle, clean and file the ring. Then I used plastic tweezers and held the ring shank in a jar of Liver of Sulphur for a few minutes, to add a patina to the Korean Hangul. Once I was happy with the colour, I used some emery paper to remove the patina for the raised parts of the ring. Then I popped in the stone (thankfully, it still fit!), and used a bezel pusher to set it.
And here it is! Hopefully you like it as much as I do!
Through taekwon-do, I’ve made some really lovely friendships with people from all backgrounds and of all ages, including the owner of this ring.
