This week, I’m taking a break from wire jewellery because… my workshop is finally ready, my kids have gone back to school and I’ve made a spinner ring! So I now have a couple of days free in the week, which I’ve been spending obsessively in my workshop (read: glorified summer house! But I don’t care, because it’s my space!). Here’s the before and after shot!
Quite a difference, huh?
Jewellery Challenges
I’ve grown up quite a bit since my last bout of jewellery making. When I last started learning jewellery making techniques, I was in my late 20s. I was adamant that I would learn everything myself and hated asking questions. This time round, I’m a little bit older and wiser. So I’ve signed up to virtually every group and forum imaginable! One such group is the Jewellers Academy on Facebook; it’s actually a Facebook group run by the Jewellers Academy. The Jewellers Academy is an online jewellery school and the sister organisation of London Jewellery School (where I took my first silver jewellery class!)
The Jewellers Academy runs a monthly jewellery challenge. The aim is to encourage jewellers to try and make new things or push their limits. I decided to take part this month (and beyond!) so that I would have something to focus on making. The challenge for March was a spinner ring!
So… What’s a Spinner Ring?!
So I’ll admit… before this challenge, I had no idea what a spinner ring was. I had to do some googling, and soon learnt that a spinner ring is the adult equivalent of a fidget spinner. Those of you with kids will know exactly what I’m talking about! A spinner ring (or worry ring or mediation ring) is usually two (or more) rings. The inner ring sits directly on your finger and the outer ring(s) sits on top of the inner ring, and is free to spin around. Have a look online, there are some stunning examples!
Alright, so I was a bit apprehensive about making this ring… I mean, I haven’t made anything in nearly a decade! I’ve not made a join, not used solder, not used a torch… You get the idea! As it turned out, it was a little bit like riding a bike… once you’ve learnt, you don’t tend to forget. For the processes that were a bit more rusty, I soon managed to look up online and in some of my books.
And here it is, the finished piece!
The inner ring is made from copper, with a liver of sulfur patina. The outer ring is a piece of twisted square sterling silver wire.
Below follows a description of how I made the ring – please don’t take it as a tutorial! I was largely refreshing my memory on how the workbench works, so I likely did things out of order (and badly!), but hey! It’s a learning process, right?? And we’re here to learn together!
Tools
- Jeweller’s Saw
- Soldering Torch
- Doming Set
- Nylon / Rubber Mallet
- Ring Mandrel (or something to size and shape your ring)
- Tweezers
- Jeweller’s Pickle
- Flux
- Solder
- Ruler
- Try Square
Materials
You can use any material and shape of wire that you want here – go mad with your designs! I’ve made quite a simple spinner ring, and just raised the edges to secure the rings together, so you probably want a wider band for the inner ring.
Inner Ring
- Rectangular copper wire (mine was 0.9mm thick, 10mm wide)
Outer Ring
- Square sterling silver wire (mine was 1.5mm thick)
Description
1. Measure the Wire
Thankfully, I was able to look up how to measure the wire to make a ring from my blog article Steps to Measure a Simple Band Ring. As I didn’t actually have any copper wire the right width, I cut my band out of a sheet of copper. I needed to make a UK size K ring (which I believe is a 5.25 in the US), so I ended up sawing a piece of metal that was 53.09mm long x 10mm wide, and my metal thickness was 0.9mm. At this point, I was already really pleased that I had: a) remembered how to fit the saw blade to the frame (and get the blades the right way… which was a fluke!) and b) saw the metal without breaking the blade! Two ticks!
2. Anneal, File & Join
After cutting out my piece of metal, there followed several minutes of trying to remember: how the torch worked; how to refill it; and how on earth to anneal a piece of metal! Eventually I managed to get the torch working. Hands up, I had to call on my husband to sort out the lock that I had put on, when I wasn’t meant to… I heated the metal up to what I thought was deep red. I think I’d just been a little bit before the correct temperature, with hindsight.
Next followed quenching in cold water, then pickling to clean off the fire scale.
Once I was done with that, I spent several minutes trying to file the ends smooth and to right angles. The ends need to fit nicely together once I bend the ends closed for the join. I’ll be honest… I was impatient here! I really wanted to get a ring made before picking up the kids from school! So, the join was definitely not flush (check out my video and you’ll see what I mean – link down the bottom of the post). And because the join was not flush, when I soldered my ring together, I got this:
At this point, I had to put the ring on hold and pick up my daughter from school! Ah, the glamorous life of a Mum!
3. Removing Excess Solder and Shaping
So I decided to hope for the best with the join, and pickled the ring, and filed off the excess solder. When I looked again, the gap in the join seemed even more evident. So, I tried to add more solder to fill the gap (it’s probably not the right thing to do… the correct approach would likely have been to saw through the solder, clean it, file it better and then attempt the join again!). Anyhow, I kept going (and learning!) and eventually, I got this:
It could be better, it could be worse! I’ve also used a nylon mallet to hammer the ring on my ring mandrel, so it’s both round and the correct size, by this point!
4. Adding Texture
I decided to add some texture to my copper ring (mostly because I wanted to play with the texturing hammer I’d been given as a present!). So after annealing and cleaning my ring again, I put the ring back on the ring mandrel and hit it with the texturing hammer. It’s a very therapeutic if you’re having a bad day, by the way! Just be sure to flip the ring over on the mandrel every so often, so that the sizing is even! This is what I ended up with:
I quite liked it!
(NB I annealed the metal again at this point, because I knew I was going to need to dome the edges later!)
5. Making the Inner Ring
For the silver ring, I used a 1.5mm square sterling silver wire. I’ve recently watched a YouTube video about twisting wire, and so I really wanted to give that a go! I’m afraid I didn’t take many photos of the process, but you’re welcome to watch my video for this bit (link below)!
So, I measured across the diameter of my copper ring from the outer edges. Then applied the formula for calculating a ring band size. I’ll admit, I added a few extra mm, just in case, as I was pretty terrified that the ring wouldn’t fit over the copper ring (I needn’t have worried… it turned out the silver ring was huge!). Since I didn’t know whether the wire would reduce in size after twisting, I cut 15cm of silver wire, then annealed and pickled it. I then attached one end in my vice and attempted to twist the wire… there was a lot of trial and error from this!
Initially, the wire just turned around in the vice. My vice is lined with rubber (I assume to stop any marking of the metal), so it just wasn’t getting a good grip. I ended up getting some scrap pieces of metal and placed the end of my wire between them, then placed this inside the vice. I ended up getting a good grip on the wire, but it still looked like I wasn’t able to twist the wire. Eventually, I figured out that as well as twisting, I needed to pull the wire taut! So I ended up with a piece of twisted metal like this:
If I were to do this again, I would have annealed the wire again, put it back in the vice and twisted it some more for a tighter twist. But at this point, I was terrified that the metal would be work hardened!
I then cut the wire to the right length, annealed and pickled it again, then filed the ends for a flush join. While the wire is still soft, bend it so that the ends join, then solder with hard solder. Shape and size the ring on the mandrel, then test if it fits on the inner ring. Mine looked like this:
The silver ring was too big for the copper ring at this point, so I cut through the join, remeasured and cut a piece of silver off, then rejoined the ends.
To finish off, I popped the copper ring in a liver of surfer solution to apply a patina. I ended up doing this several times, because I kept polishing off the patina… I’ve now picked up a copy of Stephen Goldsmith’s book, “Polishing and Finishing for Jewellers and Silversmiths”, as I’ve never been happy with my finishes and polishes, so that’s another one to add to my bedtime reading material!
Anyhow, when I finally got my patina right, I used my doming set to raise one edge up. Eventually, I got it flared out enough to stop the silver ring falling off one side. So, I added the silver ring and flared the other edge.
And this is the final result:
All in all, I’m really happy with it! I managed to make not one, but two rings. And for the first time ever, I managed to make a ring that fits the intended finger (in the past, I had always made them too small, so had to switch the ring to a different finger to wear).
Now that I’ve been wearing a spinner ring for a few days, I can safely say that it’s a very useful thing to have around. I’m constantly twirling this ring around, and now I always have a “toy” to entertain my children with (whoo-hoo to long car journeys, when we’re permitted to travel again!).
I have absolutely loved being back at the workbench and so pleased that I’ve remembered (mostly) what to do! Now I’m off to plan the next thing that I can make!
In the meantime, here’s a video that shows the fun I was having in the workshop. Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel, if you’d like to keep up-to-date with my latest projects and makes!
Do let me know what you think in the comments! Until next time!
It looks amazing. Great job!
Aww, thank you! That’s made my day 🙂
Looks great! I love the design, and the patina combined with the texturing is beautiful. It looks like the bark of a tree.
I did a ring-making class a few weeks ago, and it’s difficult to retain all the detail. Watching your video and reading this post helped me to remember what to do (and just as importantly, why!). We used a gas / oxygen mix in the torch – it was pretty fierce compared to your butane torch. No problem getting up to temperature, but it was very easy to overdo it … as I quickly discovered! Does your torch burn hot enough to smelt silver?
Thank you! Now that I look at the ring again, I think you’re right! It wasn’t intentional, just the texture made by the hammer!
I’m glad you found the video helpful – going through trying to remember everything from a class is hard! This evening, I’ve been reading through some of my old blog posts and found lots of tips that I’d forgotten about, and that’s been quite a nice trip down memory lane.
Honestly, I’m not sure if my torch will be hot enough to smelt silver. I have got a bunch of equipment to attempt it (on a small scale), and going to need to do some reading before I attempt it. I will post about my efforts when I get there! I’m shortly starting a series of posts and videos where I’m attempting to make every project from a book called “Two-in-One Manuals – Jewellery” by Madeline Coles, and Project 3 will require me to melt scraps of silver into tiny balls… I guess that’s going to be a good time to find out! I’ll be sharing my first project in 2 weeks’ time.
Thank you for taking the time to read my post and write to me!
Best Wishes!
Thanks for replying. I’m looking forward to the posts and videos!