rings rings rings
Lloyd of the chainmaillers' guild ordered a size 10 turks-head ring two weeks ago. I am at last ready to mail him one tomorrow, as soon as the P.O. comes back from Labor Day. Turned out it took me several tries to come up with a satisfactory product.
Quoting from my note to him,
"I'm so sorry to have taken so very long. Turns out I should be building one of these at least every couple of months to keep in practice, it is NOT like riding a bicycle ;-)
Actually the first one I made came out quite nicely. Only it was about a size 12, because I figured wrongly the spacing needed on the jig used for starting the pattern.
So I have a nice big ring; I will probably sell it at the show I have in two weeks. I made another, right size, but I hammered it too hard as I stretched it and evened up the wires on the ring stick (Loren supplies cut sections of billiards cue, they work really well)
So it looked kind of battered, and I tried again. Success.
At this point, I decided to try using my Dremel and some fine sanding discs to smooth of the surface of the over-hammered one, kind of to put smooth "facets" on the raised parts. That worked moderately well, and I polished and cleaned it. THEN I discovered that somehow I had picked up the wrong ring, and sanded off facets on the successful, non-battered one! Erm ... regrettable ... language was heard.
I then did one more, CAREFULLY. I am getting really good at the pattern, thank you."
He was gracious enough not to complain at the delay, and was amused by my account of my attempts, said he was glad to hear these things happened to other people too.
Quoting from my note to him,
"I'm so sorry to have taken so very long. Turns out I should be building one of these at least every couple of months to keep in practice, it is NOT like riding a bicycle ;-)
Actually the first one I made came out quite nicely. Only it was about a size 12, because I figured wrongly the spacing needed on the jig used for starting the pattern.
So I have a nice big ring; I will probably sell it at the show I have in two weeks. I made another, right size, but I hammered it too hard as I stretched it and evened up the wires on the ring stick (Loren supplies cut sections of billiards cue, they work really well)
So it looked kind of battered, and I tried again. Success.
At this point, I decided to try using my Dremel and some fine sanding discs to smooth of the surface of the over-hammered one, kind of to put smooth "facets" on the raised parts. That worked moderately well, and I polished and cleaned it. THEN I discovered that somehow I had picked up the wrong ring, and sanded off facets on the successful, non-battered one! Erm ... regrettable ... language was heard.
I then did one more, CAREFULLY. I am getting really good at the pattern, thank you."
He was gracious enough not to complain at the delay, and was amused by my account of my attempts, said he was glad to hear these things happened to other people too.
Labels: rings Loren Lloyd
posted by AbigailM at 6:02 PM
4 Comments:
Also glad these things happen to other people too! These rings are awesomely cool, what do you do with the end wires so they don't slice between-finger arteries? Methinks I need a tutorial :)
If the end wires are trimmed short, during the stretching and finishing they get pressed into the weave so that they iie flat next to the wire beside, and they are no trouble. Almost impossible to find, actually. If you look at the inside of the middle ring, toward the top left of the visible inside part, you can see one "loose" end.
If you make a single-strand ring, you have to solder or fuse the ends, but with doubled or tripled, they cannot even begin to come apart.
All three rings look pretty awesome! Have you tried to make a bangle? I guess that would require a pretty long wire, unless you used a large gauge.
The photo LorensWorkshop that I just put in our Flickr pool shows a cuff bracelet and a ring that were the products of the workshop where I learned this. Loren Damewood wears a 24K gold bracelet made with the technique like the ring. It's not a bangle, but compressed close to the wrist. He wears it pretty much 24/7. You can see it in some photos on his website http://golden-knots.com
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