Custom Sonas Ring

This ring is sterling silver with the word 'sonas' (Gaelic for happiness) pierced through the ring in the ancient Ogham alphabet. The band is about 5/16" wide.











It was created as a custom design. This was the first Ogham ring I tried making. I enjoyed making it because the process reminded me of the first rings I made in jewelry class. Were we started with a sheet of metal then cut and formed a ring out of it. Filing the joint so it lines up before soldering.

I am very pleased with how this ring turned out but am not planning on continuing with this style for several reasons. The first being the piercing process would not adapt well to narrower bands. The main reason is a stability factor while sizing the ring. Before I worked on this in sterling silver I did a test run in copper.

I started with the design printed on a piece of paper that I spray mounted to the metal. For balance in this design I added a second drill hole to the end of the word.



The part I wasn't pleased with when making the test ring became apparent when I started to form the ring. Because 'sonas' is cut through the metal it created a weaker point at the top of the O and A causing the letter to spread on one side (shown on right). I was able to avoid that while forming and sizing the sterling ring because I saw it as an issue in the copper test ring. Though I have found that it is possible to avoid the letters spreading as they did, this design will be left as a one of a kind.

The process of testing to see what works and what doesn't is part of what I love about custom work. It gives me a chance to play with designs I may not have thought of otherwise and to push the boundaries of what I can make.

Copper Cuffs

It has taken a while to get back my blog but I am here now. As promised here is a photo of the copper cuffs I was working on when I last blogged...

They turned out quite well. And even though the hammering alone took 2 sessions over 2 days I still say hand hammering is still better than using a machine to do the hammering for me. It is just a matter of pacing so as not to completely wear our the muscles ;) These cuffs took longer than usual because they are much larger than I usually make. They were a custom order and measure 2" wide by 11" long. Usually the largest cuffs I make are 1" wide by 7" long.

After hammering, the stage that was shown in my last blog post, I sanded the cuffs by hand and hammered them into their cuff form. The last step before photographing and shipping was to polish them to a high shine.

In the time it has taken me to get this post together I have made quite a few new pieces along with working on listings for my Etsy site. The new design for my animal line is the ferret. They turned out beautifully.

This is one of the ferrets in copper. In about 2 weeks time I made 9 of these total in copper, nickel, red brass, and yellow brass.

The other custom piece I had was a copper version of an engineers guild ring. It is to be a special present.

I like how it turned out and am quite happy I was able to figure out how to make the design from a photograph.