Something new for me and the forum

So I had a friend hit me up with a big challoenge; to make a stainless damascus ring. He's getting married on sunday.
He actually gave me the challenge in the spring, but time was getting short and nothing gets me motivated like that kind of deadline. This ring is seamless and the pattern runs in the flat of the ring. For those of you that understand how damascus is made you can see how big of a challenge this was to do. This is the first finished one and I will be doing more of these in the future. Getting the size just right was a bigger challenge than I expected, this was actually the third one that came out good, but the others wound up too big.:viking:

Beautiful, hopefully you can find some guys with bigger hands as I'm sure the first two attempts are similarly stunning and deserve to go to good homes.

Impressive, Del.

So..... what happened to those two that were too big?

Carl said:

So..... what happened to those two that were too big?

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They are on the bench, one is finished and one is close to being finished.
I plan to use them to play with finishes, I think I might be able to get a bit more contrast out of these, but I gotta experiment. I also have enough of the damascus done to do a dozen more rings, I will probably put some of these up for sale after I get some better pics. I have some ideas for some cool variations. The good thing about hte stainless damascus is that compared to the gold and silver I normally work with is that it doesnt cost thousands per ounce. It also allows for more experimentation then I would normally do. I love doing the jewelry, almost as much as knives, I get to play a little bit here.
Thanks,
Del

I don't wear rings, but that is very cool.

Subscribed. (hint hint)

Wait, seamless as in no seam at all, or the seam is just impossible to locate?

I will be needing a pair of these in 5 years at my 10th anniversary.

I assumed he was meaning the pattern went all the way around with out stopping. Being a challenge I would assume no seam at all.

BurkeCutlery said:

Wait, seamless as in no seam at all, or the seam is just impossible to locate?

I will be needing a pair of these in 5 years at my 10th anniversary.

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Yeah, as in no seam at all.

I have lost 2 wedding rings and have been harassed endlessly to acquire another, so looking forward to seeing what you come up with Del.

Jim said:

I have lost 2 wedding rings and have been harassed endlessly to acquire another, so looking forward to seeing what you come up with Del.

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Jim,
I was a little concerned about that myself and so I made mine a quarter size smaller, and while this makes it a bit hard to get off on purpose, it makes it almost impossible to come off by accident.
Del

So I spent parts of the last 3 days working on some rings, after all of those knives, I needed a few days to let all the wood dust in the shop to settle. I like doing different things too. Although saturday was my birthday, I did a might of work then too. Well here is the result. I have 10 rings all in the same stainless damascus, and I know a bit more about making them as well. They are all cold worked once I have the damascus made. Most of that work is all hand tools, and I have sore fingers and hands to prove it. :viking:

Those are sweet Del.

very cool

Would be even cooler if you made the two edges single-bevelled!

No, I'm hardly interested in rings, but these are cool!

Since these aren't precious metal, are you going to do a small buy out of them?

Hermes7792 said:

Since these aren't precious metal, are you going to do a small buy out of them?

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James,
There are several reasons I made this batch, #1 is that I was asked to make the first one for a friend, and then I had all this extra material laying around. #2 is that while making the first ring I found out that sizing this type of ring is not a matter of measuring and it coming out just where you want. As a result of 2 I wanted to find out how the sizes correlated and find a way to do it consistantly. #3 is that although my friend was happy with the ring I sent him, I thought I could improve the finish I did on the ring, but I needed to play around a bit. #4 is that last year two of my competitors in the mokume ring business went and started selling damascus rings, and they bought some fancy equipment to extrude damascus tubing to make their rings from. So I thought I would try to find a low tech way to make some as well. #5 is that when approaching this idea to make the stainless damascus rings, I had several shiny new ideas come along and perch in my head just waiting for me to play with them. Since my birthday was this weekend, I decided to play with some of those shiny new ideas. It is one of the great satisfactions for me to get one or more of those shiny ideas and to turn them into reality. It was like an extra birthday present.
Now to answer your question more directly I really hadn't thought of doing a group buy with these, but these will be a new permanant item I am going to stock. I plan to make more in the future, right now I have 11 of them finished. I also have a show this weekend and I am taking this lot with me, there are going to be a hundred guys or so there this weekend and maybe a few of them will be interested in one of these.
I have made enough of them that I can comfortably set the price at $125 each
I may offer other patterns in the future, but for now its random pattern.
If anyone is interested, please let me know.
Thanks,
Del

I really dig these rings Del :doublethumbsup:

Anniversary is in 10 days. Maybe I can talk the girlfriend into getting me one. Because I know its too large for her tastes!