A few weekends ago I was looking for a quick weekend project that I could give as a gift to my girlfriend. Well, I am old school and thought, "Hey, let me try and make a ring, what girl doesn't like rings right?"
So I was off.
I didn't originally know what I was looking to make form wise, but I knew that I wanted to incorporate metal and wood to show my versatility with turning. I started with this 1.5" aluminum rod and chucked it into a 3 jaw self centering chuck on my Southbend lathe.
I faced the material and then used a center drill to find the center of the material. I drilled the stock with a 0.75" drill bit and was just praying that I got her size right (turns out I was too small and will need to size the ring up in the future).
Tada! In the photo it is kind of hard to see but I ended up making the ring in two sections to slip a wood band in the middle of the ring.
Off to the wood lathe! I know that my girlfriend's favorite wood is Lignum Vitae ("Tree of Life") because it is mine too. Lignum Vitae smells SO Fragrant when being worked, and continues to smell sweet well after. It also takes a finish beautifully. Above you can see that I turned the material down to the same outside diameter of my aluminum piece. I carefully used a hollowing chisel to open up the ring enough to just slide over the aluminum.
You should have seen me part off the wooden band from the lathe, I was so proud! My tolerances was within +/- 0.001. And this was done by hand!
But then tragedy happened...
While sliding the second part of the aluminum ring to trap the Lignum Vitae band, I pushed the band on too hard creating hairline fractures in the band.
I feel miserable about cracking the wooden ring, but I know for next time a 1/16" thick wooden band is incredibly fragile. I will have to experiment with stabilizing the wooden band next time with resin. This should strengthen the wood and prevent cracking.
Stay tuned to see what happens next!
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