This may seem like a crazy thing to do but if you have the help of professionals, making your own wedding ring is pretty awesome. In a few months I’ll be saying ‘I do’ in sunny Las Vegas with Elvis as our witness. I technically already have my wedding band as I’m using the engagement ring as both. Because my fiancee surprised me with such a beautiful ring, I really wanted to get him something special as well. In my opinion, men’s wedding bands are kind of all the same unless you get crazy and embellish it but we are both on the minimal side so this isn’t an option. I came across the idea of making the ring myself, this takes it from boring to one of a kind.
There is a studio downtown Toronto, ‘The Devil’s Workshop’ that makes beautiful high end jewellery and holds wedding band workshops. Usually, it’s a couple that attends the workshop however in my case (since I already had my wedding band) I went with my mom. I made my fiancee’s ring and she made one for me :).
The total price ranges depending on the material you choose as well as the thickness and height of the material. I chose rose gold for my fiancee and it wasn’t a large ring but somewhere in the middle. The cost of my materials were somewhere around $600, whereas my mom’s was a silver ring and came to about $30. The workshops are $320 per couple and run all day. Seriously, it’s a long tiring day! Who knew making rings was so much work!
I had no idea what it took to actual make a ring, it was really interesting to be a part of the entire process and at the end, feel so proud of what you’ve created with your own two hands! It all starts with that unattractive piece of metal in the picture above.
The first step is to sand down the ends of that long piece of metal. When the metal gets cut the ends are tapered from the cut so you need to sand them to create a completely straight and flat edge.
Once you’ve got the perfect edge you need to check your measurements using a formula (that I don’t remember) and cut the metal down to the correct size.
Now you’ll need to make the ring round. You place the metal piece on top of a wooden block with half circle cut outs. Then place a round wood dowel thing on top of the metal and use a wooden hammer to bang out the round shape. Once the bottom half is round you then tap the ends towards each other until you have a ‘circle’. The next step is tedious, the ends that are touching need to match up perfectly with absolutely NO gaps. I was tapping all over to get them to line up for like 25 minutes.
Once my ring was approved by the experts it was ready for the next step. But, first let’s have a look at all my hard work so far.
Now the rings are ready to become rings! We are going to solder the ends that are touching so it doesn’t have any ends! This is the fun part, apparently the rose gold is a little trickier so I needed to do more soldering than my mom did with the silver ring. In the video you see me picking up the little balls of metal after melting them and then placing them along the seam of the ring.
Once the ring is soldered shut you can see that it’s not a perfect circle nor is it pretty.
To mold the metal into a circle you place it on a ring sizer and bang around the ring. Continue to do this until is perfectly round. Then you will sand it down until it looks pretty.
After a long day of hard work we left the studio with our very own hand made rings. A lot of these photos were taken by the lovely people at The Devil’s Workshop, they post them for you after the workshop. Once word of advice, bring snacks!
