Making a Simple Rutilated Quartz Ring- Metalsmithing

Guess what? I remembered to take way more progress pics this time! Yay! Unfortunately, it's difficult/dangerous to try to take pics when I'm soldering so there will never be shots of that process unless I can convince @mstafford to give me a hand some time. Anyways, let's talk about this little ring!

I just got in this lovely faceted rutilated quartz from a lapidary artist in India. This stone is clear quartz with 'threads' of inclusions that look really neat. With the added facets, it's a really interesting stone to look at. So I thought I would just make it into a very simple ring that can be stacked with others, or worn alone. I already had a ring shank made from round wire just lying around, so I used that.

Here we go!

First off, I needed to create the bezel for the stone. This is done by fitting the correct amount of bezel wire around the stone as tightly as possible and soldering it closed.

Next I needed to make the bezel wire the right height. You can see in the photo below that it's about half as high as the stone. I want it to just reach the point where the stone starts to curve. So it needs to be a lot shorter. This was just a case of me sanding it down on the emery paper.

After I sanded it down, I soldered it to a base plate of silver. In the photo below, I had just finished soldering and am about to move it into the citric acid 'pickle,' which removes the gunk and oxidization that happens when soldering.

Straight out of the pickle, it looked like this:

The next step is to file down the excess backplate so that everything is flush and beautiful. I use a #2 file and my needle files and some emery paper to achieve this.

Lookin good! Meanwhile, I had decided that I was going to give the ring shank a hammered texture sor a bit of sparkle to echo the faceting on the stone. This is done with a ball peen hammer. I did some of it on the ring mandrel, and some just on the steel bench block.

Nice texture achieved! Next I filed a flat spot on the ring shank so that I could solder a tight fit for the bezel cup.

Boom! We almost have a ring! Now I have to polish it up. I do 99% of the polishing before setting the stone so there is no chance of scratching the stone. I used a flexshaft, which is basically a dremel tool with the motor hanging so that the handpiece is small and nimble.

Shiny! Now to set the stone! I start by securing the ring in a ring clamp. This makes it easier for me to hold onto while I'm applying a lot of pressure.

I use a bezel rocker to push a tiny sliver of silver onto the stone to secure it. I go little bit by little bit around the stone until the whole bezel has been pushed in. I discovered during this process that this stone is not perfectly cut. This is something I perhaps should have detected back when I was sanding down the bezel. I assumed that it was uniform around the edge, and it's not. So, there's a bit of a goofy spot but I doubt the average person would notice.

Then I used my steel burnisher to smooth out the little wrinkles and flaws. It also work-hardens the metal and gives a bit of a polish.

All done! Now we have a very pretty, stackable, sparkly ring in about a size 6.5 (too small for me!).

Woohoo! Another project in the books. This little one was a delight to make- I'm kinda mad I didn't make it bigger so I could wear it. Haha, I guess I won't be able to keep every single piece I make... I would love for this hobby to be able to pay for itself, and maybe evolve into a business one day. For now, I'm continuing to enjoy the process of learning. For this ring I definitely noticed that I'm getting better and faster at soldering and more dextrous with the torch & pick. Fewer mistakes is cutting down on fabrication time, and of course resulting in more beautiful pieces.

If you're a size 6.5 and are interested in this ring, feel free to drop me a line!

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Peace & Love

Caitycat