My first student just completed his first solo project. Following is a link to a picture. He is actually my son. His daughter is graduating from FIT next week and he wanted to try and make a ring for her as a graduation present. The stone is Afghan Lapis. My son is a journalist who was covering the Afghan war and embedded with the Marines in Fallujah in 2004. In his free time he purchased some Lapis rough for me that I just got around to cutting. With my direction, he cut the stone doing all of the work himself. He had a heavy 14K bracelet that I had made for him back when gold was fairly inexpensive. He wanted to recycle the gold into a bracelet for his wife. We did that project together. There was enough gold left over to make the material needed for the bezel of this ring. The rest of the ring is Sterling made from metal recycled from another bracelet that he had. He did a nice job and there is very little that should have been done differently. Let’s hope that it fits and that he continues to want to learn more about making jewelry…Rob
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An excellent first project, and a fine piece of stone.
I don’t suppose your granddaughter majored in Jewelry Design?
Nice work Rob, Tell him I said so. Also In the years I have been working I didn’t set a stone until about five years ago. No real good reason. Our Dad would be pleased as well
Don
What a lovely ring. A great project for you and your son to share.
Judy in Kansas
He had a very good teacher. Beautiful
What a heart warming story - complete with a beautiful image!
Good on you Rob - you must be very proud of your son.
Cheers Willie
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Beautiful! I’m sure his daughter will love it.
Beautiful! I also have some rough, which my son in law brought me from Afghanistan when he was stationed there. I’m gonna have to dig it out and play!
It is easy to cut but a chore to polish. I used diamond grinding wheels, then diamond resin finishing first with diamond on crystal pads and finally cerium oxide on a 6” expanding wheel canvas belt. I am sure that there are other ways, I just keep going trying different combination until I get the polish that I want. It also tends to crack which you don’t find until the cerium oxide step embeds dry polish in the crack. I also have a complete set of SI wheels and discs and will try them on an experimental piece to see if SI is a better way to go. Thanks…Rob