New inlay for an old ring

I know most of you don’t do things like this but its for a friend
and I want to get it right the first time.

they brought in an old chip inlay they wanted to repair. I have not
done anything like this. Basically a cast ring with small (grains of
salt small) chips of turquoise. Am I right to assume.

  1. grind the turquoise and sift to desired size
    2 Mix epoxy the add the mixture to the ring.
  2. Let set then grind down to desire height
  3. buff out with zam on buffing wheel

What kind of epoxy or glue? I remember someone saying thick super
glue.

would you add the chips below desired height then cap with a thin
glue/epoxy

how to keep the epoxy clear when buffing, sometimes when I do amber
it will melt if I am not careful and ruin the piece.

I looked for a tutorial on line but couldn’t find one, anyone know
of a good one.

could you use a harder stone like sand,jasper,saphires or quartz

Thanks in advance

Well, Billy, we had a shop that did chip inlay, and they used
polyester resin - sometimes called fiberglass. It’s harder. Other
than that you have it right except you’ll have to sand it after
grinding. Grind to zam just won’t do it. I see no real reason why you
couldn’t use other stones except maybe they would be too hard in the
soft resin. Seems like a contradiction, but I just don’t know. Most
of that work is turquoise, coral and jet.

I wouldn’t use super glue. It tends to get brittle and stuff falls
out. I had a watchband like this that was made with super glue and
it barely lasted a year.

RC

I have done this for a class. We used the clear two-part epoxy 330.
If desired, you can add coloring to make the epoxy black (We used a
bit of black pastel). We piled the epoxy/chip mixture up above the
level of the silver and then let it set up. Once set, we treated it
as you would any lapidary material. In our case, this entailed
finishing it flat and even with the silver rails.

It worked well as long as there were more stones than epoxy. If
there were gaps filled with just epoxy, it did not polish well.

Debby

Hi Uncle Bill!

We used to see a lot of these many years ago. Rio used to supply a
water clear epoxy and the chips. I suspect they still do. If not try
IJS in Gallup NM. they will have it as well.

We used to burn out the old damaged goop, clean the recess REALLY
WELL, just mix up the chips and glue then overfill the recess and
grind back to level. Sometimes when there was decoration in the way
that would prevent grinding, we used modeling clay and made a little
mold just larger than the recess. We would pour the epoxy & chips
into the mold and let it harden then clean that up, grind to size
and epoxy it into the recess. Those are a little harder fix. If you
have to go that route make sure the mold is level and has a nice
flat bottom as this is a real timesaver. Make the piece thicker than
you need as well.

I suggest you skip the super glue. Others may have a method using
this that will work but I have never seen any that didn’t yellow and
we always found it the pits to mess with.

Good Luck. Dan.
Dearmond Tool