Hello, I was admiring the inlayed rings in the last Lapidary Journal
and am interested in the technique to do such inlays.
Thank you in advance
Inlaying is pretty simple but you’ll need lapidary equipment and know
how to cut and polish rocks. Basically you have a recess in your ring
that you cast or fabricated. You cut your stones to fit the recess as
close as you can. Then you mix epoxy with a coloring agent that
matches the stone color. I use artist’s pastel and make powder by
scraping them over a fingernail emergy stick. You mix this with your
epoxy and glue the stone into the recess. The colored epoxy fills the
gaps you’ll undoubtedly end up with so it must match the stone color.
You should have the stone taller than the recess, you’ll need excess
protruding. The last step is you go back to your lapidary grinder and
grind down the stone level with the metal of the ring or whatever it
is. You then do your normal stone polishing procedure to polish the
stone and the metal at the same time. You then finish by polishing
the rest of the metal with normal polishing techniques. Pretty simple
and fun…Dave