Susan and Jason's rings, step by step part 1

Congratulations to Susan and Jason!!! I am so honored to make their rings and I thought it would be interesting to show how their wedding bands are made. To begin with, this is not a lathe tutorial...it's my husband's lathe and I hardly know what I'm doing. Ordinarily, I would carve this step by hand but my husband convinced me that using his lathe would make the process much more efficient and produce a much more precice ring blank.

This process starts with a tube of wax. The tube is placed in the chuck and tightened gently. This was actually a process of trial and error. We had one not tight enough and too long so it broke. Once the tube is tightened in the chuck, the first step is to bore out the inside to the correct ring size. Susan is a 6 1/4, which is .658".

This tool bores out the inside a little at a time. It has a sharp edge that will cut away all excess.

As we get close, we use a dial caliper to measure the inside diameter. I actually ordered a digital caliper after we did this, my old eyes can't read all those small numbers!! :)

This is a photo of the wax ribbons that are cut out of the inside of the tube.