How to make a silver ring

The spring semester at The Art League School is in full swing! The Madison Annex in Old Town Alexandria, VA is filled with ceramics, half-finished sculptures and the sounds of welding machines grinding into metal! Today, we visited Gretchen Raber and her silver jewelry class. She was kind enough to show us the process behind making a silver ring. It all starts with a little wire!

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• art
• jewelry
• instructon
• the art league school
• soldering

[davewilson1969]

You need to work out the "outer" diameter of the ring". this will be the inner diameter plus twice the thickness of the wire (3mm on each side). So for a 10mm inner diameter ring, the outer diameter will be 16mm. got that?

use the 16mm to calculate the length of wire needed. Circumference = pi x Diameter

eg 3.14 x 16 = 50.2mm required

bent this into a ring the ends will form a V. file these so that the join is flush and the inner diameter will be 10mm - Guaranteed ! ; )

[davewilson1969]

@6248TERRY Beg to differ, the thicker the wire, the greater the outer circumference, but this also means that the "mid" circumference of the ring is also longer. Imagine making a ring with a length of 1mm wire. if you where using the exact same length but very thick 4 mm wire for example, then where the ends meet would be a v groove, which you would have to file in order for the ends to meet. Hence the resulting thicker ring will have a slightly smaller inner diameter. - mathematics

[6248TERRY]

the length has nothing to do with the thickness of material dia. x .314 or pi gives you the length needed for ring .

[usertubular2]

Thank you for the video ! Very helpful.

[missanna208802]

I have been looking for the answer to my question all day and it was about to be answered, but someone edited it out.

I want to know how to calculate the length of wire I would need when using a heavy gage. 3mm. I know the inner diameter x pi, but then what? Where doesn the 3mm thickness of the wire come into play?