I want to make an iron ring for an engineering friend of mine, but I’ve never dabbled in casting or jewlery-making before. Does anyone here know about this topic (materials, tools, methods, etc)?
You’ll need a good furnace and a crucible. Up to 1200ºC
Casting Sand, and really good PPE
“Iron” rings are usually stainless steel, which has an even higher melting point. Cast iron or plain steel will rust and discolour very quickly. Casting doesn’t seem practical, especially without any experience with easier metals. Depending on your design you might be able to machine it instead, but it will be an interesting work holding challenge.
Here is a picture of my hairy fingers, and a ring I designed and had printed at Shapeways in Bronze. This is solid metal
The second picture is it beside Eddie, that I printed myself in Brassfill on my mendel90 printer. This is PLA mixed with metal powder.
I’ve been wanting to make a furnace
Maybe it won’t get hot enough for steel … but this one will
Thanks for all the input. It will look like a typical engineering iron ring:
(image from wikipedia)
I could make the band on a lathe, but I don’t think I could get the outside texture right after that.
@Big_Mak I hadn’t heard from Shapeways before, that’s handy to know about, although I’m going to avoid using 3D printing for this project. That ring looks great!
@hectorh that electric arc furnace is sweet. If I can’t find access to a furnace through ucb or other I might have to take a stab at making that…
Maybe that new cnc will have a 4th axis to mill the outside of that?
With a good jig and a steady hand, you could use a flat file to make that pattern by hand. Figuring out how to make an appropriate jig would be the hardest part. As tedious as it might be, it’d cost very little and you’d be done well before any of these other methods.
That all depends on the material that you are making the ring from.
I’d love to help out making a furnace! I’ve been looking at how simple it would be to melt my own aluminium for “lost wax metal casting” and it looks like so much fun. @hectorh or anyone else into doing this next month maybe? Study group / workshop?
He had one but lost it while hiking on a mountain and didn’t care enough about the symbolism to replace it. I love the ring concept and think he should have one, and I know he’ll value a hand made one enough to make an effort to hang on to it. Also making one seems like a worthwhile challenge.
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For filing in a jig you mean? Or the CNC? I’m sold on stainless steel at this point.
I think your friend might like it if you make a ring like this:
I have a pure silver coin that I can sell you for $20 (it’s a legal tender $20 cdn coin).
Alternatively, you can also use a soft steel disc instead of a coin and end up with a steel ring.
Can you tell me more about what you’re thinking here? I can’t imagine how to use a jig to reproduce that pattern, but I’m down to put in some tedious work if that’s what it takes.
Well the ring is basically a thin cylindrical wall with 12 flat angled cuts on either side. If you can determine the angle (I modeled one with rough estimates for dimensions and came up with ~70deg). If you can create a jig that sets the ring at an angle of ~70deg, then you can run that along a file until you reach the right depth. Since there are 12 flat faces, you’ll need to do this every 30 degrees. By gluing the ring to a larger piece of wood or something, you can more easily set and maintain precise angles while you work on it.
Does that make sense at all? 
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the explanation - I’ll try that approach when I find time to work on this project again.
Success!
Made on a lathe instead of cast or filed.