A few months back, I wrote about wanting to go to this great wedding ring workshop, where couples can actually design and make their own rings. I signed us up for the one in San Diego last weekend, and it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Seriously. All of you engaged people (y’all are dropping like flies… you know who you are), I highly, highly recommend doing this! Give up a day, be prepared to be patient (yeah, I am telling you to be patient; the irony is not lost on me) and go for it. As Bri said, “I really can’t imagine buying our rings any other way.”
All told, making our rings took 10 hours, start to finish (apparently, we picked the most difficult metal to work with), but it was super relaxed and fun. Jay Whaley is the jeweler who runs the workshop here in San Diego, and he’s just the nicest, most patient man ever. He teaches at UCSD, so he must be used to squirrely students using power tools for the first time (he didn’t look terrified when I picked up the blow torch). He was great about showing us what to do, stepping back to let us do it ourselves, then lending a hand when we got stuck.
OK, I’m going to drop a bunch of pictures on you right now because they tell the story better than I can. Ready… GO!
This is what we started with… just some lumps of metal
Fire, fire! Melting the metal into one piece
My little special ball
Brian’s perfectly formed ingot
Lots and lots of annealing– making the metal soft enough to shape
Flattening the metal in this fun press thing
Lookin’ good
Taking out our aggression and shaping the metal into ring form
Getting closer
Soldering time!
“Lord of the Rings” geeks? Kaila? Hermes? Anyone?
The neverending polishing process
Hey, everybody! Come and see how good I look!
Toasting our success with delicious almond champagne
Tee hee. So demure
Still in disbelief
Oooh, shiny
The final product, engraved and all!
Opa! Victory is ours!
