How to make a ring from cast off copper pipe

Step 4 Polish the ring

Now that you have a functional ring, it is time to make it pretty. If you are aything like me (and I know I am!) then you probably left the rings sit for 3 weeks in a damp environment between cutting them and finishing them. If so, you found that there is a lot of corrosion on the pipe already. You'll want to remove that.

There is an awesome tool you can buy for cleaning of the outside edges of copper pipe (and the inside of fittings.) It is the red thing in the photo below. Don't use it. It is bad for rings. First of all, it is made for lengths of pipe, so that you can hold one end of the pipe while cleaning up the pipe. That does not work on a 1/4" piece of pipe, and you'll cut yourself up trying to get it out. Trust me on this. Second, if you do actually manage to clean off the corrosion, you'll find that you now have a bunch of scratches on the ring from the steel bristles. Now you have to sand those out. Or you could skip this devil-tool and just sand it out in the first place.

I used a medium sanding disk on my dremel to grind off all the corrosion and restore it to a pretty copper shine. You could use any sanding material to do so. You can start pretty fine, I actually had to switch to a fine disk before I called it smooth.

Once you get it cleaned up, it is time to actually polish it. Brasso is a classic stand-by, and should be kept around the house for just such purposes anyway. I recently was given a polishing wheel for a dremel, and used that and brasso to make quick work of the polishing. (Can you tell I used a dremel for a lot of steps?)