How to make a ring from cast off copper pipe

Step 6 Notes

There are, of course, other sizes of pipe available. Ladies with small fingers might try 1/2" pipe; men with large fingers might try 1" pipe. My fingers are fairly thin for a guy, my wife's are fairly large for a girl. Find the size that works best for you, unless you use scrap like I did.

I also noted during the polishing stage that there were marks on the ring. On one of the cuts I made, I started to cut, then stopped after only one traversal of the pipe. Turns out this made a line that stayed on the final product. This could be used to great effect. Additionally, I had a Y on a ring. Curious, I looked at the original pipe and found that it had information printed on it in ink, and additionally imprinted on it. With a little pre-planning, this could be used to stamp a chosen letter, number, or pair of letters/numbers on the ring intentionally. I could grind these out, but it would change the shape of the ring a bit and would loose its fun, questioning character.

Comments

[dac01220]

I think that one may also try copper fittings for an in-between size, they are slightly bigger then the too small, but still slightly smaller than the too big.

[Zeppelinfreak]

Wouldnt the ring make a big green patina ring around your finger?

[abvnatter]

Yes it does.  if you coat it clear nail polish it should keep the copper from oxydizing on your finger.

[OrionBlade]

I used to use ball peen hammers of various sizes to stretch rings I made. clamp one hammer, ball side up, in a vise, and put the ring on the ball, then put another hammer on top, ball side down. You wind up with a C shaped cross section that you can then flatten back out by inserting a rod and hammering the ring between the rod and hammer. This works great, but remember to anneal after every pass. To shrink, get a jeweler's doming block - hammer into the dome, flip, hammer again, then flatten with the same technique. This will shrink the circumference slightly. Good for getting half sizes to a size or so. to go real wacky with size, slit the tube, overlap, and use an oxyacetylene or oxypropane (or even oxy mapp) torch to weld the copper back together - leaves a huge bump from the weld bead, but you can just file or grind that down. I'll post an instructable about how to do a welded ring soon, maybe even a forge welded steel ring too! good work on the cut and polish - wonderfully simple and quite pretty.