Machining titanium and stainless steel jewelry

Step 11 And we're done

Here's a picture of the finished product, showing a couple of common problems. First, it's hard to tell from the photo but the surface isn't quite where I'd want it. It's smooth and shiny, but not quite there. So it goes back for some more polishing- not a big deal. Second, and more seriously, the ball on the left has too big of a countersink. This shows well what I was warning about earlier. Nasty gunk can get caught in there and it gives a great place for bacteria to grow. This might be good enough for a healed piercing, but I still redid it.

I put a picture of my 'shop' at the bottom. The point I want to make is that you don't need a lot of space or massive machine tools to do this kind of work. The lathe is the biggest investment, and that was about $300 from harbor freight. It takes me an hour or so to make one of these. The first one took more like three hours, but I made 4 or 5 balls before I was happy with them.

Comments

[316LVM]

Awesome job I've been making body jewelry for 5 years (nothing threaded) mostly just custom bends and other designs..this is a good instruction on how to make a barbell! thank you so much for posting this!

[xenobiologista]

What are those things that look like tubes of pigment on the bench top?

[jzoch]

I think those are T handle hex keys like these:
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=37861