Introduction: Buffalo Nickel Ring

By

>This is my first tutorial-ish type thing so cut me a little slack. I'm sorry for lack of pictures, once I get into something I forget to take them.
>Anyway my inspiration for this one was my girlfriend. I wanted to give her something when I saw her this weekend, but I wanted it to be special and have some kind meaning behind it, Not just some random piece of jewelry from the store.
>The tools needed: Dremal (optional), file, hammer, ring mandrel, 100, 400, 1000, 2000 grit sandpaper, car wax/polish.

Step 1: Drilling the Hole

>There's kind of a science to this but it's not to hard once you get it down.
>First your gonna want to drill a hole in your nickel (quarters work too if you want a wider ring, I would only use quarters from before 1965 because they are silver and will look much better) about 1/4 to 1/2 inch in diameter. The bigger the hole this less you have to do in the next step.

Step 2: Rendering to Fit on the Mandrel

>This step is probably one of the more time consuming parts if you don't have the correct tools needed. All I had was a file, a cordless drema (battery dies very quickly)l, and some sanding paper.
>Your going to want to size your hole (mine was quite big) to fit on your ring madrel. You can also use a pry bar if you don't have a mandrel.

Step 3: Hammering the Ring

>For this step your going to put the ring on the mandrel/pry bar, and start taking a few swings at a time with a hammer until it's about 1 to 1 1/2 size smaller than needed to fit.
>Once this is done your going to hit it pretty hard on about a 45° angle or so. This bends the rim of the ring over.
>After that you want to start hammering it out flat on the mandrel. I've used parts from a socket set that just fit the ring, makes it perfectly round.
>Once this is done and the ring is where it fits you move to the next step.

Step 4: Sanding/Polishing

>Last steps are the most time consuming of all the steps. You're going to shape, sand, and polish your ring.
Shaping you're going to just sand or grind the ring until you think it looks good enough. This step took me a good hour because I wanted it perfect.
>Sanding/polishing is much less tedious, use 100, 400, 1000 , 2000, and then polishing with car wax. it gets the finish very nice almost mirror finish. I didn't have those so I used my sisters fingernail polisher.. She wasn't very happy but the ring turned out nice.
>My girlfriend (now ex) was glad to get it and family was amazed at how I did it.
>I hope this tutorial helped and inspired any who were thinking about making a ring. and Thank you for baring with me, considering its my first time putting up an instructable. And sorry if the text is a bit jumbled up, I did this on my phone so.

Thank you for viewing/putting up with this, it was done a while back and I wasn't exactly great at ibles. Thank you, and please comment, favorite, subscribe, and vote. :)