Spanner ring

by Jim Osment
(Brisbane Australia)

You know how when you're making things sometimes it all goes wrong, sometimes it goes great or excellent, and then sometimes you produce something so awesome you can hardly believe it. This was one of those latter days.

I woke up early with a great idea for a spanner ring. I love it when I wake up with some great new idea.I have made one spanner ring previously but this was something new. The ring is formed by making a little spanner out of nickel-silver sheet and curling it around to meet with a brass nut in the middle.The idea is a practical ring which might appeal to mechanics, engineers, handymen and so on.

Converting dreams into reality can be tricky.

To do this I actually photographed a real spanner, cropped and re-sized it using the "Paint" program supplied with my operating system. I Googled a conversion from pixels to millimeters and re-sized it to the right size for a 20mm diameter.I used double sided tape to stick it to the metal, and then cut it out with my jewelers saw. I filed it, wire brushed it, sanded and polished it and...
..then I overheated it, and melted the brass nut all over the place, flung it into a corner, swore a bit and stomped around a bit and then printed out another spanner picture, stuck it to a new piece of metal...etc etc.

This time I proceeded much more carefully. I cut the spanner out better, filed it better, polished it better, found a better nut and bolt and soldered it on brilliantly. The solder has not been filed at all just polished along with the ring.

I am very pleased with how it turned out. I like the design, like nothing I've seen before, the inside is excellent, and the outside polished up very beautifully as well.

I don't know if anyone else will like it, but then that's not really the point.I like it.

Jim Osment
Hammered Hearts