25 Cent Fork Ring

As stated in a previous instructable, my now fiancée loves rings! After her help with a yet-to-be published instructable, I felt that I owed her. I've always seen rings made from fork or spoon handles at city fairs, but we were recently out and about when we saw one made from the tines of a small fork. When I saw that I couldn't help but think "I could make that". After a quick trip to the local thrift store, the 25 Cent Fork Ring was born.

Parts

• Small forks from your local thrift store

Tools

• Jewelers Mandrel
• Hammer
• 1/2" pipe (I used a pipe from my pipe clamps)
• Vice grips
• Hacksaw or Dremel cut off wheel
• Calipers or ruler
• Duct Tape
• Sandpaper
• Polish

Flatten the fork by placing it between two boards and hammering together. This will keep from making unnecessary tool marks on the fork.

The size of the ring will determine the length of the fork. I wanted to make a size 8 ring. I decided that I wanted a little bit of space between the tines and the handle. I cut the fork about 5.5 mm shorter than the final circumference. This ended up making it a little bit too short. With future rings, I will cut the fork only 2 or 3 mm short and not the 5 as I have done with this ring.

I used a cut off wheel on my Dremel to make a clean cut.

Using a 1/2" pipe and vice grips, clamp the handle end of the fork to the pipe. Using a hammer, slowly bend and form the ring around the pipe. Apply several layers of duct tape on the vice grips wherever they will make contact with the fork. The less tooling marks you make in the fork means the less you will need to sand out later.

Using your jewelers mandrel and duct tape covered vice grips, slowly form the ring moving up the mandrel till the desired size is made.

Once the ring is the correct size, sand out any tooling marks using increasingly fine sandpaper. I started out with 150, then 200, 350, 400, and 600. After that I used buffing compound to polish it up.

Give your ring to someone that would appreciate the beauty found in common materials.