His and Her's Ebony/Titanium Wedding Rings With Laser Engraved Oak Presentation Box

In this Instructable I will show you how I made his and hers matching rings for a friends natural woodland wedding, the rings will be made from a solid stock piece of Ebony I had left over from making another ring in an earlier Instructable, to compliment the rings I will also be making an Engraved Oak Presentation box out of 18mm Oak off cut flooring, and Lasering the lid with a Celtic knot.

The Titanium bands are recessed 2 Piece purchased from Ring Supplies here in the UK and they cost very little, I couldn't actually make these bands myself so this is the next best option and they are superb for this type of ring.

The Ebony stock was purchased from a well known online supplier.

I will be using a cheapo metal mini lathe to turn the ebony and will be wearing the necessary PPE during this operation which will include safety glasses and dust mask, I need to hear the lathe so on this occasion I wont be wearing ear defenders.

Lets make some rings:

Ebony stock

Titanium recessed bands x 2

Oak flooring offcut

CA Glue and activator

Fine sandpaper

Micro polishing pads

Plastic polish

Laser

Mini Lathe

The screen shots of the process are from an earlier Instructable, its the same process.

The first thing to do is to cut 2 blanks out of the ebony, to do this I use a hole saw, 35mm on this occasion which is a bit on the large size but its all I had, the hole saw leaves a hole in the centre of the blank, we can then transfer it to the lathe and enlarge the hole enough with drills so we can get the boring tool in, we then turn the blanks making the hole just the right size using the Titanium bands as our guide 2 different sizes of course his and hers.

Once we have the correct hole sizes sorted we can then transfer the blanks onto the expanding ring mandrel, this is what I use to turn the blanks down using the auto feed on the Lathe, I take it down as far as I dare using the Auto feed then cut to the correct width of each ring, the final thickness is achieved with sand paper.

The ebony blanks can now be trial fitted on the Titanium bands and ensure that they tighten up correctly, we don't want a gap in the ring when tightened, the ebony needs to be just proud of the bezel on the ring.

When I am happy that the ebony blank fits ok, I apply a little CA Glue to the inside of the blank, and then screw both pieces together, and tighten up.

The ring can now be pushed back onto the expanding ring mandrel and final sanding and and adding a little radius to the edges.

Please use a dust Mask whilst applying CA Glue, it gives off fumes, Now we have to stabilize the ring, to do this we use CA glue, this is applied with a cotton bud, or paper towel can be used, I try to keep CA glue off the Titanium as much as I can, I apply it around 5/6 times each time just spraying activator from a distance so its a mist, too much and the CA glue whitens.

To Polish.

I use 600 grit then 1000 grit wet and dry and until a smooth finish is achieved then use Micro mesh pads with water going through the range, then clean with a cloth and for a final lustre I use plastic polish, then finally buff the rings up.

Vetric cut2D is used to make a 2 slot box to accommodate the rings, An off cut of Oak flooring is used for this purpose, Its 20mm deep 91mm wide and we can make the length 150mm.

The first job as always is to input the stock dimensions and starting point which we do then as always with no plan as such, I think about how I want the rings to look on opening, I opt for 2 slots initially, using the ring dimensions I use the Draw Rectangle tool and sketch a rectangle for the bigger ring, this is the base of the ring box, I want a snug fit in the pocket but allow a little off-set then same again for the smaller ring, the slots are approx 3mm apart, a 1mm fillet is applied to the corners of the slots also make sure they are centred in the off cut, then create another rectangle around the slots, then off-set this rectangle to 6mm, A 5mm fillet on each of the corners is inputted and that is the base sketch complete.

For the box lid we just highlight both the outer rings of the base, copy and paste and move this new sketch to just above the base sketch, leave enough room between for the tooling to pass, 6mm Flat bottom bit in this case.

Sketch complete we can move onto the Cutting section.

Switching to Toolpath Commands, we make a pocket selection for the bigger slot first, the depth will be 18mm giving us 2mm to play with, preview and rename the file, this file name will the name of the toolpath when its saved as the same bit will be used for all cuts.

The smaller slot depth will be 16mm making it sit at around the the same height as the bigger ring when in the box. Preview the cut

Still on the base, we highlight both the outer rectangles and make this a pocket of 6mm, the lid will fit snugly over this 6mm lip when its closed. Preview the cut

The final Cut is just highlighting the outer rectangle and making this a profile cut, to 20.1mm we want to cut to go the whole way through, we add tabs to hold the base in place after cutting. Preview the cut.

Moving onto the lid, we highlight the inner rectangle and make this cut a pocket 11.5mm this gives allowance for the top of the rings when the lid is on, I messed up here and made it 10mm and the lid didn't fit which was annoying, I got round it by making a smaller rectangle and cut down another 1.5mm, this solved the problem nicely.

The final cut is a profile cut on the outer rectangle at 20.1mm to cut right through and add tabs to hold in place after cutting.

All cuts can now be ticked and saved to a folder of your choice, I normally save to desktop where I can easily find it again, then onto the cnc machine which runs on Universal G code sender via a Raspberry pi.

To the Finish line:

When the box and lid is removed from the cnc, there is some sanding to do, I use both a belt and Palm sander, plus some manual sanding.

I messed up again here with slots, they were a bit too snug and I had to file some material away for them to fit, there is a snug fit now.

I want the lid to look smaller than the base so I mark off how much material I can safely remove and cut on the bandsaw, and then routed the edges for a more pleasing finish, then sanded.

I can now laser a celtic knot pattern onto the lid, I opted for 4 heart design, I thought it just looked the part.

Using the laserpecker Pro a design is chosen online using my phone, saved to photos then used in the laser pecker program via bluetooth to laser the Knot.

To finish I used Boiled Linseed oil the oak was dry and soaked the oil up nicely.

The rings and ring box are now complete, one or two little issues but nothing that couldn't be resolved.

I'm very happy with the outcome for not too much outlay and I'm sure the couple will love the rings.

Hope you enjoyed this Instructable and thanks for looking.