Signet Ring

This instructable will guide you through the steps to create your own signet ring. My end goal was to cast one out of metal myself. I do not at this time have the means or the ready cash to gain the means to acquire the tools necessary. So, I decided to do the next best thing and create one out of other materials. I am overall pleased with the final product. I am planing to design more seals with which to seal my letters. I hope you enjoy.

-MagicFAP

I did not have good wax for carving so i decided to make a block myself. I first drew a pattern and then cut out a metal form to hold the wax. I then melted a candle into the form.

I next used a dremel tool to rough out the shapes of my design (fig 1). It worked well but was very messy. I then cleaned up the carving with an exacto knife (fig 2)

I then created a wooden ring blank. I cut a ring sized block of wood and drilled a finger hole with a 3/4th inch bit. After it was cut I used a belt sander to round out the bottom of the ring and to narrow the bottom of the ring so that it was more comfortable.

I then used the wax to press a cast in Sculpey (http://www.sculpey.com/). I cooked the sculpey at 275 for about 20 minutes. I then used a coping saw to sqare off the design.

Then use the dremel to make a recess in the top of the ring. I cut out the outline of the square first and the cut away the middle. I used the sculpey symbol to check the depth of the recess. Once I had got the recess just right, I used hot glue to secure the symbol. I decided to use hot glue because I wanted to be able to switch out the symbol.

Overall I'm relay happy with the product. You can see a preliminary test below. I did not have the proper wax to get the color I wanted, but the seal came out beautiful. I cant wait to start writing letters. In the future i plan to ad a small gear and to stain the wood to make it look a little older i.e. add a bit of steampunkery =]. I hope that you can get as much fun out of this project as I have. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.

-MagicFAP