Free Form Ring

Dateline: 10/11/98

With the holidays, many jewelry crafters start getting busy with shows and making those special gifts. I was busy myself making some free form rings and thought this might be a fun project for this week. These are quick and easy to make and are great little impulse purchase items for adults and especially for younger customers. I throw a few of these in a little bowl in my booth and sell them for a few dollars. Young girls love them.

Here are the supplies and equipment you'll need:

• 18 gage round wire (silver, copper, or gold-filled)
• flat or bent nosed pliers
• wire cutters
• files
• *ring mandrel
• *raw hide hammer

*Note: A ring mandrel and raw hide hammer help to shape and size the ring. You could probably get away, in a pinch, with using a round wooden dowel as a substitute for the mandrel. If you decide to purchase a ring mandrel, make sure you get a metal one and not plastic. You will be banging on it and the plastic ones just don’t last. As far as the hammer, it must be raw hide so it doesn’t scratch the wire.

Okay, let’s get started. These instructions will make a ring that’s a size 7. First cut off approx. 4 inches of wire and file both ends smooth. (Obviously, the larger the ring the longer the wire needs to be, but four inches usually works well for most rings I make.) Now take the wire and wrap it around the ring mandrel at the size 7 mark, and twist the wire.

Pull the ring off the mandrel. Now pull the wire that’s on top down and through the ring, and pull the wire on the bottom up and through the ring. Use the bent or flat nosed pliers for this.

Use the pliers again to curl each end of the wire into the middle of the ring. At this point, the ring will look weird and too scrunched up, but that will be fixed when you bang it out in the next step.

Slip the ring back onto your mandrel. It will be smaller than the size 7 you started with. Using the raw hide hammer, start to tap on the curly part to flatten it out. You’ll see the ring start moving down the mandrel. Continue to tap on the ring until it looks nice and round. If you want to make the ring larger, continue to tap and move the ring down the mandrel. As you tap on the wire, you are changing the temperature so it will stretch some maybe ½ to a whole size at the most.

These are fun little rings. In fact, a number of the people who have bought them from me have even used them as toe rings. I have another ring project planned, so keep your hammer and mandrel handy.

As usual, let me know what you think.

All graphics created by Tammy Powley.

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