After Tuesday’s assorted failures I went back to working on a ring yesterday as I had originally cut two pieces out of the resin block. This time I mounted it so firmly on the mandrel that in the end it started to tear, but nothing got lost and I managed to finish a ring. As Marcus mentioned, polishing things on a lathe (or a mandrel fitted to a power drill) works a treat, so the outside shone in no time, but the inside was still all matte.
Now, if I had a chuck I could carefully put the ring into it and polish it on the lathe, but since I don’t I used the cheap and dirty method of just coating it with more resin. This also sealed the tiny crack in the side, and while I will probably look down on this in a couple of months, I don’t think it’s too bad for a first attempt. It’s still quite big and I’ll definitely aim for smaller, but until that, this’ll do.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
You can see the crack here. But you can also see the amazing swirls from the metallic pigment.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
The blank was originally a three pouring blank: first I poured the blank into my “burl slice mould”, then I put that into a square mould and added some light blue resin, but it wasn’t enough, so I left it until at another time I had some light pink resin left. Worked a treat, don’t you think?
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Wow, I like it!
How thick is it from inner surface (touching your skin) to outer surface?
It also looks to be well over 5mm from front edge to back edge. Is that correct? Or am I misjudging the size here?
That came out great! Lathes are addictive, watch out!
CD
It’s about 2 mm thick and 1 c m wide.
Marcus
I haven’t even activated the lathe as it didn’t come with a chuck. This was done on my power drill.
Lovely metallic swirls, and helpful little dragon!
Congratulations! It’s very nice! I love the way you used color here, the multi pours were very effective.
If you are able to go to a jeweler’s supply store, or shop one online, they make special bits and fittings for grinding or polishing the inside of rings. However that said, in my own experience, you are better off with a more matte finish inside the ring. It helps to make the ring just a little bit more comfortable to wear, I think possibly because the matte surface slightly increases air circulation inside the ring against the skin. Of course you also want it quite smooth. I had a jeweler friend who called it a “satin” finish and her customers were very happy.
That is very nice looking.
Really cool, I love the things you do with resin!
kestrel
I would have gone with a matte finish, just smoothing it out to make it comfortable, if it were all opaque, but the clear parts are only clear if both sides are shiny shiny.
That’s really interesting. I wonder what causes that effect?
Anyway, thanks for answering my earlier questions about size. I thought it might be close to 1cm front to back, but not knowing your hands it was hard to tell. : )
CD
Resin scratches quite easily. Unless you can cast your piece in a very shiny silicone mould, it will be opaque. I wrote about sanding here : https://freethoughtblogs.com/affinity/2019/03/09/the-plural-of-mermaid-is-moremaids/ and you can see how much work it is until you can see the inside of the piece. At the point where the outside of the ring was polished, the inside was matte, so the clear blue and pink looked more like a baby blue and baby pink.
@Crip Dyke #9, The reason why both the outer and inner sides of clear gemstones need to be polished, and that I thing holds true for clear resin too, is light refraction. On a polished surface, the light either passes or reflects, depending on the angle of attack and the density of the mediums involved (like air/diamond or air/resin). That makes things shiny from certain angles and transparent from others. But when one or both of the surfaces is matte, that matte finish causes the light to scatter in random directions -- thus making the object visually less shiny even when the matte surface is the inner one. It also dulls the colors by making them whiter/grayer.
Light refraction and scattering is also the reason why wood looks always lighter before applying varnish -- the varnish fills the pores and scratches and thus reduces the scattering of light, making the light to better both reflect off the surface and get absorbed. It is also why ice is clear but snow is white.
You need the scratches to get as small as possible, ideally below the wavelength of visible light -- that is why you have to go to grits above 2500 and maybe even buff afterward. That is also the reason why it is easier to polish hard materials than soft ones because even fine sandpaper makes bigger scratches in soft material.
That is why the shiniest is always resin/lacquer that was just poured/applied and not subsequently worked in any way -- there are no scratches and the surfaces are perfectly smooth.