Recently, we’ve moved half way across the planet (you can read about that in previous blog posts) with nothing more than a few suitcases… in other words, not enough space to pack any of the tools we usually use in jewelry making. So, we decided to buy some tools we’ve always wanted to have but could never really justify the expense… enters the mini lathe!
This wonderful piece of equipment enables us to precisely carve many of our racer rings, the gorgeous 2mm thick beauties you can see in our men’s section here.
The beauty of it is that Michel still carves each one by hand, as the cutting tool is hand operated, but the sizing of the rings is accurate to a fraction of a mm!
The other awesome thing is just watching the process, so we are sharing it with you! 😁
Once the waxes are carved, they have to be polished and cast in silver using lost wax technique. Each ring is made to order – we do not use moulds of any sort – so each ring is made from start to finish for a specific person.
Once cast, the sprues, used to inject silver into the mould need to be filed off and the whole ring usually ends up again on the lathe for the final filing and polishing. The whole process takes more than 8 hours to complete!