Casting Cash, Gold, and Glow Powder in a Resin Ring

I wanted to make a casted resin ring that was filled with shredded cash. So I got shredded cash, that is in strips. Shredded cash usually comes from like the Federal Reserve. When they have old dollar bills that they just shred up. So there is like a few hundred dollars of cash in my bag. It's just all shredded up and it does not cost that much,  maybe 20 bucks.

One thing I wanted to try was adding gold. I went and got a gold leaf that is super thin. I don't want to touch. If I touch that it sticks to me and it just falls apart. So I set it aside for later. Gold can be flattened to incredible thinness but it's still completely opaque so you can't see through it at all. It is so thin, 15 microns, so very very thin. There hardly anything there but it can get thin. You can crumple it up and do different things with it and it will still show up in the ring really nicely.

I also wanted to try adding a glow. I hoped it would be really subtle you won't even notice it during the daytime and then have a nice glow to it. I have green glow powder here because we're working with cash.

I laid out all of our materials here, casting materials as well as two tubes for casting the actual materials in. I put a piece of duct tape on the end to seal it off and make sure it doesn't leak. Then I ran it on the table top to make sure it's got a complete sealed all around. I don't want any leaks coming out of here.

Then I sprayed some mold release in there to get the casting out a little bit easier at the end. I sprinkled in a little bit of the shredded cash and then some gold leaf. The sheet form of the gold leaf was not good to work with. I recommend a vial filled with crumpled up gold leaf.

I rotated off the different steps that I'm doing. I sprinkled in some gold leaf and then some shredded cash. Make sure the layers are thin enough so that there's gold leaf all throughout the entire ring.

I measured out the amounts of resin that I wanted to use. I used about two ounces for each of them and I added the glow powder. Then I added the appropriate amount of catalyst and there's a little diagram on the side of the casting resin that tells me how much to put in. I then mixed it all up very thoroughly. I slowly poured it in and some of that cash is starting to settle and so I added a little bit more and pour in some more resin. I repeated until it’s topped off.

Then the next step was to vacuum all of the bubbles out of the blanks. I put them in my vacuum chamber for about 15 minutes. Then I used a UV lamp to look at the glow.

For the actual ring making, I put the first rod in my lathe and used a boring bar to smooth out the end. It kind of ripped and tore apart almost violently and that's just because there are so many air bubbles and different impurities in the top layer. I cut through all the garbage, wasted material at the top. Then I tried to cut into the actual usable material. I got the rod cut down to a point where there is some nice consistent bubble-free material.

I hollowed out the inside to get the inner diameter for the ring size that I want. Then I switched to my other lathe tool to trim down the outside diameter of it. I slowly trimmed this ring away until I got the dimensions I want. Then to detach the ring from the rest of the rod I used a cut off tool in my dremel. I slowly cut into it and I was able to just gently separate the ring from the material.

Then I mounted the ring on an expanding ring mandrel. I sanded and shaped the ring. I gave it a flat profile and rounded things out to make it super comfortable. For the sanding, I started at the coarse sandpaper. I usually start at about 220 grit and I work my way all the way up to about 1500.

For polishing, I used a felt fit on my dremel and a white compound first for a medium polish. It smoothes the whole ring out it gives it a very consistent finish but, not a glossy finish. Then I moved to the green. That's a higher polish and so that'll give it a glossy finish to make it shine.

To give it a polish on the outside I use a buffing wheel. The exact same concepts apply here. I started with the white polish on the left and then finish with the green polish.

And that’s it. You have a cash, gold and glow powder resin ring.

Check out the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhpOkFCgQDk and subscribe to Patrick Adair Designs.