Making a Bullet Shell and Meteorite Ring with The King of Random

For this ring, I worked with The King of Random to create some rods out of molten brass from bullet shells, meteorite pieces, and titanium that I could then use to make some pretty cool rings. I love creating rings out of meteorite, and always end up with a lot of extra scraps. I decided it would be a cool to use the scraps I had and create a rod that I could machine rings out of.

The Process:

To start off, I needed to grind down the rods that we made into a more circular shape, so they would fit into my lathe jaws. To do this, I sanded down the rods until they were the correct size to fit in my lathe jaws. I then decided to take my tungsten carbide lathe bit and trim down the outside edges of the rod to make a smooth surface.

For the next step, I used a boring bar to cut away the inside of the ring. I then trimmed out the inside of the ring until it was the final diameter I wanted. Once I had the dimensions I wanted for the ring, I used a parting off tool to cut away the ring from the rest of the material.

I now needed to sand and polish the ring. To start off, I used a really rough dremel to smooth out the sides of the ring and make it a comfortable ring to wear. I then started sanding the outside and inside of the ring starting with a rough sandpaper and working my way up. After I had the ring sanded down, I switched over to polishing. Because my buffing wheel can not fit inside of the ring, I had to polish it by hand. To do this, I just used some polish on a paper towel, and polished the inside of the ring until I got a perfect glossy finish. To polish up the outside of the ring, I started with a rough polish to get out any imperfections from the sandpaper, and then switched to a high polish to get the perfect glossy mirror finish I was looking for.

My last step was to use acid to etch the meteorite. To do this, I mixed some acid with hydrogen peroxide and put the ring inside. After the ring had been in the acid compound for a couple of minutes, I took the ring out and placed it into a mixture of water and baking soda to help neutralize the ring again. This process really helped bring out the cool etching pattern in the meteorite.

I decided to make three different rings with this material. I made one with just the material alone, one with a carbon fiber lining, and one with a galaxy resin lining. I think the rings turned out great and am pleased with the results! Let us know what you think.