Making an Obsidian Timascus Ring and Flame Coloring it

Today I am going to be making a ring out of timascus which is one of my new favorite materials. We get our timascus from Alpha Knife Supply. I think the timascus colors and striped pattern will look really cool on this ring. After I am done creating the shape of this ring, I want to heat anodize it to help bring out even more of its unique colors. I sell rings like this and other unique material rings on my website, so go check it out!

The Process: The first step I needed to do was to cut off a piece of the timascus from the rod I had. After I cut the blank off, it was time for me to cut a hole out of the center, using my center drill. Once I had the hole cut out, I needed to trim away more of the material using my boring bar. Once I had the size and pattern that I wanted, I stopped trimming away the material. I then decided I wanted to add bevels to the ring without rounding out the edges. I used my boring bar to create the bevels.

I wanted to use 400 grit sandpaper on my belt sander, to create tons of different bevels on the rings to give it a really unique texture and look. As my belt sander was running, I changed the angle of the ring and moved the ring around. I continued this process until the entire surface of the ring had been hit by the belt sander. I then needed to use a really coarse polish to help even out the surface and make sure it was really smooth.

My last step, was to clean of the ring really thoroughly, before I heat anodized it. This cleaning process was very important, because if I had any impurities before I heat anodized it, it would affect the finish of the ring. Now it was time for me to start heat anodizing the ring. To do this, I put the ring of a wire that was hooked to my lathe. This wire would then spin as I was using the blow torch to heat up the material. I wanted the ring to spin at a constant speed, so the heat was even distributed through the ring. Once the ring started to heat up, the color started to change. It went from a bronze color, to a blue, to a purple. I decided to stop heating up the ring when I got to the blue and purple color range, and now the ring was finished! We have a really cool pattern carved into the ring, and then a whole new pattern from the timascus.