These days I don't feel like doing anything photo related so I thought I'll do something with my hands. I had some oak veneer so I thought "let's make a ring out of it".
The first step was to cut the veneer into long thin 5 cm strips.
The wood isn't known to be very malleable so I had to boil the long strips for about an hour, then let the water cool down and after that I wrapped the veneer around a round small bottle and secured it with paper duct tape . I let the wood dry overnight.
After the wood had dried out, I removed the duct tape and I was left with a coiled piece of wood.
I took a bottle of nail polish with the cap about the size of my finger and tighten the wood around it. When I had a circle I added a few drops of CA glue and then tighten about half a cm added some more glue and so on until the whole strip was wrapped and glued.
Now the fun part begins...shaping the ring. I had 6 pieces of sandpaper of different granulation. From hard to soft so I started with the toughest and finished the ring with the smoothest piece.
This is the most tedious part of the process. You have to move the ring in a circular motion and always check how much of it got sanded so you won't sand too much of it.
After all the sanding was done, I had to shape the edges. If I had done it by hand I would have never gotten it right so I used a dremel like tool to shape the edges.
After the edges were shaped I took a small piece of the smoothest sandpaper and gave the ring a final sanding to remove all the minor flaws.
I thought it would be a good idea to use some CA glue to give the ring a shiny finishing touch but I used a wrong type of cloth and some pieces of lint got glued to the ring.
All in all it's not a very complicated operation although it takes a bit of time and effort to get it done.
I'm gonna use this ring to experiment with some silver inlays and see if I get to a satisfying result.
