Custom Stone Checkerboard Wedding Ring
With their wedding coming up in 6 months, my client reached out to me with a very special wedding ring project. She wanted to replicate a ring her husband-to-be’s grandfather used to have.
The center featured a checkerboard with turquoise and an unidentified gold stone. There were sterling silver ball accents on either side of the stone and a pattern on the ring shank just below the stone.
My client’s husband-to-be had pieces of turquoise from his grandfather’s collection that he wanted to have included in the stone checkerboard intarsia that I would be making.
To verify the details of the ring, I sent over my sketch of how the ring would look like. We decided to do a wax cast for the ring with all of the details, like the sun rays on the side of the ring as well as the little sterling balls on the top.
Once all of the details were approved of, my client sent over their turquoise and I hunted down the perfect match for the mystery golden stone in the grandfather’s original. Because stone checkerboards need to have stones of the same hardness, I felt like picking a golden Hubei turquoise would be the perfect fit!
Once both turquoises arrived, I was able to start working on the precise cutting for the checkerboard, all using a water-clear, non-yellowing, high-strength epoxy to hold it together instead of the usual CA glue that most intarsia artists use. Epoxy lasts much, much longer than CAs.
Once the stone was finished, I was able to carve the wax ring and add all of the little details before sending it to a casting house.
When the ring came back after being cast, I had a bit of fine tuning and extra polishing to do before setting the stone and it was finished!
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