The Devil's Workshop: Wedding Bands

Last year when Mike and I got married we made our gold wedding bands at the Devil's Workshop just a 5 min walk away from us on Queen St. West.  My brother put the idea in my head when he told me about some friends that had tried it out.  Having never done any type of silversmithing before I was very skeptical that we could make wedding bands that didn't look...well...home-made.  It was too intriguing to pass up though, and since we both wanted very simple wedding bands we signed up for the 1-day wedding band workshop.

Above you can see the two strips of 18k gold that we transformed into our wedding bands.  In the top right photo is the cozy studio where we spent the afternoon.  Below I'm sawing the strip of gold down to the right length for my ring.  Next came filing and sanding the edges to make them nice and square.

We used a raw hide mallet and ring mandrel to pound the metal into shape.  This was a cute photo that the owner of the studio took.

Using ring-bending pliers (round on one half and flat on the other) we brought the ends of the ring together to form a tight fit.  Here's where we got to see just how good a job we had done squaring off the ends of the gold strips.  To properly solder the ring together it was crucial that the ends butted up against each other without gaps.

Here Mike is soldering his ring together.  Prior to applying heat the ring was dipped in flux to clean the metal's surface.  The flame caused the flux to bubble and dry up which is why it looks coated in white foam.








Then it was my turn to work the flame...

Once the rings were soldered and cleaned we spent a considerable amount of time pounding the rings on the mandrels to shape them into perfect circles.  Next came polishing with emery paper for what felt like most of the afternoon.  It was the most tedious portion of the workshop, and pretty exhausting on the hands and arms, but it was necessary to eliminate the larger scratches before the final polishing step (shown below).

Using the polishing wheel to bring out the shine!

And now....(drum roll)...check out these rings!  They look like we bought them in a store!  I'm so glad we decided to sign up for this workshop and would recommend it to anyone who wanted to try something special.  Oh, and if you decided you wanted little diamonds set flush with the surface, or some pattern etched into the ring for detail, you could always leave your rings with the owner to do for you after the workshop.  We chose to keep our wedding bands plain and simple and were thrilled to take them home with us that very day.

Our 18kt gold wedding bands, made with love.