New Ring Designs

New Ring Designs

November 24th, 2010

A while ago I bought lots of antique silver spoon sets when we visited Colin’s sister Morag and her family over the summer as they live near Spoon Central – a little village called Horncastle that is full to the brim with small antique shops. As I’ve been without my camera for what seems like months, I’ve not been able to photograph any of my ‘work in progress’ for a while. I have been busy, just not really been able to blog about it.



Well my camera arrived back from the lab all shiny and new the other day and so today I spent some time taking images of the new rings I’ve made from the spoons I bought over the summer. So here are a few shots of my new rings – in spoon format and then transformed into things of beauty for someone special…

Some of the spoons needed a lot of care and attention as they were quite scratched and deeply marked in places – so I spent hours filing, sanding and polishing them before forming them into rings – a laborious task but very worth it – it’s so lovely to work away at an old spoon and bring it back to life, so to speak and polish them up to a brilliant shine and rid them of blemishes. I couldn’t get rid of every mark though and it’s nice that there are often these remnants of past lives and history within the spoons that I use.

This is a shot of all the spoons prior to sanding, filing and polishing. I’ve removed the bowls and rounded and smoothed the ends.


Before and after shots of set 1

This set of spoons has a lovely pattern on the upper side and on the under side so I made two different rings.






Before and after shots of set 2

I love the flower design of this spoon.




Before and after shots of set 3

These spoons have a lovely feathered edge design.




Before and after shots of set 4

These spoons have a shell design which is quite a common spoon pattern, but the ones I’ve bought before only had the shell at the tip of the stems. These lovely spoons have the shell pattern and a lovely grooved edge as well.




Before and after shots of set 5

A simple grooved pattern runs along the edge of these spoons and they have quite a decorative edge at the tip.





I’ve had loads of fun making this set of rings as they all have fab patterns and grooves on them and I decided to experiment with oxidisation and adding an antique patina to them. Once formed into ring and fully polished, I make sure the rings are perrfectly clean and free from fingerprints, then I heat them up by placing them into boiling hot water. They then get transferred into a stinky [gas masks required] Liver of Sulphur solution that is also gently heated in a bath of hot water and they are left in the liquid until I’m satisfied with the oxidisation process.

The rings are washed and then I use a set of fine graded sandpapers to polish them again, removing the patina from the raised areas of silver. The black patina gets left in the grooves and patterns when the rings are re-polished and this really accentuates the designs. It’s a bit tricky re-polishing the insides of the rings and I did initially try painting the patina onto only the outside of the rings with a brush, but this was quite tricky and it was impossible to avoid the liquid running around the entire ring and onto the inside. It also meant that the patina was applied unevenly and so I thought it best to apply it to the entire ring and just spend a little extra time to finish the rings off – I think the hard work is worth it for the final result.

Related Posts
My Latest Ring OrderThree New SpoonsTeaspoon RingsNew Pendant Designs

POSTED IN NEW STOCK |