Every now and then I like to sit down and create something unique, a personal challenge to keep me being creative. This week I wanted to create a diamond cluster ring and I thought I’d fill you all in on how I would go about creating it!
Firstly, I drew a few sketches of what was in my head and formed a thorough concept.
Once complete I selected some diamonds looking specifically at their size, colour and cut. After I made the selection I created a setting for the diamonds to sit. To do this I melted down the metal and poured it into an ingot (a bar of metal). I then immediately quenched it in water to cool it down. The ingot was then flattened through rollers, this process is called milling and results in a flat piece of metal. I then put the diamonds onto the milled metal and marked out where I wanted them to be, cut the area out by hand and proceeded to drill holes for the diamonds to sit. The prongs you can see are the claws and were made by milling and then drawing the metal through a draw plate. The draw plate changes the shape of the metal, in this case into a round wire.
Next, work began on making the shank, a new bit of metal was again melted, milled and then turned up, which means formed into a ring shape. The metal was then cut, filed and bent into the required shaped to complete the concept. The final stages included a polish, and setting the diamonds.
[fancygallery id=”2″ album=”3″]