How to Make Coin Ring From 50 Cent Coin

It's always fun to challenge yourself by trying something you've never tried before. I've been meaning to experiment ring making for some time now to try this project out. This is not a traditional coin ring as I'm not using the stamping on the coin in the finished ring, but I'm doing a mirror finish. I also wanted to this beautiful natural wave shape instead of a straight profile.

Step 1: Shaping the Ring With Hammer

I started by simply by hammering the edge of the ring with a small hammer on an anvil. You can you any sturdy hard surface, e.g. vises often have a small flat surface for hammering. My intention was to make the ring have this wave shape. I noticed that the ring will "automatically" start to bend in this way if you are not careful and make sure you hammer it straight and don't hit too hard.

After a while of hammering you will notice that the ring edge of the ring will slowly get wider. You need to hammer the ring as long as needed to get the edge to wanted wideness. You also should make sure you don't only hammer on one spot but keep turning the ring around to keep it round othevise you will end up with falt areas on your ring.

At some point of the hammering I thought I want to still make the ring a little wider but as I had already started to bend the ring it started to bend slightly too much. I straightened the ring a little in the vise and kept on hammering until I was satisfied with the wideness.

Step 2: Making the Hole

I didn't have any good way to hold the ring while drilling. I decided to try whether Friction would enough to hold it. I pressed the bent edges of the ring into a 2x4. You can see in the picture that the coin has sunk into the wood. This was enough to keep it on it's place until the hole was done.

After drilling the hole I put the coin in to a vise being careful not to tighten it so much that the coin starts to bend. I used a dremel with carbide bit to carve the hole near to wanted size. At his point I thought I still wanted to make the hole larger but I didn't want to remove much more material so I took a round steel bar and used that as an anvil as a hammered the ring a little more. Once again it is important to constantly turn the ring around and not hit too hard to avoid flat spots. When hammered like this the metal will spread to all directions this will make the metal circle longer and thus it will make the hole larger without removing material.

After I was satisfied with the size of the ring I removed the rest of the marks left by the carbide bit with a diamond bit and fine stone bit.

Step 3: Poslihing

In preparation of the ring for polish I quickly sanded it both from outside and inside with 400 and 800 grit papers. 800 grit will be quite enough to get a nice mirror finish with metal polishing compound.

I used a polishing compound on a wool flap wheel on a drill for the outside of the ring. This wheel is too large use in the inside of the ring so I used a wool polishing wheel for a dremel with the polishing compound. In the video I use first white compund to teh outside and red on the inside, but in reality I used white both on the inside and outside first and then followed with the red compound. I'm not sure whether it is necessary but the white compund is slightly rougher and therefore it could help give the best mirror finish possible

Step 4: Finished Product

After polishing the product is now finished. I'm very satisfied with the way it turned out. Now I feel a lot more confident about trying to make a ring with more complex or expensive materials.

Thank you all for reading my instructable. If you like my work, feel free to check out my youtube page also. That is my main media to post all of my work.