Silver Ring with Sodalite Cabochon...

Here's another attempt at recycling silver scraps.  This time things went more as planned. ;-)

I scribed the flattened piece of silver with the objective to from two long pieces for a simple band.

I cut the pieces with my jeweler's saw and then refined the shape with a file.

I bevelled an end of each piece in order to provide a very strong weld joint.

I then cleaned the pieces in silver pickle for a few minutes to ensure a strong weld.

The picture with the beautiful fire scale, is the resulting joint before it got pickled again.

I now needed to anneal the piece in order to hammer the band into shape.

I brushed on flux, to use as a visual temperature indicator.  Once the flux becomes liquid the temperature is just about right.

The flame was removed, and then the piece was quenched in water.  

The band then spent some more time into the pickle to remove the fire scale.

I placed the band material around my hand-made ring mandrel and hammered into shape.

I overalapped the band at the top where the bezel for the cabochon will be welded.  (black traces

 on the band).

The excess material passed the bezel will be bent upwards to form a clutch for the bezel to be welded to.

In this picture you see the clutches have been formed by bending the excess material and filed down to a nice shape.

The bezel fits between these two clutches and rests on the double band.

At this stage the doubled band and bezel were welded together, but the cabochon was not set.

Here the rings has gone through a cycle of cleaning, the stone (sodalite) is not yet set.

When I get a chance, the ring will go through the next level of cleaning, I will set the stone and apply some wax and give it a final polish.