Leather Wedding Ring Box

Well, here we are again. This time we are making a ring box for the rings we made in the previous Instructable I did. We wanted to have a box that could fit into an inside jacket pocket without bulging it out. So here's the idea. Make a ring box that is flat! :D

So stick around and we will make one together!

So for this tutorial you will need the following supplies (not all are pictured... sorry, my bad):

- Scraps of leather (enough for the two sides and the strip around the edge)

You can use one color, but I used two different colors for this one. The blue for the top and bottom and the silver for around the edge. Get creative! Its fun!

- Heavy Felt cut into 4 inch rounds.

I found felt coasters that were a 1/8 inch thick that worked very well for this.

- A nail rivet

- Scissors

- A Sharpie

- Sinew "thread"

This I was able to find artificial sinew thread at my craft store

- Leather Needle

- A Nail and hammer and piece of scrap board

- A Dremel with a small drill bit (1/32 should work well)

- A Jewelers Saw with a 1 blade

- A leather hole punch

- Omni Stick glue (Or equivalent adhesive that will work on leather)

Alright! Lets do this!

Alright so the first step is to get the inside ready for your ring box. So if you got your heavy felt cut into 4 inch rounds, what you will need to do is glue two sets of two together with your glue. Let them dry for about 8 to 10 hours. Once you have those, what you will do is take ONE of those and measure to find the middle and mark it with the Sharpie. Then from the middle, measure equidistance to the side of the middle and make two circles. (I used a quarter to get my circles, just FYI).

Then take a small drill head and drill a pilot hole where you will start your sawing. Once you have that on both circles, take your saw, and saw out both circles.

Once you have that, if you are like me and miscut, you may need to sand it down to get them a little more round. And also a nice touch is to round the edges on the opposite side from the one with the markings to give it a nice rounded edge.

Next, after you have that done. Take your glue and glue up the side with the marks on it and glue the other felt to it. Make sure to put a good amount of pressure on it to make sure it sticks to each other well. Then let that sit for another 8 hours.

What I did when that was done was I took my rings and put them in there just to see how cool it was gonna be. Go ahead, do it. I'll wait ;)

So now that you have the inside part ready, we can start on the outside.

For this you will take your insides and place it on the INSIDE of the piece of leather you want to use for the top and bottoms. Then take your Sharpie and mark your line to cut out flush against the felt inside. *** Make sure you are on the inside of your leather, not the part that will be on the outside. Just in case you sneeze and your sharpie jumps. ***

Ok. Now cut that out and do that one more time for the other piece.Once you are done, you should have two rounds that are identical (or as close as you can get when hand cutting)

Next you want to cut the strip for the sides.

WARNING: Math is coming up! AHHHH!

So to figure out the side strip, you need to do the math for the circumference of the 4 inch rounds. Once you have that, add about 2 inches to it for the piece that will "latch" it shut.

Then take your innards and mark the height on the INSIDE of the leather for your strip. I gave myself a 1/8 inch wiggle room on each side in case of edits or mistakes. Then mark down the length to get the length you need for the strip.

Once you have that, go ahead and cut your strip and you will have your "skin" ready for your ring box.

Alright... So now that you have the circles cut to size for the top and bottom and the strip for the sides, we want to start prepping them to sew it together.

How I did this was I took my scrap piece of wood, nail and hammer and nailed or punched a hole every 1/4 inch around the circles and down the part of the strip that was for the circumference of the box. DON'T do it down the whole strip as that last 2 inches are for the "latch" remember?

Once you have that done you will have holes like in the last photo here on the circle and up both sides of the strip (minus the extra 2 inches)

Then you are ready to start stitching!

Now we're ready to get our needle, scissors and sinew thread to start stitchin these together.

Ok so I started with about oooooooh 18 inches of sinew thread. I sewed the first couple holes on the side to the top with a tail of about an inch and a half and then went back and tied it off at the first hole. Then continued around. If you run out of thread, don't fret, just tie it off, cut it and start another. Go around and get it all sewn and tie the end off and make sure its a good knot so it won't pull apart.

Once you have that, you want to split the top so you can start the bottom. What you can do for this is take the top and fold it where the split is on the side down and mark it with the sharpie. Then cut it. You want to cut it all the way thru the top. BUT make sure not to hit any of the thread or it will all come apart.

Next... rinse and repeat for the bottom. Cutting the bottom to match the cut in the top is a little different. Just press the top down and follow the cut on the top along the bottom and you'll get it.

What you should have now is what looks like Pac Man with a long nose.

After this, I would put your innards in just to make sure they fit well and snug. Don't want them moving around a lot with your precious cargo.

Alright lets wrap this thing up, shall we?

Now we want to add the nail rivet that will allow us to close the box up. First step is get out your leather hole punch, grab your scrap wood and nail and hammer.

What you will do is with your box closed up around the insides, figure out where you want your rivet to be. I wanted mine to be about 1/2 inch from the end of the extra strip. I then marked it with the nail lightly. Take the innards out, then make it so you can press the nail in a little more without damaging the sides anywhere else. Once you have it marked, open it up and punch a pilot hole with the leather hole punch set at 2.5 in the side of the case to put the nail rivet in. Push the screw on base of the rivet out from inside the box. Then screw on the top of the nail rivet.

If you got a big headed nail rivet like mine, this next part requires a scissor as well.

Once you have that in, go ahead and set your leather punch to the size you need for the hole the rivet head will go through. Mine was a bit bigger than my hole punch, so I punched it first then used a scissor to cut it big enough. Once you have it, test it out and make sure it works. You may need to cut it a tiny bigger. Just be careful not to cut it too big, ya know? Once you have that done and you test it, go ahead and test it with your insides in the case. And if you are satisifed, its time to finish this up.

Take your insides back out and apply some glue to the inside right where the two cuts meet on the side strip. Then press your insides back in. MAKE SURE to have the ring holes perpendicular to the slits down the middle. Close it up so it sets to how it closes. Let that set and TAA DAA! You have a super cool leather ring box.