Rainbow Ring - 100 Segments of Exotic Woods + Resins for a 1-of-a-Kind Heirloom Ring

You don't need a Leprechaun to make this Rainbow Ring but you do need a lot of patience and some luck! Plus it helps to know a great Wood Wizard. In my case it's a guy name Hal Metlitzky who is the creator of the "Dizzy Bowl". Hal is my mentor from my local wood club and taught me his process and his work is in the Smithsonian Museum. To make a dizzy bowl you need to glue up many rows of thin wood strips of various colors. He uses a lot of exotic woods. Then slice them very thin to create a sort of multilayer sandwich. Here is a video showing the process. One thing I noticed, as he cut the ring circles for his bowl, was the corners ended up in the scrap bin. I said, hmm, I can make something out of those and that's how Dizzy Rings - I mean Rainbow Rings were born. Maybe if I make enough, I can get a pot of Gold. This ring has over 100 wood and dyed resin segments.

Here's how to make one. Enjoy!

Various wood and veneers of thickness ranging form 1/32 to 1/8 inches.

You could also use construction paper and epoxy and make a micarta blank too like this.

Or buy a blank and cut slices to make a sandwich

CA glue

Clamps

Drill and Bits

Files and Sand Paper

Ring Size Mandrel

Optional: Bandsaw, Table Saw, Lathe (makes it faster but you can do with drill, files, small hand saw)

Carefully slice your laminated ring block into thin strips to build a ring blank sandwich. You need at least 3 layers with the grains rotated to give the ring good strength. It's sort of like making a very small, but colorful, piece of plywood.

I use a quarter to create the outer shape and size of the ring blank. It's good to make it large and then fine tune too to your final size. I shoot for 4mm wide and 2mm thick for the ring rim. Also, I drill a center hole so I can put the blank on my lathe to fine tune.

Most of the tedious parts are done. Now just shape the blank into a nice circular ring blanks.

I noodled about the best way to fine tune the inner ring size and came up with this process. With a lathe, I drilled out the center close to my target ring size and then created a mandrel with sandpaper to sneak up on the final size. If you don't have a lathe, you can use a Dremel tool, power drill, or files and sand paper to sneak up on the internal diameter to reach your target ring size.

Now your at the home stretch and need to be very careful since the ring is very thin and you don't want it to snap on this final step and ruin all your hard work. Here you do the final shaping, sanding, and applying your finish. I use several coats (7 at least) of thin CA glue and sand between coats with 1000 grit sand paper to get a smooth surface. I finish with a special polish I make out of beeswax and diatomaceous earth. (It's the stuff they put in some tooth paste)

Didn't it "turn" out nice? See the others I made. The last one was for my little neighbor to grow into.

Show what do you think, should I call them Dizzy or Rainbow rings?