Of all the gift novelties you can turn on a lathe, a wearable, beautiful ring might seem the least plausible option. But with Rockler’s economical stainless, titanium or black ceramic ring cores and just a tiny bit of attractive wood, acrylic or epoxy, you can do just that! The process involves fitting the inner core to a thin turning blank, then remounting the core to a specialized ring mandrel, or to a pen-turning mandrel outfitted with ring bushings, and turning the ring’s exterior to shape. I used titanium and black ceramic cores for the rings you see here. For outer wood choices, I went “big” on color and contrast: cocobolo, padauk, osage orange, black ebony, black-and-white ebony, desert ironwood and zebrawood. Most of them are available as 1½" x 1½" x 6" handle blanks from Rockler. Or choose from a variety of pre-cut wooden ring blanks at rockler.com. If you pick ring blanks from your scrap bin instead, the denser, harder and more close-grained the wood, the better for this application. You want to use species that resist abrasion, take a high polish and call attention to themselves visually, even in the tiniest of displays.
I’ll also note — and you can see a couple of examples here — that these rings can be fashioned from Rockler’s multi-colored Acrylester handle blanks for a flashier, “synthetic”
