Wedding Ring Experience - 10/25/2008
On Saturday, October 25, my fiancé Ryan and I participated in the Wedding Ring Experience Workshop in downtown Chicago.
It was an absolute blast! I would recommend it to everyone who is looking for a different way to do their wedding rings. For those who don't know, the Wedding Ring Workshop pairs you with an experienced jeweler and they help you through the process of making each other's wedding ring!
Our appointment was at 9:30 a.m., so Ryan and I took the early morning Metra train to downtown Chicago.
As usual, it was a chilly day in Chicago. It was so foggy that we couldn't see the top of the Sears tower.
Once we arrived at Alan Xie's store (Xie's Fine Jewelers), we saw the beginnings of our rings! We each posed with the platinum strip that would be our rings because we are cool like that!
Here is the official picture of our future rings.
The first step was filing down any bumps on the platinum strips. As you can see, we took our filing very seriously.
I had to make Ryan's ring longer to fit his finger, so I got to use a machine that flattened the metal to make it longer.
After I flattened the metal, I had to heat it so that I would be able to mold it into a ring shape.
Ryan had to do the same process for my ring.
Our next step was to shape the strips into rings. Ryan did a great job with my ring (first picture), but his ring ended up looking like an oval and it took a while to reshape it into an actual circle (second picture).
Then, I had to solder his ring together.
This is Ryan sizing my ring, trying to make it the perfect size!
Then I had to saw the ring. I probably broke about 10 saw blades. It was pretty frustrating! You would be in the middle of a stroke and just hear a "pink!" - Ryan only broke one, but he's just a show off. :)
The result of all my sawing:
Meanwhile, while Ryan was trying to expand the ring and he broke his solder. He was quite sad.
However, he fixed it and it was time to use the PLAT stamp.
After I re-soldered, our strips actually looked like rings! (Well, very rough rings, but nevertheless rings.) Ryan wants me to add that there was a ton of filing involved before this picture. It felt like we filed forever!
Ryan moved onto polishing the inside of my ring.
And the outside of the ring.
Ryan, working hard!!
Since it took me quite some time to saw Ryan's ring, I was just on the sanding. You have to sand down the ring to get a great looking polish on the ring.
We also had to sand the inside of the ring.
After Ryan finished polishing my ring, then he dipped it in cleaning solution and steamed the ring to finishing the cleaning.
Because I wanted engraving on the outside, Mr. Xie had to use a special machine that was a little too advanced for us.
Meanwhile, I was polishing Ryan's ring. Those little rubber thimbles on my fingers were supposed to guard agaisnt the heat, but man, did our fingers feel the heat!
My final step was engraving the inside of Ryan's ring.
Finally, we were finished!! We were so happy with our wonderful, beautiful rings!
The fabulous Mr. Xie with his jewlery students.
And finally, the finished product! Yes, they both have "Unpossible" engraved on them. Before we met, Ryan and I "invented" this word. So, it has a lot of meaning to us.
The End.
It was an absolute blast! I would recommend it to everyone who is looking for a different way to do their wedding rings. For those who don't know, the Wedding Ring Workshop pairs you with an experienced jeweler and they help you through the process of making each other's wedding ring!
Our appointment was at 9:30 a.m., so Ryan and I took the early morning Metra train to downtown Chicago.
As usual, it was a chilly day in Chicago. It was so foggy that we couldn't see the top of the Sears tower.
Once we arrived at Alan Xie's store (Xie's Fine Jewelers), we saw the beginnings of our rings! We each posed with the platinum strip that would be our rings because we are cool like that!
Here is the official picture of our future rings.
The first step was filing down any bumps on the platinum strips. As you can see, we took our filing very seriously.
I had to make Ryan's ring longer to fit his finger, so I got to use a machine that flattened the metal to make it longer.
After I flattened the metal, I had to heat it so that I would be able to mold it into a ring shape.
Ryan had to do the same process for my ring.
Our next step was to shape the strips into rings. Ryan did a great job with my ring (first picture), but his ring ended up looking like an oval and it took a while to reshape it into an actual circle (second picture).
Then, I had to solder his ring together.
This is Ryan sizing my ring, trying to make it the perfect size!
Then I had to saw the ring. I probably broke about 10 saw blades. It was pretty frustrating! You would be in the middle of a stroke and just hear a "pink!" - Ryan only broke one, but he's just a show off. :)
The result of all my sawing:
Meanwhile, while Ryan was trying to expand the ring and he broke his solder. He was quite sad.
However, he fixed it and it was time to use the PLAT stamp.
After I re-soldered, our strips actually looked like rings! (Well, very rough rings, but nevertheless rings.) Ryan wants me to add that there was a ton of filing involved before this picture. It felt like we filed forever!
Ryan moved onto polishing the inside of my ring.
And the outside of the ring.
Ryan, working hard!!
Since it took me quite some time to saw Ryan's ring, I was just on the sanding. You have to sand down the ring to get a great looking polish on the ring.
We also had to sand the inside of the ring.
After Ryan finished polishing my ring, then he dipped it in cleaning solution and steamed the ring to finishing the cleaning.
Because I wanted engraving on the outside, Mr. Xie had to use a special machine that was a little too advanced for us.
Meanwhile, I was polishing Ryan's ring. Those little rubber thimbles on my fingers were supposed to guard agaisnt the heat, but man, did our fingers feel the heat!
My final step was engraving the inside of Ryan's ring.
Finally, we were finished!! We were so happy with our wonderful, beautiful rings!
The fabulous Mr. Xie with his jewlery students.
And finally, the finished product! Yes, they both have "Unpossible" engraved on them. Before we met, Ryan and I "invented" this word. So, it has a lot of meaning to us.
The End.