It was my 10 year wedding anniversary and I wanted to get something special for my wife, but for some reason, I was still in school at the time and had absolutely no money. I got a little ambitious and decided to make a pair of titanium wedding bands. They started out as a solid rod about a foot long and I machined them down on a manual lathe and mill. At first I was going to surprise my wife with the ring, but I realized it would be way more helpful to have her input along the way, so we designed them together.
I first roughed out a thick ring on a lathe and then milled a 45 degree angle out of the center. I also used a tiny spur bit to cut a groove the length of the diamond on each side.
I roughed out a bit more of the shape using a large sander with course sand paper.
Continuing to sand, but also file a lot by hand with a small file set.
The rest of the work was done with sandpaper and a lot of elbow grease.
To finish it off, I used really fine sand paper and then polished it on a buffer.
The last step was setting the stone. I had practiced this on several prototype rings and chipped several CZs, but this ring was aligned well and after clamping the base of the ring in a vice with plastic jaws, I carefully torqued open the ring with a wooden dowel and inserted the stone. Lucky for me, it didn't crack.
This is my band that I turned on a lathe. I engraved 10 tally marks on the inside of each of the rings to mark our tenth anniversary.
As a finishing touch, I anodized the inside of mine a deep blue.
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