14K white gold, 1/3 carat diamond set into a blooming rose. Pretty pretty!!

18K gold wedding bands carved with oak leaves and acorn clusters.

Katherine’s husband is a botanist and the two of them have a particular fondness for white oak trees. I designed this set of wedding bands with three leaf/acorn clusters wrapped around the band. Each time I carve a new ring, it is my new favorite, and these rings are no exception. I think they turned out beautifully.

And some wax images..

Pic by Michael Karrer from Flickr.

The initial theme was “moon,” and some other things, but the moon idea was the most intriguing. I figured that just carving a bunch of bumpy craters would be somehow anticlimactic and just random; what would be really cool is if I could map out a section of the lunar landscape and actually carve a scale model of that around the ring. Which ups The Geek by a neat factor of 10, easy. So that’s what I did.

I asked if there were any favorite sections of the moon, any pet craters so to speak (don’t you have a favorite crater?) and was pointed at Tycho, the magnificent and fairly “young” crater with all the blast lines radiating out from it. It’s pretty awesome really, plus it’s rife with fictitious references. I spent a lot of time browsing Flickr images taken by various astronomy enthusiasts. Of which there are many.

The problem with Tycho was that it is hard to get the full effect unless viewed from a great distance, where you can see the thousands of kilometers of blast lines. From here, basically:

Pic by Michael Karrer. Tycho is the lower one in the middle.

See what I mean? Supremely cool, but if I carved it at such a distance, it would be a teeny poke mark with some lines coming out. I didn’t have that much real estate; one ring was to be 6mm wide and the other only 4mm. So I looked around at a lot of craters until I found a linear cluster of pretty cool ones.

This is the Theophilus area, which sounded cool, was next to one of those crazy flat mares, and had a respectable string of notable and named craters. I really liked the primary Theophilus crater, which had a cool tripple-peaked mountain in the center. I did some sketches, mapped out the craters, and was pretty much ready to start carving, when I found THIS section:

That is generally what is called the South Central Highlands (you can see it on the very first image of the half moon too; it is along the center line, lower half). Smack front and center, and I even got to include Tycho near the end of my crater string.

I started, more or less, with the three large craters: Ptolomaeus, Alphonsus, and Arzachel, and ended with Tycho, an edge of Maginus, and Clavius (which doesn’t show up in the above image except as a black shadow). I like this string of craters because they are prominent, right in the middle of the map, and have some really interesting craters and formations.

Pic by Michael Karrer. Another pic here.

Arzachel is cool, with a nice prominent rim, a mountain, a few baby craters, AND a canyon (rille) in the bottom. It’s named after an Arabic astronomer named Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī. Obviously.

Thebit pic by Michael Karrer.

I also like Thebit, the double crater just south of Arzachel. The little bud crater hanging off the edge is just called “Thebit A.” I renamed it “Son of Thebit.” It’s too bad I couldn’t include Rupes Recta, that straight line formation to the right of Thebit.

Deslandres pic by Torben Bjorn Hansen. Here’s another nice one with major annotation.

I was particularly fond of the whole Deslandres area. A large heart-shaped crater-remains with a lot of other little compound craters smacked all around it. The best part is right in the middle is a neat little prominent crater called Hell (!). It seemed perfect for a pair of wedding bands. The other cool thing about Deslandres is that the little smooth spot northwest of Hell, called the “bright spot,” is actually one of the brightest spots on the moon visible from the earth during a full moon. You can look up at night and actually see this. If you are looking carefully.

Incidentally, Hell Crater is not named for the famed underworld of pop mythology but rather after a Jesuit Priest named Maximilian Hell.

Moving along.. Tycho is of course totally rad, no doubt about that. Ultra prominent with its own little mountain in the middle (I wonder what the scale of these features actually is compared to mountains and canyons here on earth).

Lastly, we have Clavius, one of the very largest craters on the moon. It’s apparently visible to the naked eye but I haven’t managed to get out there on a good clear 1/2 moon night (pesky Portland weather) to check that. I will though. I feel like these craters are my own personal friends after carving them twice at a 1:2142857 scale.

Clavius pic by Michael Karrer.

See how cool? Clavius is also notable for being the location of a fictitious settlement, Clavius Base, in 2001, A Space Odyssey.

After all that, here are the rings. I did his in palladium 950 and hers in 14K rose gold with a little pink champagne-colored diamond set right smack in Hell. Her ring was essentially a tinier version of his ring and so with the width difference, I was able to simply scale down the ring entirely and not have to trim out much, if any, of the formations.

The ring starts out with the three biggies: Ptolomaeus, Alphonsus, and Arzachel.

Then Thebit/Son of Thebit and the upper edge of Purbach. You can see the start of the Deslandres area on his ring below.

Deslandres, Hell, Lexell. Her ring has a tiny pink/champagne colored diamond set in Hell.

Things get a little hectic after Deslandres. Most prominent is Tycho though, the, um, prominent crater there with the mountain in the middle.

Here’s Clavius. It’s a large flat-bottomed crater with many baby craters smacked all around the edges and inside. On his ring in particular, you can see the lower rim of Maginus to the left of Clavius, at the top edge of the ring. This is the ‘end’ of the design/landscape segment where it comes back around to Ptolomaeus.

Just for kicks, here’s a photo of the waxes. Deslandres area, before I tweaked her ring to accommodate the stone.

And lastly, I have to thank all of the astronomy buffs out there with the awesome flickr sets. I was able to look at a bunch different photos and angles of each major crater before carving each. I love the internet. I also posted a couple of these pictures without permission (I can’t figure out where I found them in the first place) so if anyone recognizes their image, let me know and I can credit you or remove it, whichever you wish.

Hand-carved Forest of Trees band with eight (I believe) recycled diamonds (picked out of old jewelry the client sent me). I am damned happy with how this ring turned out. It was a long time in the making, with no fewer than fifty thousand emails back and forth with the client beginning in October of last year I think it was, extensive research into how not to be charged customs for stones and metal that she was sending me to use in the ring, extraction of stones and recycling of old gold, and then I began carving! Whew!

The design started out as “trees” and finalized to be Ancient Oak Forest on a Bright Night with Rising Full Moon and Early Evening Stars peeking through the branches.

Here’s a shot of the early wax. I sort of ran with the initial ancient oak theme and got a little overzealous with the trippy branches. “Healthy happy oaks!!” called the client. I fledged out the trees with leaves and this toned down the creepy Halloween vibe that was threatening.

Moving around the ring. Main stone was about 4mm in diameter and the rest of the little guys were around 2mm. It is really hard to get good photos of bright shiny things that have a lot of texture and detail. I have to say though, no matter how nice something might look in the photos, it ALWAYS looks at least ten times better in person.

When I at last finished the ring and had it packaged and ready to ship, we were chagrined to find the Canadian post on strike; no mail was being delivered in the country unless by private courier. After a couple of weeks, things had been “settled” and the ring was shipped and delivered without incident (or customs charges! Hooray!).

The choice of 18K white gold was I think perfect. It is not as white as platinum, palladium, or even 14K white; I do not rhodium plate my white gold. It has a very slight yellowish cast, which makes it look like metallic ivory to me. Warms it up a little and gives it a more antique-y feel. It worked nicely to represent a silvery moonlit night.

14K gold Pond Lily ring set with customer’s salvaged 3.8mm diamonds! I had to do some reworking of the petals and bloom sizes to accommodate the diamonds and the finished piece looked pretty sweet.

Mmmmmm buttery.

Why hello there!

I carved this ring for an Australian surfer/rock climber/outdoorsy kind of guy. We have the weather-worn beach tree, the breaking wave, and an operculum shell, which is a hard spiraly bit that gastropods use to seal their shells tightly closed. We used to find them on the beaches in Central America but I had not previously known what they were actually called.

The ring is carved and cast in palladium.

This is an engagement/wedding ring made from palladium with a gorgeous turquoise piece from Nevada. The couple I get my US turquoise from prospect, mine, cut, and polish all their own turquoise. They do not enhance or stabilize the stone in any way. They are awesome and their stones are amazing. This stone is from their Dyer Blue mine in Nevada.

More of their stones I have in stock:

The large piece at 7 o’clock is amazing: it has reddish brown matrix and chunks of jet-black chert in it. The piece at 5 o’clock (has a pretty mossy green tinge) is turquoise that formed inside of a brachiopod clam fossil. (How cool!)

A carved band with rose clusters and ginkgo leaves scattered across the top. Also: five 2.5mm diamonds; hooray! This ring turned out great, I think. It was the wedding band to go with a 3/4ct diamond solitaire. The effect was quite impressive.

Leaves of the ginkgos act as the “prongs” to hold the diamond in place.

More views of the ring. Tapered bands like this are surprisingly comfortable and non-constricting to wear. I am a huge fan.

And lastly, we have our model wearing the band and showing off her finest gray studio hoodie. Fancy!

[Platinum, blue diamond, and palladium.]

One of my good friends from way back in high school (hello Facebook!) got a hold of me with a ring idea for her husband. They had been married for some years but never really got nice wedding bands; she thought she would surprise her husband with one for christmas and began scheming up ways to sneak-measure his finger size without him noticing anything. Amusingly, about a week later, he suggested out of the blue that they buy themselves wedding bands for their christmas present that year. Karen, evidently, needs to take lessons in subtlety.

Karen and Jon are both total sci-fi geeks and she thought a spacey sort of theme might be interesting, so I started sketching ideas. I found design inspiration from vintage science fiction cover art—you know all that awesome stuff of dudes in round globular helmets and retro spacecrafts with toggle switches and orange square buttonry, comets flying by in the sky with maybe a ringed planet, red rocky outcroppings, pointy cities.. um, and stuff. (I do love me some retro cover art.)

["Space Workers" by Gennady Golobokov, 1973, Russia. I'm digging the pointy helmet.]

[Isn't this awesome? It's Jeffrey Jones' cover for the Amazing Science Fiction magazine, September 1970.]

The rings are laid out in three sections: ringed planet, spiral galaxy, and comet—with lots of flowy wavy designs between. Karen’s ring is in platinum with a little 2.5mm blue diamond in her comet, and Jon’s ring in palladium (the two metals are almost identical in color but the palladium is not as heavy and not as expensive; for a man’s ring, this helps immensely in keeping the cost from getting ridiculous). Animated gifs of all sides of the rings are here: Karen’s ring and Jon’s ring.

It was the first time I’ve worked the two metals side-by-side and it was interesting to compare how they felt and finished up. Though platinum is a harder and denser metal, I would say that they were equally difficult to finish; palladium is more “sticky” perhaps, and platinum more “dry” feeling. From what I have read, palladium has extremely similar wear characteristics as platinum, which makes it pretty much the perfect white jewelry metal (aside from the hard-to-finish aspect). Both took about a million years to file, sand, sand finer, polish, polish finer, etc. I know Karen has a soft spot for heavy metal so I surfed through my mp3 player for some inspirational music to help pass the time whilst sand-sand-sanding away.

[Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles cover. I also like the Fahrenheit 451 cover; it's not really spacey, but I liked the look and the abstract reflections in the helmet.]

More totally cool retro cover art from the former Soviet Union & eastern bloc countries here. And some German art here.