Alicia and I headed to Green Lake Jewelers for an update on our Armillary-inspired wedding rings, and recieved a wax cast and a demonstration in 3D, which I captured on video.
Let’s start by backing up.
About five weeks ago, Alicia and I made concrete our choice of jeweler and design for our upcoming wedding rings. Those familiar with the story know that we are headed for a 2010 wedding date; I suppose we’re a little early on some of these items but these things are essential: our wedding colors, our clothing choices, our rings.
Which brings us back to where we were. Our rings - one for me, one for Alicia, are based on a 17th-century German design that resembles an armillary sphere, a device used in modeling orbits of the earth, moon, and other bodies around the sun.
A side note: Turns out the original LiveJournal post Alicia found this ring from got BoingBoing’d earlier this year. Well done, Mr. Doctrow.
Initial verbal sketches of this ring to family and friends prompted a number of responses, most amazed, some incredulous. Many expressed interest and wonder at the fact that this ring contained a mechanism – a trick owing to its unique construction – that allowed the ring to unfold into a series of concentric rings.
Wax castings were completed recently, comprising the three ring elements in Alicia’s ring, though they were insufficient - the three-ring structure posed a unique challenge to the subtractive wax casting done at our jewelers, and a new cast will need to be done in an additive machine – a “grower”, that will form the molds out of resin.
Other design elements are present, of course – Alicia’s ring, made of 18k yellow gold has a green sapphire set in a half-bezel, with a stepped arrangement of surrounding diamonds. My ring, constructed of 14k yellow gold mixed with palladium, features circuitry-inspired etchings terminating in a pair of inset blue sapphires. The placement of these features is still being worked on, but the heart of the design – the mechanism – is in place.
Here’s a small video of the mechanism operating on my ring, as demonstrated in a 3D CAD program, shown to us by our jeweler, Kirk, at Green Lake Jewelry Works in Seattle.
We expect a new wax cast from the growing machine in about two weeks, a final round of changes, and then delivery of the final rings by the first day in November. That had ought to be enough time for a holiday proposal. But don’t tell Alicia :)
We’ll have more updates soon!
absolutely fabulous …….