This is the 5 Best Tips for Making a Wood and Metal Ring. In this post, you’ll learn what to look out for when making a wooden ring with a metal band in the center.

Making a Wood and Metal Ring

One of the best types of wooden ring that you could possibly make is a wooden ring that has a metal core at the center. This is awesome for several reasons, and it’s a perfect blend of strength and beauty.

Wood is definitely not as strong as metal, but in many ways it is far more beautiful. Metal is much stronger, and is great for the core of the rain, with the wood on the outside to showcase the beauty.

In this way, you get all of the good from the metal, and all the good from the wood, with none of the negatives. All you need to do is glue these two pieces together, and then make a great looking wooden ring. I’ll show you everything you need to know coming up.

See Also: Top 10 Wooden Ring Making Posts

Pick a Good Ring for the Core

Wood and metal rings start out with the core. You need to pick out the perfect ring core in order to build your wood and metal ring upon a sturdy base. I recommend stainless steel, titanium, or sterling silver.

There are other materials that you can use for sure, and some of them are fairly expensive. Rest assured however that you do not need to spend a lot of money on your metal ring. You are only using it for strength, and it will be barely visible.

A good place to look for ring cores on Amazon. Also, depending on the tooling you have, you need to buy a ring that is a certain shape.

If you have the ability to cut metal, just buy a wedding band. If you don’t, you need to buy a ring that is flat on the outside. When you glue the piece of wood to the outside of the ring, it needs to be flat so that way the seam doesn’t show.

See Also: How to Make a Wooden Ring With a Metal Band

Pick the Best Piece of Wood

After you know your core is good, and you’ve bought it at the right size for your finger, it’s time to move onto the wood. This is an opportunity for you to pick out something amazing, and make an exceptional looking ring.

The beauty of ring making is that the piece of wood you need is very small. This means even a really expensive species of wood is not outside of your range because the piece you need will still be relatively inexpensive.

Even if you had to spend $20 on a small piece of wood, and that may be a lot of money for the amount of wood you’re getting, the price itself is not prohibitive of you using the species.

Wood and metal rings are excellent, so I definitely recommend that you pick out a really nice piece of wood and something that has a lot of character when you make your ring.

See Also: 10 Best Woodworking Projects that Sell Well

Rough Up the Mating Surfaces

Gluing these two pieces of material together can be a little bit of a challenge, but thankfully there are some things you can do to make the process a lot easier. It starts with roughing up the mating surfaces before you apply the glue.

Metal is very smooth, and depending on how you drill your wood it can also be smooth as well. This prevents the adhesive from really getting a good grip, but you can fix that.

Instead of allowing these smooth surfaces to meet each other without any assistance, you need to use something sharp to create ridges and scratches on the mating surfaces. This will help form a mechanical bond between the two materials.

Make scratches side to side and up-and-down on the metal ring surface, and don’t be afraid to make them kind of deep. The more rough and craggy you can make the surface, the better the two surfaces will bond together.

This means a longer lasting ring, and it also means that you won’t have to worry about the two pieces delaminating at some point in the future. That’s really nice to know, and it’s good peace of mind.

See Also: How to Choose the Best Epoxy Resin for Wood

Use Two Part Epoxy to Adhere The Pieces

The absolute best adhesive that you can use to bond your two pieces of material is called two part epoxy. This is a mixture of two chemicals that harden through reaction, and form an incredibly strong bond.

Pretty much any time you need to use a glue that’s different than wood glue, you can get away with using two-part epoxy. This means any time you need to glue something to something else, epoxy will pretty much always deliver.

Just like using wood glue, you want to apply a thin layer to both of the mating faces, and then press the two items together. Don’t worry about clamping, because there really is no way to clamp this particular lamination.

However, you don’t need to worry about the excess epoxy.

See Also: How to Make a Wood and Copper Ring from a Pipe Fitting

Clean Excess Epoxy Before it Sets

If you get a five-minute epoxy, right around that time you will notice that the epoxy starts to get a little bit harder, and feel more like gel than liquid. This is the time when you need to start wiping all of it off the metal portion of the ring.

Use a piece of cloth, and make sure that you wipe off every bit of epoxy that has gotten on the metal portion of your wood and metal ring. This will be a nightmare to get off later, so spend the time now while it’s still soft.

Don’t be afraid to get the cloth a little wet, just be careful that you don’t slide around the ring too much inside of the piece of wood. If you wait long enough, it actually might set up well enough that you don’t have to worry about that part as much.

When all of the excess epoxy is removed from the metal ring, you can set this unit aside for 24 hours to fully cure.

See Also: 25 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Making Wooden Rings

Your Action Assignment

Now that you are familiar with all of these great tips for making a wood and metal ring, it’s time to get out of the shop and take action on what you’ve learned.

Wooden rings are a pleasure to make, and they are even more fun when they have a solid metal core that gives you all of the strength of metal with all of the beauty of wood.

Even if this is your first time making a wooden ring, you can definitely do well by making a wood and metal ring for your very first project. It’s easy, fun, and you’ll be addicted right from the start.

If you have any questions on how to make wood and metal rings, please post a question and I’ll be glad to answer them. Happy building.

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