Me and the Boy - a Little Family Time

US Golden Dollar  & Quarter  Dollar Coin Rings

I've been busy but my muse has been quiet. I can make while not entirely "woohoo I so want to do this", but I prefer the woohoo. It keeps everything fun, which is why I do this. My stress levels have been higher than I thought they were I guess, I pushed hard at the beginning of the year and I enjoyed that, but I underestimated the amount of down time my muse was going to require afterwards.

So you can understand how happy I was when I told my son I was planning to make some rings over the weekend and he piped up with, "Can I make some too? I still want to learn to make some coin rings. "

And that is just what we did!

First we picked out some coins to use. He has wanted to turn his golden presidential dollar coins into rings for quite some time now. We also picked up a Quarter and a Mexican Peso. I have a Casino token around here somewhere I had planned on using, but somehow it got missed. Maybe next time!

Then we gathered up the tools needed, he went downstairs and picked up a drill and I pulled out my punch set. Marked the centers of the coins and got our holes started. Not without casualty though, I apparently opened my punch set upside down so Alex used it that way and mushroomed one of my punches. oops, ah well that's how you learn ....

Forming the ring on the mandrel.

We used a hammer on the quarter and gave it a textured finish that is really pretty and then switched over to wood and leather mallets for the Peso and the Dollar so we wouldn't destroy the details of the coins.

Peso Ring

We only set out to make them to fit his fingers so there are things we would probably do differently if we needed to size for a specific size smaller than that but it was a great learning experience for us both. And he hasn't taken any of them off, except for washing hands etc, since we made them.

Wearin o' the rings, just sounds good doesn't it :)  Looks good too.

That's how we spent our weekend. How'd you spend yours? Feel free to tell me in the comments or on my page on FB. I'd love to hear from you!

Til next time!

Thanks for stoppin by!