Antler Ring

Polished antler ring with antler behind.

As some of you may know if you read my previous post "Snowy Adventures" I came across a deer head with antlers still attached (see post for photo of antlers.) Well I actually carried the antlers with me back home, and I've been meaning to do something with them for quite some time. After a few hours of browsing the interwebs for ideas and coming up with nothing but hat racks, and gun racks I decided to go it alone. I finally decided on a ring for my fiance (not engagement, she already has one of those, an antler engagement ring would be kinda tacky I think.)


The end of the antler was wide enough to make a ring out of so I started sawing with my ryoba (double edged Japanese pull saw.) After about 5 minutes of that I was off the the store to buy a respirator, the smell of antlers dust is worse than burning flesh and I can't imagine it being good for my lungs. Once cut it was then clamped down and a hole was bored using a spade bit in the drill press. Drilling the hole was quite easy since the marrow was a bit soft in the center, like a gross chewy caramel core. After that it was just a few days worth of hand sanding the outer part of the ring to refine the shape and smooth it. The finishing touch was a few hours of polishing compound and cloth to give it a nice shine (difficult to see in the photo as I don't have the proper setup to take amazing photos of jewelry.) Anyway I think it came out well and has a really amazing unique texture to it, I hope she likes it.