We create all of our genuine dinosaur bone rings in our Phoenix, Arizona jewelry studio. The process is fairly lengthy and requires special equipment as well as mastery of many jewelry and lapidary techniques to create a quality dinosaur bone ring our customer will be proud to wear.  We begin by injecting molten wax into a rubber mold to create a wax model copy of the ring design our customer has chosen.   We size the wax model of the ring and it is now ready to be cast in the metal of choice, in this case Continuum sterling silver.  Once the ring is cast in metal the ring is clipped from the casting tree, which usually contains several other rings, and we run it through a series of polishing wheels to check for any flaws in the metal.  At this point, any accent gemstones will be set, in the case of the example shown the stones are black diamonds.  The gemstones need to be set before starting the inlay process to avoid damaging the dinosaur bone inlay and to be able to put the ring in the ultrasonic to remove any debris from the setting process.

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Next we select the dinosaur bone to inlay and use a rock saw with a diamond coated blade to cut a section off of the slab of rough dinosaur bone.  The strip of dinosaur bone is then cut into smaller pieces that will be inlaid in the ring.  Each individual piece of dinosaur bone is examined to find any flaws and maximize the colors and pattern.  Each piece is meticulously fit into place by grinding every side on a diamond wheel until a perfect fit is achieved.  The pieces of dinosaur bone are now ready to be glued into the ring's inlay channel with an industrial strength epoxy.  The epoxy hardens fairly quickly so it is important to get the dinosaur bone sections in place and perfectly seated before the epoxy hardens.  All of the hard work precisely fitting the inlay pieces can be ruined in the gluing process if the pieces are not perfectly positioned in place before the epoxy cures.

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Once the epoxy has hardened, the next step is to grind off the excess epoxy and dinosaur bone until the bone is flush with the inlay channel.  Now the dinosaur bone is polished by grinding it on a series of diamond wheels until all the fine scratches are removed.  The final polishing step is to polish the dinosaur bone on a leather wheel coated with tin oxide.  This will put a put a perfect polish on the surface of the dinosaur bone and ready the ring for final buffing.  The cloth buffing wheel with a fine polishing compound will put a mirror finish on the silver and high polish on the dinosaur bone.  The dinosaur bone ring is now cleaned with soft soap and a soft toothbrush to remove any polishing compound that may have lodged around the black diamonds.  The ring is photographed in the light tent and then shipped to its proud new bone ring owner.

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Learn how to care for your dinosaur bone ring.

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