Making a Tritium and Damascus Steel Glow Ring
All right we were successfully able to breach the mainframe and hack right into the motherboard so we're able to access
The bios
So now if you'll see here this is how we can actually buy tritium it is a very it's an illegal substance
So using this hacked mainframe we can now purchase some tritium so let's see let's go for
what color we like in green? Greens usually the brightest glow color will go with green let's get 20 of these bad boys
add to cart
All right now we're using the hacked version of paypal it's like paypal but it's hacked
you know? I forgot my hacked paypal password but pull that up
alright so we were
Successfully able to order the tritium now we did maybe embellish the process of ordering it just a little bit but it actually is
Illegal to sell tritium in the us but it's not illegal to buy tritium in the us we were able to
Go to an Asian
distributor, buy it from them and
They're gonna ship it to us and that was legal we just can't like get it on ebay or any other
Standardized website because it's illegal to sell for whatever reason and if you don't know what tritium is it's actually hydrogen
But it undergoes a process that makes it slightly radioactive
and it's not enough that it could ever be
dangerous
But it's enough that'll actually glow so it's a gas that glows it doesn't need to be charged by the sun or anything like that?
And the glow on that usually lasts about 10 to 20 years so because this comes in glass vials it does limit our
Abilities with what kind of ring designs we can do so we're gonna have to have a unique and completely
different design for this one but i think it's still gonna look amazing
I'm not a hundred percent sure what we're gonna be going for but i'm probably gonna drop a few sketches show those off
To you guys and we'll pick one of them to go with and we've got like a month before this is going
To arrive, so i've got plenty of time to think it over and figure it all out
so i'll check back in with you guys once that gets delivered
wait a minute dustin how did you get down here so fast did you fall through the ceiling again
You sure did you sly dog okay but silly transitions aside we do have the tritium so i want
to show you guys what this looks like in the dark so let's just follow me through here
We'll go to my
dark
Scary basement so you can see here are the vials
glowing in the dark they're glass tubes they're full of that tritium gas
these will make for a really interesting ring i'm excited to start working with this and i'm hoping this is a ring that i might
Be able to sell on my website this can be really difficult and finicky to make
So i'll have to see how the production of it goes
but let me know what you think down in the comments if i should make these available
All right so our first step is going
to be trimming down the outside of our piece of damascus steel
it's not spinning
perfectly centered in my lathe and so i just need to shave off just a little bit until we're cutting into all-new material
that way it'll be perfectly centered and we can have a really even ring
okay and now i need to face off the outer
surface of our cylinder here and that's just to even it out before it was just a raw cut or straight off a bandsaw so
just
like on the outside this gives us an even surface to work off of to make sure everything about this ring is perfectly even now
i just quickly used a file to shape down the sharp edge here whose really sharp
this definitely isn't necessary it's just pretty sharp so i don't want to end up cutting myself on it and then our next step we
Need to start to drill a hole through the center of this and so i'm going to start with a center drill here that gets
Our hole started and then i switch over to a drill bit because
i'm doing a lot of drilling here when i do just a simple ring blank i usually just stick with the center drill but in
This case since we're removing so much material and it's such a deep cut i switch over to the drill bit and
Then once we get the hole hollowed out
Enough that we can fit our boring bar in there that's when we switch over to that because the boring bar it's a lot faster
A lot more precise but you don't have to keep changing it out every time you want to bump up the side so you just
Adjust the way then you can cut a bigger hole so i just continue to hollow this out i stop a little bit before the
Ring size we're going for because i do want, to leave quite a bit of room
For safety and i'll be able to trim this down later so we're just trying to get a general
hollowed-out
Cylinder shape here then we'll be able to begin cutting the holes for the tritium vials and once we're done with that we can go
back and in size it exactly how we want to
And now you'll see me use a combination of
Sharpie and these calipers to put lines on the ring the first line that i draw is to show the depth of the hole that
I need to drill to get the tritium vials all the way through and then the second one on the outer rim here that's the?
Line in which all of the holes that we're going to drill are going
To be and then the third thing you'll see me do here is i'm cutting this groove into the ring that way when i'm drilling
Through the material i'll be able to see it poke out the end and know when to stop
now we're headi ng over to my mill and i first need to lay the whole thing out and so i've marked a spot where i
want
To drill each of the holes and then i use this center punch to put a little dent
exactly where we want each of the holes this is really helpful because when we're using drill bits that are this small they're really flexible
and so if we didn't do any of these steps the drill bit would just wander around
everywhere and the hole would just be in a completely different spot and it
absolutely make the ring making process just undoable. We couldn't make this ring without this
So now that we've got those done we're able to switch over to our drill bits on the mill then i've got the whole thing
Set up on a rotary table so i drill one hole and then i'll rotate it 30 degrees and then i drill the next one
And then we just continue that process until we've gone all the way around the ring
and throughout this whole process i used about ten drill bits
I ordered a pack of
15 and these are special cobalt drill bits and they're also just a higher grade than most standard drill bits you'd get in a set
And that's very important because i definitely don't want one of these drill bits to snap off inside of the ring it's a complete nightmare
To deal with and the reason i go through
So many is because they can't get dull pretty quickly and i'd really like i said i don't want to take my chances getting these
Lodged in there and so every time it goes dull and stops cutting as well as it was i'll replace it for a new one
and this was totally worth it i probably spent about fifteen dollars on drill bits for this ring but we're putting hundreds of dollars of
Tritium in this and so it's definitely worth it this is also about a hundred dollars of damascus steel so this is an expensive ring
And i don't want to ruin it just because i'm cheap with my drill bits
All right so we now have every hole drilled and we're done with the mill we're ready
To switch back over to the lathe but, we first need to cut the ring off
With the bandsaw so once i've got the piece clamped into place we're ready to start doing the actual cutting of it and i turn
On the machine and this damascus steel it's a really tough material so you got
To be careful with it i'm going really easy on the saw here because i don't want to dull the blade but that can also
have the opposite effect too if you cut the material too slow there'll be too much rubbing and i'll cause your plate to go dull
So you got
to be careful with that and get the right setting style then you'll see i add a little bit of oil just add a little
bit of lubrication
Now that we've got our chunk cut off i'm ready to go over to the lathe and i just need to clean this up that
bandsaw left a really rough finish and so i'm just trimming it all away getting it all cut to a new surface so that we
can do some precision work on it
Now we've got that finished and you can see here there's a hole that didn't get drilled all the way through so i went back
and fix that up we were all fine from this point on and then like i said earlier i'm doing a final sizing to the
Inside of this ring so i'm trimming it away very slowly very carefully because i want a nice surface finish on here?
now it's time to start shaping the outside of the ring and so i need to mount this on an expanding ring mandrel and i
Wanted to show you guys a cool stuff you can do with your ring mandrel these are available on my supplies website and if you
just
Have one of the sizes on hand and you need to cut a smaller ring that won't fit onto your mandrel
you
Can just trim it away a little bit this also has the added
Benefit of really truing up the mandrel in case there's any wobble to it because as
i'm sure a lot of you know if you have something that expands like this a lot of the times you can't get it to
Be perfectly true and how true these spin depends on quite a few different factors like how tight that you've got it so if you're
about
To start work on a really important very precise project
i do recommend just trimming it down just a little bit taking away that layer and that way you can get a really high
Accuracy of precision so for this groove here i'm be switching between
three different
lathe cutters i've got a left hand cutter that i start out with and then a right hand cutter and that's to get the
edges exactly how we want them and i want to remove the bulk of the material with these because these are nicer cutters than this
Disposable one that i'm going to be using next and the reason i'm using this is because it has a flat edge to it so
I'm able to get in there and flatten everything out make sure it's all even
And i eventually get it all leveled out exactly how i want it i had to switch between all the different
Cutters a couple of times but now i've got it how i need it i will need to do quite a bit of sanding to
Get the finish how i want it but this is good for now and next i need to do the bevels on the ring and
so the way i do this is i get my right hand cutter first and i touch it just barely on the edge of the
Ring and once i get it there i rotate the dial on the lathe 30
thousandths of an inch
And i generally like to do about 50
Thousandths but in this case there wasn't enough room we would have started to cut into the holes that we have drilled and so there
Just, wasn't room for that so when a future ring i might leave a little bit more space there just
So we can get a more defined bevel but, for now this looks good it gives it a nice sharp look
To it so i'm happy we could at least get something
Next i used this power drill and i'm just have the same drill bit we used to drill the holes the point of this step
Is just to clean everything up we've got a lot of
fragmented metal just hanging on there and so between this and some
Sanding i'll be able to clean up all the holes make sure the ring is ready
to have those tritium vials just slid right in and then to improve the surface finish on the inside of the groove you'll see i
just
use these very thin strips of sandpaper and it's kind of a slow process
Because i don't have a lot of sandpaper to work with but i eventually get it down to a surface finish that's definitely good enough
For this but i do eventually get it to a point where we've got a really nice surface finish
And then for the rest of the sanding on the ring you'll see i'm usin g this metal block underneath my piece of sandpaper and that's
To keep the sandpaper flat i don't want to smooth out
any of these bevels i want to keep it looking really sharp
Because like i said earlier these bevels are pretty small and just in general it just gives you a nice cleaner look so i very
Carefully sand the outer diameter as well as the bevels up to about
1500 grit and that gets them perfectly smooth and they're ready to be polished and then for the edges of the ring i'm just sanding
them on a flat piece of sandpaper on the table here and there were a bunch of burrs around the holes here and so i
started with some rough sandpaper and i spent a lot of time on that and then i just slowly polished everything up until i got
a perfectly smooth out and there were still a few little micro scratches in there but between the polishing and the etching we'll do we'll
Be able to completely get rid of those so i'm polishing it up this isn't completely necessary
but it will give us some really nice etching results later on so i did spend quite a bit of time i started on the
Left with a white medium polish and then i switch over to the right and that's where i do the fine polish and that's how
We're left with this mirror finish we've got here now it's time to go back into the lathe and this is where i'm going to
add a comfort finish to the ring you can see i don't use electric tape to protect the outside of the ring i usually do
that on rings but because we're going
To etch this in acid if i left any little marks on there they'd be completely hidden with the pattern that we put on it
And so between that and the polishing i do and it actually there was no marks visible after i polished it the second time
And then once we etch it there's just no signs of that at all so that's why i'm not bothering with the electric tape
And then for the inside polishing would be a lot trickier here a nd so you'll see i'm using some specialty sandpaper i do the standard
220 grit all the way up to a thousand but then i switch over to this second booklet of sandpaper i've got here this goes
from 1500 all the way up to
7,000 and this is some special
sandpaper it's made in Germany and it's held to a very high standard so you can see we get a glossy finish just straight off the
Sandpaper so this is
awesome stuff it's really cool to work with now we've got all the shaping done this ring actually looks really cool the way it is
just
super glossy and
Reflective and put a lot of time getting this finish on here and you can see there are still some grooves in a few places
And as i've stressed before that's really not important we're going
to be etching this and that's going to completely hide any of those defects now for the etching i'm pouring out half knew your attic
acid and then half hydrogen
peroxide and
Then i'm
Carefully just dropping it down in there i don't want to splash any get it on my hands or my eyes or anything so just
carefully dropping it in there and i let this etch for about five hours
So you can see in this time-lapse that pattern it just reveals itself and it's completely amazing it just
completely transforms the look of the ring it went from a really shiny just pure silver ring into a really rustic
Almost woodgrain looking texture that it has on it and i really like the look it has and now we have one final step to
Do to the finish of the ring to get exactly how we want it so i'm going back over to my ring mandrel and just
mounting it on there and then i'm going to sand the raised edges at the
damascus steel and what this does is it gives us a polished glossy finish on the raised parts of the ring and then on the
lowered sections of it it's got that really rough
Randomized texture that the acid gives it that just helps contrast the two different types of steel in the ring we've got one that's?
polished and then the other one that's really rough and this especially
Stands out in direct lighting where you can see the reflectiveness of the one material and then just how rough and matte the other one
Is and you'll see once again i put stiff
Materials underneath the sandpaper in order to not have it flex because i don't want to sand any of those lowered sections i need to
Be careful the sand strictly the raised portions and now the step we've all been waiting for this is the very last step and this
Is going to be gluing in the tritium vials
So i've worked about 20 hours on this ring to get up until this point
We still haven't even touched the tritium and that's kind of the whole point of the ring so i waited for this for
And when i got to this step i went and tried to test fit and there was a lot of the holes where the tritium
actually didn't finish and so i spent at least an hour just hand finishing all those holes
I had to sand them out with some little files to try to widen up the holes and make sure everything fit but i finally
Got all the holes to the exact size that we needed and then we're ready to start gluing these in place so i've just got
some ca glue laid out here and then this is just a blue stick of acrylic this is just something i had handy that i
Could dab a little bit of the glue onto and then dab it into the groove on the ring and it's important to be careful
With this once i hide the piece of tritium in i don't want to rotate it or anything because that'll bring up a lot of
The glue with it and that'll just completely mess up a nice finish that the glass has on it so you'll just
See me repeat this process over and over until i get these all done i do a test fit just
to make completely sure that the vial will fit in the hole and then i add a little dab of glue there and then i
Slide it in exactly how i want it i want to make sure it's flush on both edges and then the glass isn't sticking out
On either end and now we are totally finished with this ring and this felt so good to get done it all came together so
well
And the end result just completely blew me away this was a cool ring, to see come together and it was so rewarding
To see it all pay off i was doing all these weird different steps on this ring and i had no idea if it would
Turn out how i wanted it and there were a couple things that i would like to correct in a future version
but i'd say this for a prototype was exactly what i had envisioned and i couldn't be happier with it
So that's the ring guys, i've got a bunch of pictures that i'm going
to be showing you right now of the ring that i took it looks amazing and low-lighting where those tritium vials really light up
So i just took a whole bunch of photos i wanted to show this off the best i could so let me know what you
Think i think this ring turned out really well i do like the look that it has in the daytime it's a really clean look
and then at night this just comes to life like green glow it just goes everywhere it's completely
Noticeable all the time and what's great about the tritium is it doesn't need to be charged so it'll glow like this all night long
and in some of these pictures you can see even if i'm in a pitch-black room
the tritium will light up the damascus steel and it'll cast shadows over the different textures of it so it's just such an interesting ring
To look at i think this is definitely up there with my all-time
Favorite ring i've ever made but anyways guys i just want to thank you so much for watching this video i put a lot of
work
into this ring i literally
Over the course of a couple months that we've been working on this ever since ordering the tritium we had to wait for that to
come from China that in and of itself took over a month and then once i had that this was just such a daunting
Project that i just work on it whenever i had the free time and so i'd put in five hours here five hours there and
it was just like once a week that i'd get around to it but i
finally got this ring finished and so i really hope you appreciated this video if you did you can give it a thumbs up that
Really helps me out that lets youtube know that this was a good video and that they'll recommend it to other people and if you're
new to the channel you can subscribe i post to ring videos a week and i do all sorts of different rings i do a
few other different projects here and there and you can of course
always follow me on
instagram that's where i post a lot of my coupon codes i do a lot of giveaways there as well as just showing you guys
Kind of behind the scenes looks at what i'm doing and as always you can go to Patrick Adair designs com that's where i've got
My rings for sale and if you're interested in making the rings yourself you can go to Patrick Adair supplies calm as well thank you
All so much for watching and i'll see you in the next one
