In this video I’ll show you how I made this awesome little ring. It was inspired by the new Star Wars movie, Rogue One.  I was really inspired by the new black Storm Troopers. They’re known widely online as Death Troopers.

Basically they are black storm troopers with green visors and little green lights in their helmets.

I made this ring with some interesting materials. I used Corian and a glow in the dark material called Kirinite as well as sterling silver with a patina that I got from using liver of sulphur.

This ring is now available to order on Etsy, click below to check it out:

The Death Trooper Glow Ring

So let’s make us a Death Trooper!

To begin I measured my finger size and double checked the sizer on my mandrel. For this ring I decided a size 10 would be the perfect fit.

I wanted this ring to be nice and chunky at 10mm wide so I took a sheet of 0.8mm silver sheet and marked a line to follow with my saw.

After lubing up the blade with a bit of beeswax my jewellery saw made quick work of cutting the strip of silver.

Before the silver could be bent to shape I needed to anneal the strip to soften the metal. I did this with my hand torch and heated the strip equally until I saw a soft glow coming off it.

I allowed the strip of silver to cool down before using a half round nose plyers to bend it into a rough ring shape.

To make the edges fit together nicely I cleaned them up with a file, making sure that when I was finished that no light could shine through the seam.

To clean off the oxidisation from annealing I placed the silver ring blank into a pickling solution for about 20 minutes.

In the meantime I used a 120 grit sand paper to scratch up the surfaces of my Corian and Kirinite, I did this to help them glue together better.

I basically made an acrylic sandwich by super gluing the green glow Kirinite between two pieces of black Corian.

While the glue cured I took my silver out of the pickle and dipped it in bicarb of soda to neutralise the acid and gave it a good rinse in water to ensure it was clean for soldering.

To solder the ring I put a bit of flux and a few pieces of silver solder over the seam of the ring and proceed to heat the silver with my hand torch.

When the ring was heated equally I focused the flame over the seam until the solder flowed into it.
I allowed the silver ring to cool down and the gave it another bath in the pickle before taking a raw hide mallet to hammer the ring to size. I just put it on a metal mandrel and hammered away until it was round and the right size.

Now that my piece of silver actually resembled a ring I traced the shape of it onto my acrylic sandwich and drilled a hole with the closest fitting drill bit I could find.

As the drill bit was slightly to small I used a rotary tool to sand away the inside of the acrylic ring until I could fit the silver ring inside it.

I used the band saw and a disk sander to clean up and shape the outside of the acrylic so that it was also ring shaped.

The next thing to do was to glue the corian/kirinite ring to the silver ring liner. I should have definitely been wearing gloves for this part but I’m used to getting super glue on my fingers by now.

I scratched up the outside of the silver ring, applied super glue and inserted it into the acrylic ring carefully.

I went back to the disk sander and used a few grits of sand paper to clean up the edges of the ring and make sure the silver and acrylic were flush.

Then I used progressively finer grits of emery paper to clean up the inside of the silver ring and taper the inside edges.

With the inside and edges looking pretty I mounted the ring on a spindle and sanded it to shape through a few grits of sand paper before polishing with micro mesh to make an even, shiny finish on the ring.

A quick buffing with a bit of burnishing cream was the final touch to bring out the gleam!

I decided the inside of the ring was too bright so I dipped it into a liver of sulphur bath until it had a nice black, oily patina.

I gave it a good rinse and a buffing with renaissance wax for good measure and here’s the final piece.

All in all I’m happy with the Death Trooper ring, it is a unique piece of jewellery and that glow material gets super bright when it’s charged up!

Thank you for watching, if you like the video subscribe and watch more of my tutorials! You can also support my channel by visiting www.zebranowoodcraft.com and checking out my shop.

Until next time, live long and prosper … I mean may the force be with you.