To avoid rusting of the steel on the skin I had to think about a method. I choose brass as an inside ring for the steel outside. Brass tarnishes the skin only a little bit, and after a while it doesn`t do it almost no more at all (strange phenomenon, which is not only observed by myself. Other people describe it too.
I couldn`t find a good explanation for this up to now. It is about the same with copper. When you are sick it starts tarnishing again. This might come from sweating and higher body temperature.)
It would be too expensive in the long run to use medium or hard silver solder for joining such relatively large pieces. But the cheaper soft silver bearing solder would flow away when you try to heat-oxidize the steel later. So I came to the idea to use brass (brazing). This has the additional advantage of having the same color as the brass inside ring. It works with common brass wire and soldering flux, but a high temperature is necessary. I can reach it with a MAP gas hand torch. [combustion temperature of MAP gas 2,020 °C (3,670 °F). The surface of the sun is 5505 °C (9932° F).]
rectangular pieces of welding steel and brass were brazed together with brass wire. The resulting piece was cut in the middle, and the 2 pieces were soldered together again at one point with medium silver solder. The steel and brass were grinded and shaped with various cutting discs and grinding stones, a silver bezel was set into a drilled hole in the steel and soldered on. the steel was blackened and polished repeatedly. Then it was hammered with two different sized hammers. The brass was treated with diamond discs (ripping up the surface, producing a sparkling surface) and polished to different grades at different places. A part of the reddish oxidized brass (copper oxide) was not removed completely. The stone was set with an agate burnisher and polishing wheels. The whole ring was polished repeatedly at different times with polishing wheels, Tripoli, Red Rouge and Fabulustre.
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