A Sassy Conspiracy

For Christmas I made mom, my aunt and myself spoon rings, made from my great-grandmother’s silverware that mom inherited when gramma passed away this summer. Its a lovely set of sterling silver Birks silverware, monogrammed with the initial of my gramma’s maiden name. However, sterling silver flatware is hardly practical these days, and none of us have dinner parties that would call for something so extravagent (and frankly, what a pain to polish it all up whenever you want to use it).  Mom and I thought it might be more meaningful to instead take a couple of the spoons, and fashion them into rings for each of the women in the family, so they could have their own little keepsake from gramma.

I did not anneal the spoons before making the rings, and I think I might try that with the next ring. The spoons are quite thick, so it was a challenge to get them into a nice round shape, especially for my aunt, who’s ring was a 7.5 (mine and mom’s were size 9). Shawn had to do some of the shaping because I was not quite strong enough. They’re a very pretty, simple design though, and I find the resulting rings to be quite elegant, given they started life as spoons.

For those who are interested, the process is quite simple. I used a jewelers saw to remove the spoon head (it took pretty close to the entire length of the spoon handle to make the ring, less maybe 0.5cm). Once the cut was made, I used needle files to round out the edges of the cut and then used a series of polishing papers to polish the end until very smooth. I then bent the spoon around a ring mandrel as much as I could (which wasn’t all that much, especially near the monogrammed end), let Shawn have a go at it too, then finished the shaping with a rawhide mallet. On my first attempt, I used pliers to help with the shaping, which ended up being a mistake because it marred the bevel detail that runs along the edge of the spoon (maybe nylon grip pliers would work in the future?), and on my second attempt I noticed that even the rawhide mallet would start to mar the bevel if you overworked any one area. Luckily I noticed both of these problems before I caused any real noticeable damage to the rings. The sizing was also challenging because when you hammer on the mandrel, it tends to size up the ring if you’re not careful, and making it smaller required some work. The insides of the rings required polishing since it became scratched from being worked over the metal mandrel, but I managed to preserve the Birks hallmark on mine almost perfectly. Once I polished the inside of the ring with polishing papers, a quick run through the tumbler brought out a really nice shine. I was a bit concerned that the tumbling might damage the monogram, which is already a little worn, but I think it instead made it more visible by bringing out the shine on the surface around it.

So there you have it – heirloom spoon rings :) Mom and my aunt were both very happy with the rings, though they did wonder what my gramma would have thought of cutting up the silverware like that. I personally think gramma would have appreciated the creativity of it.

This is the third ring that I made for myself. I didn’t think to take a before shot, but the third image shows one of the demitasse spoons from the set, which I will also be turning into a ring.