Custom petrified whale bone ring

The gemstone in this ring is petrified whale bone. I found it on the coast of California. This is a pretty rare type to find, with such definition of the cell structure. It's pretty interesting material to work with to say the least. Very odd to cut a gemstone out of a once warm blooded creature, that swam through our oceans millions of years ago. If anybody is a whalebone expert palientologist I would sure love to know what type of whale this was. The customer wanted a heart shape cut out of the back. So I traced a heart design and started drilling a small hole at the top of the heart. You must feed the blade of a jeweler's sawblade through your whole. Tightening the blade up and sawing in this manner takes some practice. Never take off your safety glasses when working with jewelry tools. The sawblades are especially prone to breaking and caution must be used at all times. Once you have all your pieces cut out you can solder it all together. All soldering should be done before you set the stone. Diamonds can be soldered in place but other gems will explode or crack. This is the inside of the setting after a bit of clean up. You can still see where most of the solder chips were placed before I heated it with a torch. The solder melts at a slightly lower temperature than the surrounding silver. If done correctly the bond should be as strong as the silver itself. Once the soldering is complete you will have to do some filing and sanding. It's a very time consuming process but I like to do most of the work by hand. You can actually see where I scratched this with a dremmel tool trying to polish it. Took a little extra time to get a brilliant shine on it, but it was all worth it in the end. The customer was so exited to be able to own such an interesting piece of jewelry. Not too many people have a Petrified Whale bone ring. Had to get a bunch of pictures before I mailed this beauty out. Hope you enjoyed the show! Please #upvote #follow and #resteem Here's a link to my online shop.https://www.mygypsystore.com/store/dirty-hippie-designs/