Sliced d20 as cabochon?

[takyris]

After seeing a couple of Etsy stores in which people used dice to make jewelry (pendants and earrings, mostly), I was hit by the awesome coolness that would come from taking a d20, slicing it cleanly in half, and using the half-die as the stone for a ring. (I used the term cabochon, but since it's not smoothed out, that might not be right.)

(I'm aware that this is reeeeeeal geeky. I'm in a geeky mood right now.)

Sadly, when I queried the woman who made the jewelry, she said that making a clean cut like that would be hard with her equipment, and finding a ring base to mount something like that on might be hard as well.

I am a semi-precious-stone ring junkie. It's the one form of jewelry I like wearing, and I've recently had to increase the size of what my wife calls my bling box because the sheer amount of moonstone and tigerseye and citrine and lapis filled up the old one. And the idea of having some nice Chessex Scarlet Scarab d20 to wear as my Geeking Ring on gamedays fills me with all kinds of happy.

Anybody got any ideas on how I could make this happen?

Note: I've seen the "full d20 mounted on a ring" pieces. Those look absurd. The reason I like the half-cut d20 idea is that from a distance, it looks like, you know, an actual ring, not a pinball you've glued to your knuckle.

 

[Pbartender]

Anybody got any ideas on how I could make this happen?

So you've two major parts to the project... A) Cutting the d20, and B) mounting it to a ring.

Last part first... Go to a local hobby shop. Someplace like Hobby Lobby. If you look in the DIY jewelry section, you should be able to find ring blanks in lots of sizes (shouldn't cost more than a couple dollars for one, depending on size, material and design). There's two kinds... those in which the "stone" is glued down, and those that have little tabs that bend over the edges of the "stone" and clamp it into place. For example:

Cutting the D20... Simply put clamp it firmly, but gently, into a vice, and carefully, carefully saw it in two with a hacksaw. Then, just sand the flat side smooth... lay a sheet of medium-fine sandpaper on a flat surface, and rub the D20 across it until the backside is flat. If you want a smoother finish on the back, be sure to progress to finer grit sandpaper.

Finally, just glue (or clamp in) the d20 to the ring blank.

 

[Gilladian]

Another possibility is to make a mold of a real D20 and then cast your die half. I'd personally use silicon mold material (there are several brands like Miracle Mold) and then polymer clay or even Precious Metal Clay. With polymer clay you can make faux stone very easily.

So you could have a faux turquoise or tiger-eye d20 half without mauling a real d20.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Another possibility is to make a mold of a real D20 and then cast your die half. I'd personally use silicon mold material (there are several brands like Miracle Mold) and then polymer clay or even Precious Metal Clay. With polymer clay you can make faux stone very easily.

Or coloured resin - to imitate fake jewels. Then polish and varnish it, and will probably look very cool. Plus, you can use the surplus resin to make your own gelatinous cube!

Cheers, LT.