During boot camp a guy mentioned his dad had made a nice ring out of a half dollar using only army mess gear. Wow, how did he do that?

 This sounded interesting for I was into anything like that during my child hood days and still like to do strange things even now. No, not that strange!!!!

  Anyway his dad using a half dollar made a nice ring for his finger using  Army mess gear. The army spoons are bigger than a civilian table spoon with a little more cupped business end and was heavier so it should bend the half dollar faster.

 So over a year went by in my spare time I would hold the half dollar with finger and thumb against my knee in the up and down position and beat the crap out of the money and keep turning it to keep the same shape all the way around until it got about the right size for my finger. Ever so often I would hit accidently hit my thumb and thumb nail.. And the smaller the diameter got the more often I hit the thumb.  And just thinking about it, a sane person would finally realize, hey dumb arse, that's probably not recommended..   Needless to say the 11 other guys in my squad were not too happy with me after a few months of clink clinking until lights out at 10. Yep I even tried it in the dark but thumb was always the first thing hit...

  When I finally got it down to about the right size I started hollowing the center out. And this was done with a mess knife. The knife got too wide a very short distance from the tip end so I didn't have much area to work with which caused things to go very slow.

  Once it got this wide, the other ring is my wedding for comparison, I started hollowing out the center with the knife.   But for a few days I would check with all the other guys and get their opinion if they thought this would be the right size for my finger cause no one had a ring to compare it to back then.  And once the banging stops and the grinding starts there's no more going back to try and get it smaller.

  This is it compared to my wedding ring. What you see is what a half dollar becomes with no sanding or smoothing and I wore it for a few years after I got out of the army.  Thinking back, I did use Brasso to make it shine. Then it stayed that way with no other work. 

  Our barracks so to speak was on the sixth floor of the SS Gestopo Headquarters in Munich, Germany in 1958 and every night I would go down to the first floor and find a slab of smooth concrete to sharpen my knife end.....

 This was back when money was not sandwitched together with other metal's and was worth 50 cents,  a cheap way to get a ring worth the money. Now a collector might stick it to you.

  Later a couple of guys told me their friends made rings out of quarters but a quarter would go down way smaller than the size a persons finger. 

  There was a pawn shop close to the army base in Manhatten, Kansas and someone mentioned one day why don't you take the ring in to see what they think its worth especially with that much work. We did and they said thats illegal for defacing coins.

 

I been going through some photos I had stored on Lumber jocks long ago and ran across these pictures. The ring is still somewhere in this house.  

     I just now realized I had lots of patience back then for no else would do what I did for just a little ring....and I still have patience but it seems to be only when I am working with my hands.

   smallpatch

Nice.  Makes you appreciate it more when it is hand made.  My dad talked about guys he was in the army with doing that but I don't believe he did.  I asked him to give me a spoon and fifty cents to make one and he said he knew I would buy ice cream with the money and use the spoon to eat it.

Dan most dads were and are much smarter than we as kids ever gave them credit for...

A whole lot of work there Jess.  Didn't the Army have any of those thousand dollar hammers and such back then?

Great work Jess, for sure.

Cal I don't ever remember seeing any hammers even the dollar kind. Explain yourself?

They did on the Post, or known in Germany it was Warner Kerson have three or four different hobbies guys could spend some time doing. Wood working, jewelry making, developing film and camera learning and something else but can't remember. I only developed my film. We did have barber shops, a PX and a large deli . They actually felt like if we stayed on the post, us and the german people would get along better..There were very few older men left in Germany and a whole bunch of females and the older women didn't like us for we killed their men folks and as this being 13 years after the war ended lots of hate and anger still persisted.

Also it seems like I do remember lots of young girls.

  Starting about two weeks before we started returning to the USA, they got real nice to us like delivering coffee and donuts to the guys no matter where they were, out in the field, at the gun range or every place their were troops trying to get us to re=up, ha.

I was on the rifle,, pistol and small bore teams the whole time I was over there which was the best place to be in the army while no wars was going on but the very worse place when the fighting was going on.

 

smallpatch

Seems to me like somewhere I've seen a machine that would turn a quarter into a ring.   Likely at a county fair or maybe in Old Abilene Town where my parents would occasionally perform. 

Never the less, making your own with time and patience is clearly  a magnificent endeavor.  Well done and thanks for posting the photos and tale.

4D

21 hours ago, Smallpatch said:

Cal I don't ever remember seeing any hammers even the dollar kind. Explain yourself?

 

Nothing to explain Jess, seems like a hammer would do a more efficient job than a spoon

 

 

15 hours ago, 4DThinker said:

Never the less, making your own with time and patience is clearly  a magnificent endeavor.  Well done and thanks for posting the photos and tale.

 

I have to second what 4D has said

Cal I don't know where the first person who started making a ring out of a half dollar would have thought the army mess spoon would make the perfect roll to become a ring but he must have had some sort of knowledge. Flat tools just won't do it .

 4D most of my thinking and doing is best kept in the trunk of a car I have realized.

And I do have a little off the wall wood thingy coming along but nothing is ever  thought out very much and that's why we put a fire place in the house.

I've got 2 fireplaces in my house, and a nice metal fire pit on my rear deck.  Never thought of using them to turn my wooden mistakes into ash and smoke.  Always thought the wood scraps would be better off decaying in the land fill.   

As I play with metal to challenge my maker curiosity it seems like I'll need a small foundry to melt down and recycle the scraps.  Might need to check city codes before I install one in my house.

 

When I was a young man, early 1950s, my father worked at a prison  farm as a stationary engineer. A place where the least of offenders were allowed to finish their time. One of the favorite ways of passing the time was to make rings. They started with a 50 cent piece and would pound on it with a spoon on the edge until it had flattened to the desired size. Then they would somehow drill out the center and polish it. One of the prisoners gave dad an unfinished ring that did not have the center drilled out. Dad gave it to me and I drilled it out my size. All went well until a basketball game. My ring got caught in the net and nearly jerked my finger off. It did enough damage the way it was by stripping off the skin and flesh on my Knuckle down to my next joint. I found the ring and tossed it in the river. 

18 minutes ago, Ron Altier said:

When I was a young man, early 1950s, my father worked at a prison  farm as a stationary engineer. A place where the least of offenders were allowed to finish their time. One of the favorite ways of passing the time was to make rings. They started with a 50 cent piece and would pound on it with a spoon on the edge until it had flattened to the desired size. Then they would somehow drill out the center and polish it. One of the prisoners gave dad an unfinished ring that did not have the center drilled out. Dad gave it to me and I drilled it out my size. All went well until a basketball game. My ring got caught in the net and nearly jerked my finger off. It did enough damage the way it was by stripping off the skin and flesh on my Knuckle down to my next joint. I found the ring and tossed it in the river. 

In the alert ready room of every AF base I was at, hung a picture of a ring finger with all it's tendons trailing, having been having been ripped from the hand when the ring got caught on the side boards of a troop hauling truck as the hand's owner jumped off. Working around Jet engines, loose jewelry was verboten. I just decided a ring was just as dangerous. Haven't worn one since. 

As far as I'm concerned, any jewelry in a woodworking shop is a hazard, as well.

Edited April 12, 20233 yr by Gene Howe

Ron you brought back a memory from when I was fire fighter in Lubbock, tx.

 

Our lead out fire fighting vehicle was a panel truck that had 200 gal of water and had two guys riding on the back and to stay on while someone was racing down the streets towards the fire they had a pipe installed up on top of the back end above the doors for something to hang on to. It just didn't look that bad at all but one of the firefighters lost a finger as his ring caught on something. I was one of those persons who rode back there in my early days and all the guys were married with their rings to prove it. From then on at the fire house no one wore his ring after that.  

  We couldn't decide whether to fight the fire or tend to the blood gushing out of where his finger was!!!

Started Army flight school just after getting married. One of the big no-no's was wearing rings or other jewelry on the flightline. So, I left my ring at home rather than risk losing it somewhere.

 

Still have all ten fingers intact but to this day I still hear about taking off the ring!