Custom Slag Rings

A couple recently came to us with an unusual material that they wanted incorporated into wedding bands. They brought us a grocery bag with what looked to be very dense green glass in chunks the size of a fist. They found these rocks while walking outside an industrial complex in Portugal. They didn’t know what the material was, but it held a great deal of meaning for them. Some research and consulting with industrial metal workers revealed that the material was silicon carbide (or slag), which is traditionally used as an abrasive for polishing glass & diamonds. It has a very high melting point and is extremely difficult to cut. It sometimes occurs naturally, and is fairly common in space, but is also a bi-product of some iron smelting. Our challenge was to figure out how to make this substance into a set of rings. After many design trials, we were able to set the slag deep within the rings.