Making a silicon-bronze ring II

The insert for the ring was originally made of silicon bronze strip 13 x 0.5mm after rolling. This was cut nearly to size and rolled round in a ring former. It was then slipped inside the domed ring and the butt edge scratched with a scriber to give some idea of where to cut. In fact, I found one needed to allow about 0.8mm to get a perfect fit. It was soldered with hard solder in a similar iron wire ring to that for the dome, but smaller in diameter. An even larger gauge iron wire, springy and very tough, was used to pull this ring apart during heating to re-adjust the solder seam – very inventive, but not quite inventive enough since the ring went shooting off into the room. After re-soldering, pickling and cleaning, it was a nice fit in the domed ring.
However I felt it was unnecessarily heavy, so repeated the process of making a plain band with 13 x 0.25mm silicon bronze strip. In all cases for this project, repeated use was made of the enamel kiln set to about 800ºC for annealing. This satisfactorily softened the metal, but the darkened surface was quite resistant to removal even with hot acid, taking additional scrubbing with wire wool. Subsequently, I felt that I should remake the inner band a third time, this time wider, so that it could be riveted up the sides – the extended rim looked nice.