Blaise Mibeck

Education

Career

My wife and I married in 1995. After months of searching for wedding rings I decided to make them myself. My dad told me a story about a method for hammering a coin into a ring. The coin is placed on an anvil and tapped with a hammer hundreds of times while rotating the coin slightly each time. You get to a point when the cross section looks like a I-bar, then you begin tapping the sides to round the ring into a band. A drill is then used to remove as much material from the middle as possible. Finally, a considerable amount of grinding a rasping are done to smooth out the inside.

I decided to use newer coins. This was a mistake -- an interesting mistake, actually. The coins were 50 cent pieces made in 1973 and 1975 (our birth years). They were a sandwich of nickel/copper/nickel alloys. Because of this the finished wedding band appeared silver with a copper strip down the middle -- this is a neat effect. Also, the words "In God we trust" appeared inside the rings -- a bonus that I did not fully appreciate at the time.

I finished these rings just in time. In my hurry, I never had the chance to test fit the rings. I had made mine too small and her ring too big. I attempted to have a jeweler resize them, but nobody would even attempt it because these rings were not made of the softer precious metals they were used to working with. I got into the habit of wearing the ring between the first and second knuckle and it slipped off. My wife also lost hers. They were gone after the first year.

Ten years later I began to think about making replacement wedding rings, this time using precious metals. Time, money and experience prevented me from pursuing this. By providence I found River City Jewelers in Grand Forks, ND.

I never thought it would be possible to afford custom made jewelery. Micheal Zhorela and Cory Schullo studied my scribbles and listened to my hand waving description of how I made the original rings. Then they discussed several possible methods for creating the new rings. I wanted the design of the new rings to be a nod to the old -- for instance,  although I wanted the bands to have a smooth instead of hammered finish. I wanted the nickel/copper/nickel look, but composed of white-gold/rose-gold/white-gold. Most importantly I wanted "in God we trust" stamped on the inside of each ring. To make the rings Cory Schullo needed to pull a rose-gold ingot into a square cross -sectioned wire. He welded a half white-gold ring to each side of this rose-gold wire. Click on collage to the right for more pictures.

I was a part of every decision they made regarding the design of these rings. They had our rings finished inside of three weeks, in time for our anniversary. I highly recommend River City Jewelers to anybody who has an idea in their head for a piece of jewelry. Mike and Cory are fantastic people to work with!

Check them out -- even just to say hi and see what they are all about. I must have visited the store 50 times before actually commissioning this project. They always made me feel welcome.

This is my first website. It is based on a great template I found at NodeThirtyThree Design.

I am using Gimp to modify my images for this website. All photos you see are mine (except the wood planks and borders that make up the background). I use Screem to edit the HTML. My computer is pieced together from several others and runs Ubuntu.

All of my photographs as well as articles and documents on this website are © 2009 Blaise Mibeck. All rights reserved. Photographs in specific areas of this website are protected under the Creative Commons license

Where you see the image: you are free to copy and distribute those photographs, even for commercial purposes, as long as you: 1. do not modify the images and 2. attribute the image to me: Blaise Mibeck. For questions, or permissions contact me.

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