Game On….and a Boss Voodoo gets his grill

I’ve made a lot of progress on the Game Design ring.

I was conflicted about this for a while.   I wanted to keep it real small and light, but the design kept growing.  The D-20 isn’t a small shape and to keep it small, I would only be able to use the very top of it.  It just didn’t look right.

But using the entire d-20 and then setting it in this ocular shape (the purple ring) made it look completely badass.   The ring will read S C A D – A T L – I T G M and basically serves as a visual anchor for the inconsistent shape of the D-20.  These guys are always thinking about loops.  Positive feedback loops, negative feedback loops….yeah.  So the ring being a perfect circle sort of stands for that loop feedback system.  The D-20 itself has 2011 on the top.

The dimensional skulls on either side are going to turn out great.  The eyes punch completely through the shank.  The skulls – again – are all about intellect and reason, which is a huge part of what these guys do.  Plus, they look awesome.

The result is perfect.  The ring looks like some kind of medieval artifact.  It makes DeNiro’s ring from Angel Heart look like a Happy Meal toy.  The size?  Yeah, its big.  But I’m guessing these guys approached me for a reason.  If they wanted something small and dainty, they probably would’ve gone somewhere else.  This isn’t unreasonably big…most college rings are big anyway.  It isn’t even as big as my skull ring and I wear that every day.  I’m going to try to include as many hollows as possible to keep this bad boy light-weight.

Speaking of big….

This fist-sized bad-boy is my Boss Voodoo.  You might remember seeing the wax.  I finally attached the gold teeth – at least 7 of the 8 teeth.  For those of you who don’t know anything about metals, I have a huge problem here.  I have a massive block of sterling silver and then tiny little slivers of gold and I need them to stick to each other.  The silver is going to be insanely slow to conduct heat and the gold is going to suck up as much heat as possible until it either melts and balls up or…with a little luck, fuses to the solder and the rest of the ring.  This took me 6 goddamn hours.  The result was epic success followed by epic failure and then more less-than-epic success.  I got the 7 teeth in, but he 8th tooth is a bastard.  He just wont cooperate.  The solder I’m using will NOT run and the tooth is just on the brink of completely liquifying.  This wouldn’t have been a problem if the ring were smaller, but I’ve created the perfect storm on this one.

After a while, I finally gave up and contacted my pals over at Atlanta Diamond Design.  Why? Easy: they have a laser-solder.  That’s right.  Fuck you, 8th tooth, I’m using LASERS on your ass.  Chuck, the laser master over there, is going to finish that 8th tooth for me and then get it back to me next week.  Eat one.