STEP BY STEP | How GVJ Makes Silver Rings with DIAMONDS

What up? It's your boy Gus from Gus Villa Jewelry. In this video, I'm going to be showing you guys how we make our diamond rings. Usually, we can make them in any metal. In this particular case, they're going to be silver with lab diamonds. I'm going to show you guys the entire process: printing them out in 3D resin, casting them, setting those stones in there, and giving them that final beautiful polish. We're going to display them right here in these display cases, where you yourself can come down to Miami, shake our hands, and either buy it here or buy it online. They are going to be available on our website at GusVillaJewelry.com. So without further ado, hit me with the intro music, damn it!

Step 1: The Casting Process. Once we've printed out whatever rings we want, we print them out in what's called 3D resin. This resin is essentially a soft wax. We start the process very simple. Think of it as a casting tree; that's ultimately what it's called as well. We have this thing here, this has very, very hot wax. We pump it into one of these straws. I know it all looks pretty primitive, but it works. We've pumped it up with wax; this is going to be the base of our tree. Once we push the wax out, you get the actual stump itself, and then we begin to put the actual rings onto the stump. We're going to put on almost like tree branches. We grab the little wax and attach it, melting that wax onto the 3D resin. This here, what you guys are seeing, takes a lot of patience, a lot of time, and most of all, experience. It's the beauty of casting.

Once we have our little tree branches attached to our 3D resin, we're going to attach them onto the tree stump. So what we do is use that hot gun, bring in the pieces, and very carefully melt the wax onto the tree stump and attach it, forming one giant casting tree.

So once our tree stumps are done, we're going to slowly and very methodically add them onto one of these casting cylinders. Afterwards, we're going to put a metallic casting cylinder over it and fill it up with investment, and we should be ready to go.

Step 2: The Investment Process. As you saw earlier, we move the powder into the scale, measure a certain amount, and then add some water. We mix that bad boy up, and it almost creates this batter-like material. Once that's done, we add it into our casting chamber and remove all the air. This here is a vacuum; what it's doing is sucking out all the air and leaving it - technically speaking - hermetically sealed. But of course, what we're really trying to do is just move out any of the air pockets inside so that when we put it into our cylinder, there's absolutely nothing but resin and the actual investment itself.

So once the investment has been put into the casting cylinder, we put it into the vacuum, about 2 minutes. It sucks out all the air, and what you're left with is a cylinder with perfectly set investment and resin. That resin is ultimately going to be put into one of these ovens once it's completely dried. It's going to reach a certain temperature and burn that resin off. What you're left with is a perfect vacuum where the resin used to be.

So once that cylinder has reached the temperature, we now put it into the casting chamber. This uses centrifugal force, so once we have that metal nice and hot to where it's glowing red and in actual liquid form, we release it, and with centrifugal force, it shoots that gold into the cylinder and fills that void that we did by burning off the wax.

So once that cylinder has cooled down, we're going to dip it into this water. This water is going to essentially disintegrate the investment. What is hopefully left is a perfect casting, which we're going to see right here. This is, guys, the moment of truth.

All the prongs are perfectly set. It is a beautiful, beautiful casting. We got lucky. Well, when you're good, it's not luck.

Step 3: The Pre-Polish. So now that the casting is done, here comes, in my opinion, probably the most important part. This is called the pre-polish. First things first, we remove the rings from the casting tree and throw them in the tumbler. The tumbler is going to clean out any of those imperfections. Then we're going to remove them from the tumbler and, with the Dremel, pre-fill all those holes and make it perfectly ready to insert the actual diamonds themselves.

Pre-set diamond setting is actually pretty straightforward. Since the hole has already been made and the prongs have been already made as well, what you do is make sure that the hole is clean, pop the diamond in there, and then close the prongs.

Step 4: Buffing. Now that we've set the diamonds, comes the most beautiful part where it becomes kind of rough, ugly-looking silver to the beauty of jewelry, which of course is the shininess. This part is called the buffing. There are two stages. The first part involves heavy, heavy paste that removes all the imperfections. The last part, which is what you're seeing right here, uses a white buffing pad which is really fine and brings out the shine.

Final Step: The Rhodium Dip. This is the final step for any single silver ring that we're going to be selling. It's called the rhodium dip. Now, rhodium is something that's going to protect the silver. In this case, it gives it a coating so that it doesn't oxidize, otherwise known as tarnishing. To give you an example of how much rhodium costs, an ounce of gold is right around $2,300, and a pure ounce of rhodium is almost double that. So it's a very, very expensive process, and we're going to be doing it on all the rings so that they come out beautiful. The benefits, of course, no tarnish and the fact that it leaves it perfectly white.

And there you have it, beautifully silver rings dipped in rhodium with lab diamonds. I'm so happy with how these came out, and they're available on our website at GusVillaJewelry.com. Of course, if you guys have any sort of project, any sort of idea, we are here to make it come to life. If you guys need custom rings, wedding rings, pendants, earrings—it doesn't matter, we can do it all. We make these videos to show you guys the true beauty of making jewelry by hand, making it from scratch. I'm so happy to be making these kinds of videos because it truly breaks that wall between the consumer and the people who actually make it, and you guys maybe can appreciate it just a little bit more. Anyway, guys, visit GusVillaJewelry.com. I'll catch you in the next video. Holla.