captive ring tools

gary doby

Member
Messages
56
Location
North Carolina Foothills
I was thinking about trying some captive rings and have seen articles about using dental tools for the job. I would like any comments, especially about making your own tools. I might try this before expense of a specialized tool
 
Home made

I made a pair out of old flat blade screwdrivers-one for each side of the ring. Ground out the notch with a chainsaw stone in a Dremel type die grinder. Worked fine. This was after I had bought a Crown captive ring tool and struggled with it. Made my own and haven't touched the Crown tool since.
 
Last edited:
I made a pair out of old flat blade screwdrivers-one for each side of the ring. Ground out the notch with a chainsaw stone in a Dremel type die grinder. Worked fine. This was after I had bought a Crown captive ring tool and struggled with it. Made my own and haven't touched the Crown tool since.

Don,
I'm better at visual than textural descriptions... can you show a picture of your tool... I have a multitude of old flat screw drivers and a Dremel, so I could try your version ...
 
I have the Crown ring tool and you do flip it for left and right.
It has a two sided bevel, like a skew. it needs to be honed sharp. It is like cutting with a sharp scraper with no burr. Not aggressive.

I prefer a separate tool for each side like the Sorby ring tool.
With the Crown tool, it is a challenge to cut the ring without tear out, you need to set the tool rest above center, angle down and use a slightly skewed angle.
 
I'll try and get some pictures of the tools. The others are correct about the 2-sided thing. These tools act as scrapers with a small relief angle under the edge so you need one to work from each side of the ring.
 
Home Made Captive Ring Tools

These are the captive ring tools I made from flat blade screwdrivers. One for each side as desribed before. The bottom tool is the Crown double sided tool. It is supposed to work from either side of the ring. I had trouble with it but that was quite a while ago. Maybe I should try it again now that I have more experience.
 

Attachments

  • Ring Tool 1.jpg
    Ring Tool 1.jpg
    78.1 KB · Views: 58
  • Captive Ring Tool 1.jpg
    Captive Ring Tool 1.jpg
    74.9 KB · Views: 62
Larry, I just ground them, no drilling.

Chuck, Files are OK as long as there is not a huge stress on them. Not much stress doing a small captive ring. Also depends on the file. Some are made better than others. Good steel usually. You can anneal them and reharden and temper them fairly easily.
 
Top