Suggestions for Functional Jewelry?

szyzyg asks: "I'm getting married and my girlfriend and I have been looking around at rings and not really getting anywhere. I have all sorts of high concepts about what this should represent and I keep coming back to the thought 'nothing which is useless can be truly beautiful'. So I've been fighting with the idea of how to make a ring which has some use beyond simple symbolism... concepts like using magnetic minerals to turn it into a compass, or engraving some sort of measuring mechanism into it. So here's the challenge I'm putting to the Slashdot bright idea machine: How do I make a simple piece of jewelry useful? Someone out there must have better ideas."

Comments

Wedding Rings are usefull

[Merlin42]

For those who are not socially inept the wedding ring serves as a very simple communication device. It informs people as to who is 'off the market'. This same type of communication has been acheived by other cultures in different forms, eg a red dot on the forehead or a basil plant in the window.

You should get her a heat-sensitive gold band

[Mordant]

that when put into the hearth, shows funny-looking script characters on the inside, resizes itself to fit the wearer's finger, and answers to the name of "Precious."

"I'm getting married"

[Dukebytes]

Can you say diamond? Seriously - even if shes a g33ky g1rl - I would take a look at a diamond. ALL of her family and friends will be checking out her wedding ring - ALL of them...

You dont want your future mother-in-law saying "Well that Billy is a nice boy - but geesh did you see that ring he bought her? I thought those computer people made good money?" know what I mean? :)

If you want to make her one - go for it - but get a expensive one to put on her finger in front of the preach...

Duke

Re:"I'm getting married"

[zulux]

Real women don't want a diamind:

A real woman will know that a diamond is just an expensive way to dazzle the easily dazzled.

She will also know it's just carbon.

She will aslo know that it's a common stone, kept uncommon by a diamond cartel.

She will aslo know that many diamons are mined by children in conditions akin to slavery.

She would also rather have flying lessons, a trip on the Concorde to Paris, or a Harley.

I suguest, that any woman that has a social structure that makes getting a diamond more important than getting a hang-glider and lessons, is a woman to be dumped to the curb.

Re:"I'm getting married"

[hafree]

Yeah I have to agree here, this is one of the gayest "ask slashdot" questions I've heard in a long time. Get her a rock, not a secret decoder ring.

Wedding ring

[Anonymous Coward]

I resisted enriching DeBeers with my wife's wedding ring, and overall my suggestion would be "don't". People are very irrational when it comes to closely held beliefs**.

Eventually after lots of pain she came to appreciate her original ring more than the regular engagement ring, but it took many months and quite a few girlfriends to say "wow that is a nice stone".

Now about the use of the ring, it sends a message to her: I love you so much that I'm happy to waste a few grand on you.

Lastly, sometimes the most beautiful objects are those with no use at all. The caves of Lascaux painted 15,000 years ago are one of the most beautiful sights you could ever see.

** Try to argue that M$ is other than absolute evil or that Linux could be improved here, and you'll see what I mean :-)

A word to the wise....

[Asprin]

I really do wish you luck, but did you run this past her?

Are you **ABSOLUTELY** **CERTAIN** she's OK with the idea of jewelry that "does stuff"?

Don't get me wrong - I'd love the idea of having a ring that could double as a compass or has a laser or maybe has a web server in it. But I'm not a chick for a reason. My wife would have killed me if I got her a ring that did anything except sit there and depreciate - that's why I let her pick it out. If nothing else, tell her that its super-power is that it also cuts glass.

Seriously, man -- stop the bleeding before it starts. THIS COULD BE A TEST! Chicks *love* doing kind of thing to us.

On engraving...

[waytoomuchcoffee]

My wedding ring is pretty geeky -- it's titanium with engraving -- dots and vertical lines representing 0's and 1's, which spell out my wife's initials in binary (in 5-bit letters). I got it here; the guy that runs the place is very open into making custom-made designs.

I had thought about actually using it for something, like an encryption key -- for example if I started at a certain place on the ring, went a certain direction and counted up 7 or 8 bit ascii words, I could get a passphrase after a while, a pretty strong one. At this point all I would need to memorize for a theoretically very long passphrase would be the starting location, direction, and number of letters.

Even if the men in black kidnapped me and found my ring, they would still have a hard time figuring it out ;-) Now only if I could find a titanium hat -- the tin ones are so 20th century.

Just make sure it does it's primary jobs

[swillden]

Whatever else you might try to make it do, first ensure that your choice accomplishes the basics. It must:

1. Please her. Hopefully, the idea of the ring pleases her, but she should like the ring itself as well. If she thinks it's ugly, or gaudy, or plain, or... anything other than beautiful, you've failed. Also important (sometimes more important, depending on the woman) is what her family, friends, etc., will think of it. I hate to say it, but "traditional" may be be best bet. It's certainly the safest.
2. Look like a wedding ring. The main day-to-day function of a wedding ring is to let everyone around her know that she's married and, hence, unavailable. It's of no use if no one recognizes it as what it is.
3. Be reasonably comfortable. The idea is that she's going to wear this nearly 24x7 for the rest of her life, right? Don't saddle her with some monstrosity that's always getting in the way.

Oh, and one more suggestion, something I learned the hard way: make sure that it doesn't have any sharp points sticking up. My wife's first ring (the diamond fell out at the beach one day, so she got a new one) had these fairly sharp points on the tips of the prongs around the solitaire. Every time she'd roll over to cuddle up in bed, I'd end up bleeding.

Re:Secret compartment?

[pcmills]

Do you eat it or give it to your mother in law?

Diamonds

[Zack]

A lot of people really detest the diamond industry. I for one hate DeBeers, even more than I dislike Microsoft. At least Microsoft doesn't use slave labour, murder people, and abuse their workers. It's hard to justify a shiny peice of carbon with an artifically high price on it when you look at all the human rights violations the companies that mine them cause.

I know there's sociatal pressures that say you need to have a diamond. And why? Because DeBeers invented it!

http://www.africanfront.com/diamondboycott.php

There's one link, I'm sure you can find more with a quick google.

FYI

[kinema]

Rings with compartments were very common durring the late 70's and the 80's. They were used for storing cocaine.

Not many suggestions so far...

[biglig2]

... in fact I'm afraid that if I put forward a practical idea I might be modded down as on topic.

Still, I have no idea if this is possible, but would it be possible to make two rings that can sense when they are near each other and change in some way? Let see now, transmitter, reciever, power source (tiny solar cell?) indicator (led? heating element? not a noice or a vibration otherwise it'll drive you mad being together) - it might be just do-able. The japanese are fond of those badges that do this.

Problem will be size of course, so perhaps this idea is not practicable, unless you both have big hands. ;-)

OK, then, perhaps you need something mechanical. Hmm. Perhaps something that you get when you fit both rings together? A key, perhaps?

Best suggestion so far is the guy with his SO's name engraved on one of those cool titanium rings. Sequence her DNA and write that on it!

When I got married...

[MrIcee]

...my wife and I wanted our rings to be something different and special. We were just out of college and pretty poor so we didn't have a lot of money to spend.

We found a local jewler and asked if he could fashion two gold rings in the shape of a mobius strip (a one sided one edged object). We showed him, out of paper, what a mobius strip was and what it could do. A month later, and for a total cost of $90 (in the 80's) we had two rings with a half twist. To make the rings comfortable and keep the twist in a certain place he had slightly flattened the underside of the ring so that it wouldn't ride around on our fingers. (for those interested, to make a one sided one edged solid gold object he created the twist in a mold and then poured the gold into the mold.)

I always liked the mobius strip rings... there is certainly symbolism in them (no 2 sides, but 1 side... 2 people working together as 1, etc...). Nobody else had anything like them and they were quite attractive.

Aloha Nui Loa for your upcoming wedding - hope to see you honeymoon here on the active volcano in Hawaii.

IT has no value.

[Unknown Poltroon]

Youll be lucky to get 1/10 of what you paid for it. GOld jewelery alwasy sells at a little bit above melt value, and noone buys diamonds for anywhere close to what they sell them for. This has been repeately documented, but hasnt sunk into the brains of the populaion yet. Want resale value? Buy gold, silver bars and coins.

Scribe tool

[qengho]

A diamond ring has the inherent functionality of being able to score glass. With a little practice, she can become adept at permanent warchalking on the windows of businesses with poor wi-fi security.

Re:Real Women???

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

really? I have one that would rather have a trip to hawaii, surf for 10 days straight, put the little silver band around her finger and grin like a school girl hooped up on sugar.

You see bud, it is not about the diamond. It is about knowing your girl. Some women want the diamond to show it off, others want a basic ring with a huge ass story behind it that every time someone asks her why she does not have a diamond she launches into her month long surf trip around the pacific.

I have that girl, and I am going to keep her. You can have the one that wants the diamond.

Re:Real Women???

[Deagol]

My wife told me that if I ever bought her gold or diamonds, she'd leave me. :) We both don't care for gold, and both traditionally wore silver before we ever met. She likes garnets, though.

We didn't do the engagement ring thing, and we bought 2 beautiful silver rings for our wedding bands. Total cost with shipping was just shy of $100. We're both proud of the cheapness factor, as we know the price of precious metals/stones is such a sham. Though, you'd be amazed at how many women turned their noses up at the rings. She doesn't care (that's my girl!) and neither to I. The rings are beautiful and we both love them, and that's all that really matters.

I got this ring, the knots symbolic of my science/math/mechanical nature. I'm the organized one in the pair; I bring order to the chaos. In turn, she has this ring, the ivy symbolic of her being the more "wild" of the two of us. She gets me out into the sun and has a better sense of adventure. We're a perfect match, and over the years our personalities have melded a bit, which goes well with silver (a highly malleable metal). I'm thinking for our 10th anniversary, we might get a new set of rings, but with both having the ivy and knots intertwined (that is, if the owner of this site will custom make them). We may even try to get them in platinum or tungsten, much more sturdy metals.

We've been married 5.5 years and are closer than ever.

Yeah, it's all symbolic, and has no utility value. But my going on about this is simply to illustrate that one can ditch the status quo and have much more meaningful symbolism than "Look! he spent 2 month's salary on this boring ring of gold with a fleck of clear rock on it!"

I encourage everyone to browse the site linked above: metalsmiths.com. The guy has rings made of meteorite that I'd like to get -- too cool! His work is truly unique.

My only suggestion for a practical ring would be either a sun dial type of ring (calibrated for your latitude, of course) or a very simple, solid and heavy ring of platinum which you could hawk if you ever got into a real jam. About the latter suggestion... I've ready to many "urban survival" threads in misc.survival. ;-)