Jawbreaker Ring!

I was at the local county fair when I saw a giant jawbreaker, "I need that!" was the only real impulse for this project. I thought it might be a lot of fun to turn this on the lathe.

Once I actually got to working with it though, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have survived the turning process.

Cutting Up the Jawbreaker

So how many times have you had a giant jaw breaker in your shop and wondered how to cut it in half?!

Exactly. I took two shallow cups I had and used them to hold the sphere steady. It worked fine, though I'm pretty sure there are many other better ways. After that I cut one of the halves into quarters. At this point I was still thinking I was going to turn this, so the odd shape wasn't going to be an issue.

Drilling

I'm a size 10 ring. Which roughly equates to a 3/4" hole. I've made a handful of rings in the past and the process is pretty simple. Drill out the inside, then shape the outside to your liking.

Only trouble here is, drilling giant jawbreaker is hard. It chips out, breaks up and cracks so easily that I was unable to get a clean hole in it! After three tries and three failures on the first quarter piece, I decided to give it another go on the second quarter.

This time I took it very slowly and drilled right through the middle. That material is a little softer and a bit more forgiving. After a couple minutes of slowly drilling down and then blacking out the bit I was able to get what I needed. I nice clean hole.

Reconsidering

My normal M.O. for crazy material projects is to spin the thing up on the lathe. I like turning strange material and it's fun to see what comes out in the end. But I just couldn't picture this being anything more than a disaster. So instead I headed to the sander and band saw.

I started at the sander and removed the peaks from the wedge, and sanded the whole thing flat. Now, sanding sugar on the belt sander is a bit unusual and I would recommend taking time to thoroughly clean your tools up after this crazy project!

Next I shaped the ring at the band saw. This is a very small piece and your fingers are VERY CLOSE to the blade, so be careful here. We're playing with sugar but it is not child's play.

Lastly I used the disk sander to get the whole thing into round. A couple minutes with hand sanding to round over any 90* angles and you're ready for a finish.

Completed

I chose not to finish this project so I could do a gag in the video, but I will be adding a lacquer finish.

Just a few sprays of lacquer should be more than enough to protect this ring from the elements, and more importantly protect this ring from me!

It is oh so sweet....