MORRISON, Colo. — A team of three works together at Honest Hands Ring Co. in Morrison to make custom rings for people all over the country and the world. Customers will send significant items or memorabilia to be put into a ring.
Recently, the team was challenged with putting a piece of Kapton mylar foil from the Apollo 11 spacecraft into a ring.
"There's not like a guide online to figure out how to put Apollo 11 space material into a ring. You kind of have to do a lot of testing and figure out," said Honest Hands Ring Co. owner Ben Bosworth. "Obviously with such valuable materials that we're working with, when people send us sentimental materials, there's no more of that. So you have one shot to get it right, and it's a lot of pressure."
It started as a hobby for Bosworth. He wanted to make his own wedding ring, and shortly after, his friends were asking him to make rings for them.
Bosworth started his business in his garage in January 2018. As sales increased, the team realized they needed to get their own space.
"At a certain point, I was like, 'All right, I have something here. Let's start a website and let's just see what happens.' Then, kind of word spreads, and you get to a point where it's like, 'All right, now I'm too busy to actually do my full-time job and build rings at the same time.' So it's like, at a certain point, you kind of have to pull the trigger," Bosworth said.
Located inside a 720-square-foot facility are specialized machines, along with several drawers filled with precious items that will soon be put into custom rings.
"I would say there's no idea too big. That's kind of what makes this job fun is when customers bring us really wild ideas, and then it's up to us to try to engineer a solution and figure out how to make that. Because a lot of times, no one has done things that we're doing," Bosworth said.
Jon Mesick waited months for an auction where he was able to bid on the piece of Apollo 11.
"I was nervous. I got in a little bit of a bidding war and probably overpaid a little bit, but it was definitely worth it. And especially, it's a much larger piece than I needed for the ring, but I'm gonna frame it in my house and it's something I always treasure," he said.
Mesick wanted to be an astronaut growing up but ended up taking a more traditional path through engineering, eventually becoming a planning manager at Lockheed Martin for commercial civil space. When it came time to pick out a wedding band, he wanted a piece of a meteorite in it and was also able to add the piece from Apollo 11.
"The rings are made out of zirconium for the metal, then the outside bands are lunar meteorite, so meteorite that came from the Moon and landed on Earth. And then the middle strip is that Kapton foil. That's the gold foil you see on the spacecraft a lot of times," said Mesick. "So this was actually flown in space on the Apollo 11 mission as part of that spacecraft."
Bosworth said the ring took weeks of planning but only four or five days to complete.
There's an immense appreciation, both from Bosworth and the Mesick for making this one-of-a-kind ring.
"We really try to create rings that just mean something more than just like a dollar value associated," Bosworth said. "We want to build rings that people actually care about and that are sentimental."
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