Rings carved from billiard balls

Eleanor Salazar, a jewelry maker in Maine, fashions beautiful rings from old billiard balls, carving them to size and polishing them to a smooth finish.

These rings are carved from bona fide used billiard balls to fit your finger. I can make yours in sizes 5-10, and can carve it from whichever pool ball in the set strikes your fancy, from 1-15. Just be sure to contact me with your ring size when you order.

Rounded Numbered Rings (via Neatorama)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Cool rings..

and now I’m off to google some means of obtaining copious amounts of old billiard balls because it’s clearly possible and never occurred to me before. Sounds fun to haves!
L_Mariachi

$160 is a bit steep for something you can make yourself with a grinder and a drill press and a stolen pool ball. Maybe a rock tumbler too, but you can make those yourself for basically free.
- mappo
  
  Well, yes – everything’s cheaper if you steal it. What’s your point?
http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair

How am I supposed to hustle pool wearing this
http://www.facebook.com/fredrika.baer Fredrika Baer

I imagine that “bonafide used billard balls” means that these vintage billiard balls are made with elephant ivory — by not describing them as ivory, the maker can get around the laws forbidding the sale of ivory.
- Paganator
  
  It’s actually legal to sell ivory that predates the ban.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Even if it’s been converted to another use?
    - Paganator
      
      I’m no expert on the matter — I’m just basing myself on a recent National Geographic article — but I don’t think it would matter since the goal of that rule is to avoid criminalizing people who already owned ivory before the ban. The rules do appear to be less than ideal to really stop ivory poaching and illegal trading though (that was the subject of the article in question).
- Nate
  
  Just my opinion, but I’d say it’s EXTREMELY unlikely that those tiny balls from toy billiard sets were made from elephant ivory. Even back in the good old days of wild animal slaughter, a toy set made from real ivory would have been so expensive that only the richest could have afforded one, and this crafter wouldn’t have access to a large enough supply of the balls to make this a viable business proposition.
  - princessalex
    
    Where did you see that the crafter uses toy billiard balls?
    - LemonadeLunch
      
      By looking at how small they are…
    - Nate
      
      I guess I was just assuming, based on their roundness, that she was starting with a complete small ball (1 1/8″ diameter is an actual “official” size for a miniature version of pool). Looking over the other items on the site, though, I guess it’s more likely that she’s cutting out the numbered section of a full-size ball and doing the rounding herself.
      
      That just makes it even more obvious that they’re not ivory, though, since the colors go all the way through the material.
Boundegar

Those are pool balls, not billiard balls. Except they’re tiny. Did they come from one of those toy pool tables that are still mouldering in every church basement in America?
- TheKaz1969
  
  Andre the Giant was the hand model…
BombBlastLightingWaltz

Them some small assed balls.
rattypilgrim

This just gave me an idea. Rings made from glass eyeballs. Can that be done?
- Donald Petersen
  
  I believe it has been done, though probably in a setting on a metal ring. I have a glass eye that someone left as collateral toward a bar tab in my maternal grandmother’s tavern back in the 50s and never bothered to reclaim. It’s only around 1/4 of a hollow sphere, and doesn’t have enough material to go all the way around anyone’s finger. I don’t know if its shape is atypical for glass eyes or not.
  
  Yeah, my Nana ran that kind of bar.
  - rattypilgrim
    
    My grandfather participated in a numbers game from his printing shop. Or so they say. He ran that kind of printing shop.
  - SamSam
    
    You never claimed it?? O_o
http://www.facebook.com/moosestudiospottery Moose Gueydan

those are bakelite , not ivory. from a Williams toy pool table. Mid 40′s to 50′s… they are about 1 1/4 inch in diamater Ivory would be yellowed and showing grain by now
- Syndaryl
  
  Another ivory-substitute was nitrocellulose – doesn’t that inspire confidence in stuffing some old billiard ball in a rock tumbler :D
  - SamSam
    
    Is that why the pool balls used by the wizards in the Discworld explode? Did real-world pool balls ever explode?
    - Syndaryl
      
      That’s probably what Pterry was referencing.
      
      There’s definitely urban legends that they’d explode if used too roughly in a game, but at least Wikipedia can’t find anything to corroborate them (I can’t either with a casual Google). *shrug*
      
      Celuloid is flammable as blue-blazes so any kind of heavy friction would make me very uncomfortable. Thus concern at eg rock tumblers, grinders, etc.