Colorado Metalsmith Turns Moon Rock and NASA Space Junk Into Jewelry

Colorado metalsmith Benjamin Bosworth likes to engrave rings with outdoorsy designs, like miniature engravings of the Boulder Flatirons or inlays of real elk antlers. But he's just finished crafting what might be the ultimate outdoors-themed ring: a wedding band made from a piece of a spaceship that's orbited the Moon.

"My favorite thing is when customers send in their own material to use," says Bosworth, who has made custom rings incorporating arcade tokens, vinyl records, a saxophone and even dirt from the baseball field of a World Series out of his shop in Morrison, Honest Hands Ring Co. "It's an awesome way for people to put sentimental meaning into their rings."

Earlier this year, Bosworth was contacted by customer Jonathan Mesick with an astronomical ask: Mesick had acquired through auction a six-inch piece of Kapton mylar foil — the crinkly gold stuff — that had been a component of the Apollo 11 mission. You know, the one that sent astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon in 1969.

The request was on brand for Mesick, a planning manager in the aerospace industry for Lockheed Martin. The mylar foil he purchased had never actually been on the surface of the Moon, but it had been part of the Command Module Columbia, which orbited the Moon above while Armstrong made his famous giant leap on the surface below.

To complete the theme, Mesick asked for a chunk of a lunar meteorite that he owned to be worked into the ring. The final result is breathtaking, even if you can't tell Apollo 11 from Apollo Creed. Cast in black zirconium to mimic the darkness of space, it's inlaid with tiny chunks of moon rock on the edges and a strip of shimmering spaceship down the middle.
Bosworth had more than a professional interest in taking on the commission: He's a space fanatic himself. One of the many original ring designs he stocks in his shop features an engraving of the historic Saturn V rocket, which launched the Apollo 11 mission into space.

"That specific Saturn V design I pulled from the technical documents of NASA, which are public domain now. I scanned it and retouched it, then I slapped that image on a ring. So not only is it a cool design, it's actually from the blueprints of the Saturn V," he explains.

"That kind of stuff is super special to me," he adds. "I'm a mechanical engineer, so I've always just been infatuated by space, and especially the Apollo missions. They're just like the Holy Grail. So the fact that there was this NASA artifact in my shop for weeks while we were building the ring, it was super special."

For someone who makes wedding rings for a living, Bosworth has an ironic relationship with them. "I don't wear my own wedding ring half the time because I'm always in the shop, and I can't risk messing it up in one of the machines or being injured that way. So I always joke with my wife, 'I need to just go and get a tattoo of a wedding ring on my finger. That's the only way I'll be able to permanently wear one.'"

Honest Hands Ring Co. can be found on the company's website.