Metal Forming

A ring mandrel is a tapered metal rod marked with ring sizes down its length, and it's the tool you use to check or adjust a ring's size, or to shape a band of wire or sheet metal into a ring in the first place. Our A-Z+6 mandrel is the most popular tool in this whole collection, since it covers the full size range in one piece.

A dead blow mallet has a hollow head filled with loose shot or sand, which stops the head bouncing back after impact the way a solid mallet would. It's much less likely to mark your work, which makes it well suited to shaping a ring around a mandrel or flattening wire before measuring it. We prefer dead blow mallets to rawhide mallets, since they move metal more easily with less effort on your end. Our German Halder dead blow mallet is a solid, well-tested option in this range.

Steel bench blocks are for hammering and flattening metal directly, since the hard surface won't absorb any of the force. Rubber blocks are softer and better suited to punching, doming or texturing work where you want some give underneath the metal rather than a hard bounce back. Combined steel-and-rubber blocks, like our Pod Jewellery version, give you both surfaces without needing two separate blocks.

Yes, our A-Z Ring Mandrel and Dead Blow Mallet Set pairs the two together, and there's also a version that includes a ring sizer as well if you want mandrel, sizing and shaping covered in one purchase.