Make piston rings easily

There's quite a bit of information on the web about making piston rings, and much of it over complicates what is
basically a simple process.
This article deals with making new or replacement piston rings for model engines, and obsolete, worn or antique
engines, where parts are either unobtainable or economically non viable.
Or maybe you just want to try your hand at making some rings for your old lawnmower, line trimmer, or garden
blower that no longer goes.
Got a metal lathe? No problem then.
Here's how I do it.

Material
Piston rings for engines with relatively low to medium piston speeds are generally made from cast iron.
The rather brittle nature of cast iron is the reason why rings sometimes break under stress.
If piston rings are made of steel this will not occur - eg many modern engines now use exotic materials .
As speeds rise rings become thinner and have to work a lot harder, so manufacturers move to more durable
materials which are outside of the scope of this article.
However, if the original rings are cast iron then you can make replacements.
You can easily test this by trying to break the ring. If it snaps it's cast iron. If it bends, it's steel - simple as that.
Anyone that has ever tted piston rings will know how easily cast iron can break.
Suitable cast iron can be sourced from:
(1) new round bar,
(2) scrap items such as "V" belt pulleys, brake caliper pistons, used cylinder liners, vehicle axle hubs etc.,
(3) any thing else made of quality grey cast iron - NOT gym weights as these are mainly furnace dregs/slag.

Measurement
The external diameter of the freshly machined, unbroken, piston ring must be the same as the diameter of the
engine cylinder bore - NOT the external diameter of the piston.
The cylinder bore should be uniform in diameter throughout it's full length.

If the cylinder bore is worn and can't be re-bored to a uniform diameter, the external piston ring diameter should
be the same as the smallest diameter of the bore (usually crank shaft end) - to avoid possible ring breakage due
to an insucient expansion gap.
You can make the rings slightly oversize to allow for a worn bore, but you MUST set the ring gap in the least worn
section of the bore to prevent breakage from insucient clearance.
On a worn cylinder bore, it is also usual for a lip to be worn into the cylinder bore from heat/ring compression, at
the top of the piston stroke (cylinder head end).
If the cylinder is not re-bored, this should be honed back/removed to prevent possible breakage of the
replacement top compression ring.
Use the old rings to determine the internal diameter of the rings, and the thickness.
The ring cross section (horizontal width) should be slightly less than the depth of the ring lands in the piston.
The width of the ring lands is pretty obvious and measurement/t should exclude any vertical movement and
sticking/binding.
If you want to make a perfect piston ring, the following section may interest you.

Scientic paper on piston ring characteristics

Click here for a detailed look at piston rings and their design features.

Machining the ring

This is self explanatory in that you are simply machining a cylinder of the correct internal and external piston ring
dimensions, from which segments are sliced o to the required thickness.
Polish the external surface of the ring cylinder with ne wet and dry emery paper prior to cutting.
Most people will use a parting o tool to slice o the rings. Keep the cutting blade overhang as short as possible
to reduce wander, chatter, grooving and corrugation marks - these are your greatest enemy.
If you look closely at the "bad ring" image at the top of the page you can see corrugation marks in it. This is a
throw away from using a parting o blade.
A thicker blade is likely to be more rigid. Why some web sites say to use a thin blade is beyond me.
Any irregularities in the ring faces will have to be ground/polished out using ne emery paper (and kerosene as a
ushing agent) on a very at surface - eg. glass pane.
You could do the preliminary clean up dry on a very slow belt sander or linisher with a ne grit belt.
The nishing process will throw out the thickness dimension, and can make the ring undersize and useless.
So make them one at a time and adjust the thickness when cutting to compensate, until you get the process just
right.

A better way
The best option is to use a tool post grinder with a thin carborundum cutting disc (1 mm) to slice o the
segments as below.

This gives a near perfect nish to the ring faces and is 100% dead accurate every time. No rejects.
Importantly, the low pressure cutting action of a friction disc does NOTimpart hidden stress fractures into a ring
segment, that can easily occur with a parting o blade. So the piston ring will be stronger and more reliable.
You can see the dial indicator and carriage stop used to accurately set each cut above.
Below are some freshly sliced compression rings destined for a Kawasaki generator - worn originals on block.

It's not necessay to have a mirror nish on the ring faces.

Many commercial rings have a matt nish. Some even have visible light emery cross hatching (nishing marks)
when examined closely.
The faces/surfaces must however be uniform.
Regardless of whether you use a parting o blade or a cutting disc, you will have to remove a small burr from the
inside edge of the ring where the segment has broken away at the end of the cut.

No tool post grinder?

Here's a cheap alternative to using a full sized tool post grinder.

Make piston rings with a pencil type a...

This is especially handy for cutting very small and thin piston rings, and for grooving and cutting relief slots in oil
scraper rings.
No chatter marks, no grooving, etc, just like it's big brother, but it can do even more.
It can cut rings down to the thickness of a piece of paper with the low stress little friction discs it uses. Try that
with a parting o blade.
Click here for a full review of the air die grinder I used in the video.

Suitable ring types

Two stroke and four stroke compression rings are easy to make. You can also incorprate a step in the bottom
ring face to help reduce oil consumption.
Relief type oil scrapers are much more dicult to make, particularly small ones. You can copy the originals but it
will be necessary to drill or grind oil passage ways through the ring edge - tricky.
Once again a tool post or air die grinder greatly assists as it is able to grind a double edged oil scraper ring with a
central groove and oil relief slots - using a suitably thin friction disc.

Breaking the ring

Lightly clamp the ring in a vice at the vertical centre point as seen below.
Apply (front to back) nger pressure close to the edge of the jaws.

The ring will snap easily at the jaw edge, with a fairly clean break.
Lightly grind the faces of the break parallel on both planes - removing the least amount of material possible.
Tensioning the ring is dealt with on the next page.

Next page

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