Man Collects Nail Clippings for a Year to Create Unique Engagement Ring “Diamond”

If you can’t afford a diamond ring, or if you simply want to propose to your beloved in a really special manner, you may want to check out this tutorial for creating an engagement ring out of a year’s worth of nail clippings.

Kiwami, a Japanese DIY master famous for posting detailed how-to videos for making sharp knives out of virtually anything imaginable, recently took on a different kind of challenge – creating an engagement ring with a gem made out of nail clippings he allegedly collected for a year. He kept them all in a jar, and this summer turned them into a black gen that any woman would consider herself lucky to wear on her finger, provided she didn’t know what it was made of, of course.

The video shot by Kiwami Japan at the end of July recently wet viral after being picked up by Hong Kong newspaper, the South China Morning Post. While admittedly disgusted by the material used by the Japanese YouTube star, most users said they found the making-of process and the result of his work fascinating.

Kiwami Japan started the creative process by grinding his nail clippings to a fine powder, mixing them with water in a frying pan, and then compressing it into a small lump using a nut and bolt. He then baked it at 150 degrees Celsius for a few minutes, until his nail clippings ended up looking like a lump of dark clay. Finally, he got to work on a silver engagement ring and polished the “rock” into a dull, black stone that (thankfully) looked nothing like his nail clippings.

 

The unique DIY video already had millions of views before going viral, but the renewed interest in it has bumbed its view count to over 5.5 million, at the time of this writing.

“I’ve never been so disgusted yet amazed at the same time,” one viewer wrote.

“Cant really decide if this is the worst or best 17 minutes of my life,” someone else commented.

 

These two comments pretty much how I feel about this project.