TechnologyJun 08, 2026
Overnight Mountings Launches Ring Builder PlatformTechnologyAug 10, 2026
Colorado Jeweler Launches Customization Tool He Built Himself
Honest Hands Ring Co. Founder Benjamin Bosworth shared his thoughts on jewelry technology and why AI can never replace the human element.
Honest Hands’ Workbench Ring Builder is the company’s new online customization tool that allows users to build a ring from scratch, generating a 3D image and a real price, and reflecting changes in real time.
Morrison, Colo.—Honest Hands Ring Co., a custom ring maker based in Morrison, Colorado, has launched an online tool for customers to design their own ring from scratch.
The Workbench Ring Designer allows users to select every detail from band shape and width to inlay style and materials.
It generates an image and a real price, reflecting changes in real time.
The builder is designed to guide users through the same decisions the Honest Hands team goes through with a face-to-face custom client.
The company, which Ben Boswell founded in 2018, is known for its custom rings integrated with unusual and often personal materials, such as a piece of a titanium knee from a client’s dog who had passed away or a bullet that was removed from a gunshot victim who survived.
The ring builder offers 300-plus materials for users to play around with. It also offers a space for them to input their own unique material and select a color or visual that most closely resembles the item.
When the build is complete, the “Visualize My Design” tool generates an AI-rendered image of the ring, and if the user is happy with it, they can submit the design to the Honest Hands Co. team.
It’s not an immediate purchase. Someone from the team reaches out to the customer to talk through the details.
“We can review the customer's design, use our expertise to make tweaks to it, and suggest different options,” Boswell said.
“It allows us to kind of guide that customer through a journey rather than having no experience with a real human … We want them to play around, get an idea of what they want, submit a form, and then it's up to us to make sure that, one, it's possible to build, but, two, it's the right match of materials that's going to give the best result for the customer.”
The ring builder was born of a desire to give Honest Hands’ customers more freedom but also to cut down on the back-and-forth and help set clearer expectations on both sides.
“People would come to us and say, ‘We want a custom ring. And we want to buy it from you. But we have no idea what we want.’ Between myself and our customer service and our sales team, it took a lot of back-and-forth to figure out what the customer actually wanted,” Boswell said.
“We want to give some of that freedom to the customer to figure out exactly what they want in their ring and do it in a way that other people aren't doing, in 3D, having a full parametric model that people can configure. And then using the new technology of AI to render that image in a way that looks photoreal.”
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The Workbench Ring Designer allows users to select every detail from band shape and width to inlay style and materials.
It generates an image and a real price, reflecting changes in real time.
The builder is designed to guide users through the same decisions the Honest Hands team goes through with a face-to-face custom client.
The company, which Ben Boswell founded in 2018, is known for its custom rings integrated with unusual and often personal materials, such as a piece of a titanium knee from a client’s dog who had passed away or a bullet that was removed from a gunshot victim who survived.
The ring builder offers 300-plus materials for users to play around with. It also offers a space for them to input their own unique material and select a color or visual that most closely resembles the item.
When the build is complete, the “Visualize My Design” tool generates an AI-rendered image of the ring, and if the user is happy with it, they can submit the design to the Honest Hands Co. team.
It’s not an immediate purchase. Someone from the team reaches out to the customer to talk through the details.
“We can review the customer's design, use our expertise to make tweaks to it, and suggest different options,” Boswell said.
“It allows us to kind of guide that customer through a journey rather than having no experience with a real human … We want them to play around, get an idea of what they want, submit a form, and then it's up to us to make sure that, one, it's possible to build, but, two, it's the right match of materials that's going to give the best result for the customer.”
The ring builder was born of a desire to give Honest Hands’ customers more freedom but also to cut down on the back-and-forth and help set clearer expectations on both sides.
“People would come to us and say, ‘We want a custom ring. And we want to buy it from you. But we have no idea what we want.’ Between myself and our customer service and our sales team, it took a lot of back-and-forth to figure out what the customer actually wanted,” Boswell said.
“We want to give some of that freedom to the customer to figure out exactly what they want in their ring and do it in a way that other people aren't doing, in 3D, having a full parametric model that people can configure. And then using the new technology of AI to render that image in a way that looks photoreal.”
With jewelry customers becoming increasingly interested in meaningful pieces that are unique to them, more brands and retailers have invested in online customization platforms.
In recent years, more and more tech start-ups and suppliers have been developing tools and partnering with sellers to meet this need.
Honest Hands’ Workbench Ring Designer, however, was scratch-made in-house.
Boswell, who has a background in mechanical engineering and a baseline understanding of coding, created the platform himself with the help of AI.
“Only within the last year have things like Claude Code and AI coding tools gotten to a level that you can do this with technical experience but not actual coding experience,” he said.
The production took about 8 months, which included many late nights of learning and the occasional dead end.
“Once I finally had the foundation built and had a couple test designs done of how the rendering and how the configurator worked, it started to snowball pretty quickly,” he said.
“We worked closely with a marketing agency as well and they helped us really make it pretty and tune things up, and then I worked mostly on the back end.”
Boswell said he thinks it's the best designer tool on the market right now.
Having his hands on every part of the operation gives him some advantages.
“We did have to increase our prices when gold shot up, and things locally stabilized a little bit right now, at least this month. But I think, because it's our own builder, because it's our own factory, we can update prices on the fly if we need to,” he said.
“Ultimately, because we own everything, we can stay leaner and be okay without having to charge more than other competitors.”
He can also make quick adjustments based on customer feedback.
“A lot of times, if the customers are requesting a custom material that we don't have in the builder, we'll add that to the builder for them and then they can play around with it,” Boswell said.
He plans to continue expanding the material options available in the ring builder.
“Ideally, I want to get [the builder] to a point where any material someone could think about, they could put it there in and actually visualize it,” he said.
While the possibilities of AI allow creatives like Boswell to dream bigger, the technology itself is far from perfect. It requires guardrails and training, especially in such a niche space.
He can visualize exactly how to build a piece for a customer that wants a piece of a tree in their ring, but an AI model given the same prompt is unlikely to render an achievable design.
His main priority, as the ring builder is developed further, is ensuring that the images generated are capable of being manufactured.
He’s optimistic, though. For him, the future of technology is full of potential.
“Every day, we get customers sending something [they made using] AI that's not possible to make. But that pains me as an engineer. It's like, we can figure out how to do this, and it pushes us to figure that out,” he said.
Since the Workbench Ring Designer launched a little over a month ago, the company has seen more than 120 form submissions.
Sales are up 40 percent from the previous month, and Boswell is looking to hire a customer service and sales representative as well as another person to build rings to keep up with demand.
That’s in addition to the seven people he’s hired in the last 12 months.
The company trains everyone in house. In fact, Boswell has never hired a traditional jeweler.
The staff includes a variety of makers, including a former nuclear submarine welder and a former commercial fisherman who was building nets.
“Ultimately, we're hiring people with very high attention to detail,” he said.
“We've actually had an overwhelming response to the job postings we put up. Our last position had over 700 applicants … people who are looking for a change of industry or someone who thinks they want to work with their hands.”
The bigger Honest Hands gets, the more it attracts local Colorado customers who can visit the shop in person, Boswell noted.
“A lot of people are coming to make appointments to visit the shop, take a tour, meet the people who are building their rings,” he said.
“We don't keep inventory here of any rings because everything's made to order, but there are a lot of people that want to come here, try things on, see the materials, feel things.”
It’s a good reminder that, even with technology playing new roles, humans remain at the heart of the jewelry experience.
“There's so much about people losing their jobs due to AI, but I feel lucky in the sense that I've been able to leverage it and hire more people because of it,” Boswell said.
“All we're doing is using it as a tool to create a better experience for customers. And because of that, the customers have been ordering more, which means we get to hire more people, and it's just a win-win for everyone.”
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