Kaliber Designs makes jewellery by hand in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. The work centres on a single material: recycled bullet casings. Used brass that becomes something wearable.
The idea is straightforward. We take a casing—brass that has already done its original job—and turn it into a piece of jewellery. The casing is not hidden or disguised. Its shape, proportions, and history remain visible in the finished work.
Your casing, your story
Some of our customers send us casings from their own hunts. A .270 from the deer they took last season. A .22 from years back. We shape that specific casing into a ring or pendant made just for them.
That changes the material entirely. It is no longer generic recycled brass. It is their brass. It carries the story of the hunt—the skill, the moment, the connection to the animal and the land. When they wear the finished piece, they carry that story forward.
We treat a customer's casing as the centrepiece of the design. The marks and character of that specific round become part of the jewellery. No two pieces are alike because no two hunts are alike.
Working with recycled material
Recycled casings are not identical. They arrive with marks, colour variation, and signs of their previous use. Each one must be checked and prepared before it becomes part of a piece. The work can include cutting, shaping, drilling, sanding, and polishing, depending on the design.
Brass also changes with wear. It develops a darker patina through contact with air, moisture, and skin. That is a normal property of the material, not a coating failure. It means two pieces made to the same design may not stay exactly alike over time. For us, that is a feature. The patina is part of wearing something real.
We also work with materials such as 925 sterling silver and acacia wood where the design calls for them. Each material behaves differently. Construction and finishing decisions are made around what will work reliably in practice, not just how something looks in a photograph.
Made by hand
Our jewellery is made in small quantities rather than on a production line. Handmaking allows us to work with the differences found in recycled material and to check each piece as it takes shape. Those differences remain visible in the finished work. We see them as part of the material, not something that needs to be hidden.
A piece made by hand will never be factory-perfect. It will show small variations from one to the next. It will age visibly. It will carry the marks of being made and worn by real people. That is the point.
Why we do it
Kaliber Designs exists to make distinctive jewellery from materials with substance and a clear origin. When a customer sends us a casing from their hunt and we turn it into something they wear, we are doing more than recycling brass. We are keeping a meaningful material in circulation and giving it a second life that actually matters to the person wearing it.
Reusing casings reduces the need for newly manufactured components. But more than that, it connects the piece to a real story—a real hunt, a real moment, a real person. That is not a complicated narrative. It is simply the truth of what we make and why we make it.
The value of a Kaliber piece is in the material, the hands-on process, and a finished object made to be worn and kept. That is the basis of everything we do.