BGIanders wrote:

Now are we talking, "Oh, I dropped it in the campfire heat?" or "Oh, I 
dropped  it in Mt. Doom heat?"  It was said in FOTR that the ring could be

melted >by one of the acient dragons, and not just the volcano after all....

That's a common misconception. Gandalf's precise words were:
  
"It has been said that dragon-fire could melt and consume the Rings of Power,
but there is not now any dragon left on earth in which the old fire is hot
enough; nor was there ever any dragon, not even Ancalagon the Black, who could
have harmed the One Ring, the Ruling Ring, for that was made by Sauron
himself." 

The ONLY way to destroy the One is to drop it into a volcano. Nothing else
even remotely comes close.

-Mercutio
"A plague 'a both your houses!"