first attempt at mokume...

[medusa]

it was an interesting experience. I never realised that metal could completely burn up and the copper has mysteriously disappeared. 3705

I think it's fair to say I need to work on my technique...

[Julian]

Keep going, this is something I would love to be able to do.

Julian

[Di Sandland]

Have you seen pics of Mr Bond's mokume bowl?

[Kwant]

Medusa your pic reminds me of these:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7113/7449226506_1c364b853d.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/12340604@N02/7449226506/)
Keyrings (http://www.flickr.com/photos/12340604@N02/7449226506/) by kwant (http://www.flickr.com/people/12340604@N02/), on Flickr

Which were made from the molten remains of the engine block of a BMW belonging to a friend, which caught fire on my terrace some time back. By the time the fire brigade came there was not much left, but I saw these blobs and thought hmmm.............. the owner of the car was not best pleased at first but came to like the one I gave him to keep the key to his garden shed on, where he kept his mower as he did not now have a car :0)

[ps_bond]

Not perhaps quite what you were looking for as a result - can you walk through how you did it?

I'd hazard a guess at too hot, too long and too oxidising, probably torch fired?

My life is one long debugging session :D

[medusa]

Have you seen pics of Mr Bond's mokume bowl?

I have... it's sort of what inspired me!


Medusa your pic reminds me of these:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7113/7449226506_1c364b853d.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/12340604@N02/7449226506/)
Keyrings (http://www.flickr.com/photos/12340604@N02/7449226506/) by kwant (http://www.flickr.com/people/12340604@N02/), on Flickr

Which were made from the molten remains of the engine block of a BMW belonging to a friend, which caught fire on my terrace some time back. By the time the fire brigade came there was not much left, but I saw these blobs and thought hmmm.............. the owner of the car was not best pleased at first but came to like the one I gave him to keep the key to his garden shed on, where he kept his mower as he did not now have a car :0)
oooh pretty! i used to hang out at a foundry in Poplar back in the day and I was always grabbing the bits of bronze that splashed out. Yours remind me more of the now infamous 'pearl' necklace from a time ago...

Not perhaps quite what you were looking for as a result - can you walk through how you did it?

I'd hazard a guess at too hot, too long and too oxidising, probably torch fired?

My life is one long debugging session :D

I sandwiched copper and silver together (but I think the copper was really too thin) and then made an 'oven' out of charcoal blocks and added heat first from my little torch and then using my proxxon. I think for sure too hot and too long. I don't have any charcoal blocks left now. I do have an old kiln but not sure it would get hot enough.

I'm wondering now I have a very copper rich alloy of silver, could I melt it down and use it for reticulation?

[Di Sandland]

Yours remind me more of the now infamous 'pearl' necklace from a time ago..

If I had a cup of coffee, I would have choked on it

[medusa]

haha! I curse myself for not thinking of the idea first. If I had done it I would have made them individually. I can't imagine anyone wanting to wear a stranger's pearl necklace :eek:

[josef1]

this is intresting

http://www.mokume-gane.com/documents/SantaFePaper.pdf

[ps_bond]

Midway through the post I was typing, Firefox crashed...

A reading list:
http://www.mokume.com/book2nded1.html (possibly the most useful one to start with? Buy the book!!!)
http://andrewnycedesigns.com/education-center/mokume-gane-video
http://www.ganoksin.com/borisat/nenam/metal-lamination-by-diffusion.htm
http://www.mokume-gane.com/index.php?page=the_mokumegane_story (includes the Santa Fe paper by Jim)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mokume-Gane-Jewellery-Handbooks-Ferguson/dp/0713661569 (perhaps not as comprehensive as Steve's book, more focussed on using the rig he worked with - but still well worth having)

The charcoal was probably good from a neutral atmosphere POV (I use charcoal in my heat treating foil envelopes to scavenge oxygen) - bad from a cost point though! Soft firebricks work well, as do ceramic fibre boards. You've no mention of pressure there - it's a lot easier to get the sheets to bond with a decent amount of pressure (G cramp in Steve's excerpt, clamping plates in the Pijanowskis' method). You can eyeball a wired stack to see when they fuse, but it's a bit more exciting (can go too far quite quickly) and the resulting product is more difficult to work with as the 2 metals will constantly want to dissolve into the ever increasing eutectic bond. This can make soldering a bit tricky.

You can make something that looks like mokume by soldering sheets together; I think this is what is taught by Alistair McCallum, but not having been on a course I don't know for certain. This is generally believed to be a confusion caused by the Japan Society's papers from the late 1800s where they saw the process, but assumed that it *had* to involve soldering as that is what they understood. I don't do it, personally, but it works.

There is a Japanese copper alloy called shibuichi that is 1/4 silver that patinates rather nicely; you could either melt the lot down with some more copper and make that, or add fine silver grain instead and go up to a reticulation alloy?

[Kwant]

Clutches pearls and runs from thread lest I find out another meaning for mokume gane.