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Thread: first attempt at mokume...

  1. #1
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    Default first attempt at mokume...

    it was an interesting experience. I never realised that metal could completely burn up and the copper has mysteriously disappeared. Click image for larger version. 

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

  2. #2
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    Keep going, this is something I would love to be able to do.

    Julian

  3. #3
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    Have you seen pics of Mr Bond's mokume bowl?
    Di x

  4. #4
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    Medusa your pic reminds me of these:


    Keyrings by kwant, 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)

  5. #5
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    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

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Di Sandland View Post
    Have you seen pics of Mr Bond's mokume bowl?
    I have... it's sort of what inspired me!

    Quote Originally Posted by Kwant View Post
    Medusa your pic reminds me of these:


    Keyrings by kwant, 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...
    Quote Originally Posted by ps_bond View Post
    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
    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?

  7. #7
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    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
    Di x

  8. #8
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    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

  9. #9
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  10. #10
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    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/educati...ume-gane-video
    http://www.ganoksin.com/borisat/nena...-diffusion.htm
    http://www.mokume-gane.com/index.php...kumegane_story (includes the Santa Fe paper by Jim)
    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mokume-Gane-.../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?

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