Hi all.

I am brand new to working with metal based art, and am hoping to pick the brains of those who have been doing this for awhile for help with a project I am working on.

I am working on an engagement ring and while I have tried to read up on the subject, I've run into a stumbling point out of the gate. As a quick background the desired design is to have an inlay of mokume gane in the middle of the band, surrounded by sterling silver. On the top would go silver wiring molded into a solitaire setting.

As for my materials and setup I purchased a "jewelry grade" billet of mokume gane to work with, and managed to pick up an old jewelry mill on a really good sale in my local area. I already have a number of other tools on hand as well to help cut and handle the metal.

My plan was to cut out a small strip of the mokume gane and roll it out to the specified dimensions. The videos I have seen of this process show people cold rolling the metal to the desired shape, but when I try to do this I make no progress or the metal snaps. When I try to heat it up with my mapp torch, it causes the metal to become too brittle and it will snap during rolling as well. The only other option that comes to mind is to slowly heat a portion of the billet up to a suitable temperature in a kiln of some sort instead of using the torch. But I wanted to check with others before making any big step in buying equipment to do such a thing.

The rest of my plan was to buy a small gauge sheet of sterling silver and heat that up and solder the rolled mokume inlay on top of it then fold the silver up along the sides. At this point I envisioned bending the metal into the ring shape and soldering it closed. But given the trouble I've been having with heating this metal and not ruining it, I wanted to see what people thought about this step as well.

I realize everyone here is quite advanced, so I apologize about just picking your brains with basic questions, but any help with this project would be incredibly appreciated.

Thanks,
Rylkan