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Seamless mokume ring in precious metals


JLB

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Hi guys!

 

I've been desperately hunting an expert who can make something special for me, and this seems to be the place where you all are!

Put simple, I'm after a woodgrain-finished 3-color mokume ring but without any visible seam.  It's for a wedding band and I think it's important in this type of ring for it to be seamless.

 

I know there are some people using a technique to avoid the seam, maybe some of you have tried it:

 
There are a few small operators using this technique, but mostly not with precious metals.  What I find interesting is that the big players in mokume like Chris Ploof and James Binnion (sorry if I've offended someone by leaving them off!!) are not using this technique - that makes me wonder if there is something wrong with it.  The only person I've found doing this routinely with gold rings is in Germany!
 
Anyway, you guys are the experts! Any thoughts?
 
Thanks!!
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shoot james an email from his website, or look him up on facebook.  He is pretty responsive, and if that procedure is what you are after im certain he can do it.  those particular how-to's will not net you a 'seamless' woodgrain either by the way.  you can get a wood grain on either side of the billet before the split, however when you split it and drift the center open you will always end up with the ends of the billet visible, which will be a series of relatively straight lines (you will also be splitting in the same plane as your layers, which is a huge potential for the stack to fail and split in half).  if you want a true seamless woodgrain you would need to make up a billet, flatten it out into a sheet of whatever thickness you want, and texture it to have the wood grain.  then you can cut a circle out of it, and cut or punch a circular hole in the center of that, leaving you with a washer.  now off to the ring mandrel to knock the outside circumference down and raise/form that washer into a more tube like form.  this leaves you with your original wood grain pattern uninterrupted along the entire outside face of the ring.  you will likely need to do some filing and cleanup, so oversize is better than undersize, and you can pad thickness and width with rails and an inner liner.

 

hope that makes sense :)

 

you could of course just check out Jim's website too ;) though I think I do see some strategically placed seams in some of them.

http://www.mokume-gane.com/index.php?page=collections&subpage=mokume_patterns&subsubpage=woodgrain_pattern

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I don't think Jim has made mokume that way in decades. Shoot him an E-mail, he's good people and more helpful than most of us deserve. Deb and I wear a pair of mokume gane wedding rings Jim made us. Red gold, white gold, yellow gold, silver in a simple twist pattern. Twisted, rolled sawn in half for the ring blanks. Deb and My rings are mirror image patterns, unique but very much the same.

 

If you tell him Frosty sent you he'll only charge you double. <grin>

 

Frosty The Lucky.

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Alberic does great work; I've known him for about 25 years now and he still will come up with jaw dropping amazing things when I see him!  Note that that methodology was presented as a teaching aid for people who are not experts---he has the props to do mokume a bunch of different ways.  I still remember the time he borrowed our campsite to make niello in one Pennsic War. (involves a lot of burning sulfur...)

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  • 2 weeks later...

shoot james an email from his website, or look him up on facebook.  He is pretty responsive, and if that procedure is what you are after im certain he can do it.

...

 

 

you could of course just check out Jim's website too ;) though I think I do see some strategically placed seams in some of them.

http://www.mokume-gane.com/index.php?page=collections&subpage=mokume_patterns&subsubpage=woodgrain_pattern

 

Thanks for the advice!

I've ordered a custom job from Jim and Terry (mokume-gane.com).  They're going to make something using the same seamless pattern as their steel rings (the "burl" pattern, which is pretty close to woodgrain) with golds and silver.  I'll make sure to post a picture when it's here!!

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