Chinobi

I had occasion to stop into HF last week and spoke to one of their sales people about their 'anvils' she agreed with me that they were utter garbage and said that they had not yet recieved their shipment of them but were still slated to stock them.

No worries Frosty, I was on vacation all last week anyway so I've been totally MIA myself. I had to google them up myself to make sure I had them straight in my head too :D

If you were to use regular RR rail (US style i suppose i should specify) would you need to harden it like one_rod did, or would it be useable as is?

Phil, Fe, thanks :) Ah Phil, if only i had the raw BTU's (or a way to more effectively contain the ones i do have) to melt them :) Despite past actual attempts to intentionally slag quarters (not in a crucible, just on my firebrick, probably not the wisest of ideas in retrospect) the best i have gotten was to cause the layers to bubble up and separate, though with the mapp torch i could probably get the job done. On the plus side, through the process of heating to fuse and subsequently heating to forge those pieces my firebrick developed a crack and eventually split, so now i have roughly 2/3 in one piece and then two smaller 1/6ish bits that i think i can use as a three sided refractory until i can secure something more efficient :) I do indeed know about Adam's Forge, a tip o the hat to SoCalDave for referring me. I actually attended their 'discovery day' intro to blacksmithing course two sundays ago and made a letter opener :) i posted a pic in my thread in the introduce yourself section. Sadly my schedule doesnt line up well with their open forge nights (tuesday 7-10pm), i might be able to get in for their open jewelery nights (wednesday, also 7-10pm IIRC), the only tiny caveat would be the 100 mile drive from work to the class and then another 70 or so back home afterwards =/ i spoke to some of the instructors when i was there and i will be keeping an eye on the class schedule as they said they were trying to line up some more theme oriented sessions/classes in the future. Coincidentally i will be in san diego this weekend, but it will be a really short trip so i dont think there would be potential to try and schedule any side trips. I prefer the design on the round one as well, the other one was an attempt to go for the more traditional 'wood grain' effect, but was no where near dense enough. Also! Best timing ever! before i had gotten more than a line and a half into this post my doorbell rang and my neighbor dropped off a package containing my copy of Ferguson's Mokume Gane Handbook! :D so i have my reading material for the immediate future :ph34r:

So here is my first result from making Mokume (QSO style trainer, if you will) planished the edges off the metal because iv had some trouble getting them to stay lined up when stacking and clamping in the past. cleaned with borax and rinsed in rubbing alcohol clamped the stack (10x total) in that 1/8" plate jig from a page back with a whiteout/paper liner between the stack and the plates heated with a MAPP torch as evenly as i could while resting on my firebrick set it on top of the vice jaws to overhang the bolts and gave it a few whacks with the cross pein after heating for what felt like about 15 minutes. after taking it out of the clamp and reheating the stack split 6 and 4 which later became 5 and 4. half of the 5 stack folded up on itself (no bond) when i tried to square it up, so i ended up sawing off the folded part and the rest held pretty decently, though im pretty sure the bonds are mostly incomplete. the circular one is the 4 stack and the rectangular one is the trimmed remains of the 5 stack, torch oxidized the circular one for contrast. I cant wait until my copy of Ian Fergusson's book arrives! edit: the 1/8th plate clamp seemed to do the job well enough, though i might have gotten better compression/results from a thicker section. they did end up bowing by about 1/16th or less. the bolts came off just fine too, can they be reused or is that an accident waiting to happen?

Thanks Frosty :) I havnt done enameling since high school but I did enjoy it then, dont have the materials to do it at home. Do you remember what 'style' you did? I have done Champleve(enamel in negative space/depressions) and Cloisonne(enamel bound by bezel wire shapes on a flat backing), and i suppose when I overcooked the first Cloissonne I created an accidental Limoges(unbounded enamel) with a small crater of 99.9 fine instead of the bezel wire dividers B) And to avoid a double post ill just tack this on here. I was thinking about the original question of hot forging jewelry, particularly silver. I dont think hot forging really applies, because by the time you remove the part from the heat and get it to the anvil and strike with the hammer it is already at black heat and you end up hurrying the placement and swing which just gets sloppy. So more cold forged and frequently annealed seems like the way to go. That thought process lead me to incorporate a 'hot' twist element into a piece I am presently designing and when I did a constructability test on a piece of copper wire (16 gauge I think, forgot to pull the package out of the trash and verify) I just kept at it and let it take me on a little trip down 'why didnt I go to bed 2 hours ago lane'. I tried to avoid using normal techniques for metalwork of this size, instead substituting actual blacksmithing methods whenever I could. This is the result, it sits on a 1 square inch grid rotary cutter mat tools: 4" square steel jewelers anvil harbor freight 4" bench vice w/ anvil torch HF 3lb cross pein w/ hand polished face rawhide mallet round and flat pliers regular (like new, so very sharp) wood chisel spring resist tweezers wooden bench pin Brief rundown on the process (frequently annealed during and between steps, left out for brevity) annealed my wire (about 2" long) and hammered it into a square cross section heated and twisted the middle(ish) of the squared wire (about 1/2" long twist) flattened both ends of the twist into loosely consistent sheet dimensions bent piece into that loosely S shaped curve drew out lower end of S curve into longer narrower but still flat sheet cut another 3" piece of wire and squared along the full length twisted most of the new square, left about 3/8" on either side for holding purposes drew out as much of a taper as i could on one side, ended up about 1", rhombus, and cold shut city towards the tip bent an eye loop in the tapered end, leaving as much of the taper running parallel to the main body wrapped the flat upper end of the S curve around the doubled up part at the base of the eye loop and wrapped the remaining taper around that in the opposite direction wrapped and crimped lower S curve around shaft and bent ripple in loose end nearly shot the piece across the room splitting that tongue with a pretty solid strike from the 3lb to the chisel :D and cut a groove about 1/8" deep into my bench pin backing (so glad i didnt use either anvil for that part) locked up the chisel pointed up in the vice a-la hardy chisel and trimmed off the bottom of the shaft torched the bottom until i melted a good bead pickled until clean so prooved my design concept feasability, but i dont know how well I will be able to implement it, because its still way too big <_< the other alternative would be to start from a thin strip of sheet metal, probably 22 gauge and 1/8" thick and square up a bit in the middle to do the twist on, rather than going from wire to sheet.

So I attended the Adam's forge discovery day on sunday and had a lot of fun, lot of good people there and I got to have some good conversations with the instructors and assistants. Heres the letter opener i forged, I believe we started with about 8" of 3/8" square stock. Rubbed bronze highlights on the twist and cutting edge of the blade. Finished length is just about 9 1/4". Im pretty happy with the way it came out, certainly room for improvement, but not too bad for the first 4 hours of the trade :D

I will certainly keep you posted! ran out of time this weekend so it will have to be bumped. I did however attend the intro course at Adam's Forge in LA today which was pretty excellent. Convenient too that the intro project was a letter opener, as that is my ultimate intended project with the Mokume Gane that I want to make (real style, using brass/copper/nickel; quarters is just for training purposes) Steve, is the 3/8" more reuseable or still pretty disposable? I'm hoping the short lever arm on my plate will offer some resistance and at the very least prevent it from bowing and failing in the first heat, if not maybe stay serviceable for another.

Thank you Beth! You are too kind :) The vendor for the opal put a little card in with the stones that says 'Boulder, Koroit, Yowah & Winton opal, from Queensland Austrailia' and just generally referred to them as 'boulder'. I was originally looking for a really intense blue/green opal but no dice. They were saying that opals with red reflections in them were particularly prized, but either thats a load (doubtful, because they had some really nice ones for like $25,000) or they just weren't paying attention because that one will show red depending on the angle, and it was $25 :D Hillbilly, i would imagine that there are web forums for jewelers much like IFI is for smithing, maybe they can sniff out some good material sources in your area. otherwise library card/amazon.com and youtube :) PS if you end up junkyard diving for airbags please exercise extreme caution if they are undeployed, it is, after all, an explosive.

New here, but i have about 10 years of off and on silver, brass, copper and nickel jewelry experience as a hobby, as well as small metal sculpture and mechanical projects. I dont think i have ever hot forged silver, due to the small scale of the projects it is challenging to keep enough heat in the piece long enough to whack it more than once or twice, though cold hammering and texturing are fairly commonplace. I have had occasion to fuse wire together, otherwise my go to is soldering, with some limited mechanical fittings or wire wrapping. There is a plethora of literature on the subject available in book stores and online as well. Not being a manufacturer i get most of my tools and materials from the gem faire that comes through Santa Barbara, CA about 4 times a year, otherwise i have gotten the rest off of amazon. Did you have a particular form of inlay in mind? When i had access to an electric kiln in school i did some glass enamel inlay, you can also mix just about any type of pigment (colored chalk, paint pigment, i have used spices as well) with an epoxy and use that as your inlay. be sure to mind gravity on things like rings, and bear in mind that the color MAY change from dry powder to 'wet' in the epoxy suspension. I used turmeric for an orangy yellow once that ended up being more on the red side than i had anticipated. I limit myself to semi-precious stones with silver work as they are cheaper and because i dont have access to or experience working with anything more precious than silver, and it would be kind of silly to have $$$ worth of stone in $ worth of metal. There is no limit to what you can do with decorative edging and design with a set of files, a jewelers saw or a ball peen and some punches and dies. I have done the majority of my work using just a ronson tech torch, actually this is my second one, overfilled the first and it started leaking :blink: http://www.walmart.c...-Torch/17133679 I picked up a propane torch and tank from lowes for casting sterling, needed more heat and a larger tank. Also bought a delft clay casting kit online. and i just got a MAPP tank for the torch head a few days ago to see if that wont goose up fusing Mokume Gane. The rest of the equipment is fairly simple, a spread of pliers (round, flat, chain, wire cutters), pack of needle files, jewelers saw frame and a handful of blades, a bench pin to work on, flux/pickle/different temp's of solder, ball peen hammer and something solid to whack on, various grades of very fine sandpaper (220, 320, 400, finer to polish) would be a solid starter kit. You will be well served by a dremel or similar rotary tool (with or without foot pedal) to use for buffing, sanding, deburring, anything that needs to be spun quickly in order to be effective. You can even use that instead of a drill/press, though i am a big fan of my drill press now that i have one. Bigfoot is correct, pairing earings can be pretty challenging, especially if you are trying to match non-deliberately cut stones! Let me know if you have any more specific questions and ill see if i cant direct you to a solution :) this is some of the stuff i put together this year for gifts, the heart casting was what prompted the propane equipment. Bracelet: sterling and green onyx Circular necklace: sterling and iolite Draped necklace: sterling and colored pua shell (i believe thats the name) Delft clay casting just after opening the mold Kite shaped opal Roman (gypsy) set in cast sterling

Thanks Phil, Rats, i was hoping id be able to recycle that a few times... if not just have it be a 'quarters setup'. perhaps if it might end up as a disposable item i should up the ante and do more than 8 in the first batch. why did you use what seems like such a long setup for quarters? they are just under 1" in the rough by my calipers, any particular reason for that much overhang? or were you doing multiple stacks at once? Lamentably yes, thats my anvil at present, its actually a step up from my jewelers anvil, which is just a 4"x4"x1" block of modestly polished steel with no potential to anchor without clamping it in a bench vice. im going to partake in an intro to blacksmithing course at adams forge this weekend, and depending on how that goes i may intensify my efforts to find a more propper anvil. i have recently aquired a decent stump to anchor it to as well, just need to get the bolt sizes right and level out the faces of the wood.

So i am getting some equipment set up to try making a billet of quarters mokume in the near future, iv included a few photos for reference. this is the set of steel plates that i prepared to use as a pressure clamp (sitting on my 4" harbor freight bench vice, also the only anvil i have been able to source so far) holding 8 quarters (old and burned from a previous fail, just for sizing purposes here) Having only worked extensively with silver, brass and copper i do not have a very good working knowledge of the different types of steel, this is the tag of the steel bar stock i picked up from lowes, will this be applicable for heating under pressure for mokume? the plates are 1.5" x 2" x 1/8" and the bolts are 1/4" stainless. i wll post up photos of whatever may result when i get the time to actually attempt it!

Thanks Sam :)

Im really looking forward to it! i built up a set of clamp plates for QSO mokume, I may bring it with me and see if i can try it out in a propper heat source, that is if there is enough time for personal projects or if they allow the use of the facility after the class has ended.

Signed up for this Sunday's discovery day! :D do any other members frequent the Adam's Forge facility? Or is anyone else planning to attend this sunday's class?

Thanks so much Dave! Hard to beat a $20 intro course to get your bearings, the CBA level 1 course has already started though unfortunately =/

I have seen numerous recommendations here on IFI and elsewhere online for Steve Midgett's Mokume Gane - A Comprehensive Study, and I am utterly baffled by the prices that I am seeing online. Is the supply/demand curve so utterly inflated by limited printing that a used copy can legitimately retail for $500? I checked the authors website and he just links back to amazon, and the only other vendor i found with a reasonable price (ottofrei, sub $50) was out of stock. Im more than tempted to pick up the german translation from amazon for $50 and beg my girlfriend to translate it back to english! Am I missing something? I would love to have a copy of this book!

Thanks IronWolf, ill definitely check the CBA out!

Hi all, Found the site while scouring the net for information regarding Mokume Gane a few weeks ago and have since been defaulting here for just about everything forge related :D I am a civil engineer by trade and a small scale silversmith by hobby, but my interest in Mokume has drawn me more into larger scale smithing. Being realistic, Mokume would probably be 95% of what I end up doing, at least for the forseable future. I skimmed the list of threads in the local groups section but i didnt see anything much closer to where i live (Ventura, CA) than Arizona, is anyone familiar with any organizations or members that may be more local than the next state over? Thank you all as well for hosting such a great site for discussion and sharing of knowledge! I look forward to getting more involved here in the near future B)