I believe i have a general idea, but exactly what the heck is Mokume Gane??????? Seems like it's either creating a form of Damascus with non ferrous metals or smelting your own recipe of materials to meet your color, and mechanical needs.... Am i close?

-Hillbilly

pattern welded non ferrous. There is not supposed to be any melting. Smelting is extracting metals from ores. to clear up your confusing of the terms.

Solid phase welding of nonferrous metals/alloys that are then patterned by stock removal and forging.

I'm rather interested in this, never heard of it before! What reading would you recommend for this? I'd like to try to make a bracelet using this technique, but I wouldn't have the slightest clue which metals to use or the correct welding temps. What cheap metals would you recommend to start with, considering I'm likely to make lots of mistakes- so I'd rather not be using silver or gold! Perhaps copper would be ideal, but what other metal?

How about american quarters if you can get them where you live? google quarter mokume

Thanks, I'm in the UK, but the Royal Mint kindly provides information on the composition of our coins! http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/coin-design-and-specifications

I'll compare them to American quarters and find out if I can do it with any of our... cheaper money! Although it is actually illegal in the UK to deface or destroy legal tender, but I don't think a few pennies are going to affect inflation, although it's rather disrespectful to melt down the Queen's face!

Just the reason that we suggest folks list a general location in their profile.

American quarters are a sandwich of copper and nickel alloys and so are already halfway there when you stack them up and fuse them for Mokume.

I don't recall any sandwich coins in the UK when I was in Wales last April.

I went to do that earlier, I shall finish what I begun! The 5, 10, 20 and 50p coins are all 75% copper and 25% nickel which could potentially do the job, although I have no idea how the alloy is made up. I really need to do some research so I can determine for myself what is and isn't suitable. 10ps would be my best bet as they are quite big and not too expensive! I assume I'm looking for metals with similar melting points. If bronze can be used, that would be fantastic as I have loads of 2p coins which are big and not worth much!

Bronze and cupro-nickle should look good using two different denominations.

Are your coins "sandwich" type where the edge shows different colors of metals as three distinct layers? If they are then you need only one denomination.

Phil

Thanks Phil! Doesn't appear to be sandwiched, just a silvery looking piece of metal! Do you mean that I could use two denominations of cupro-nickle coins, or layered cupro-nickel with bronze coins? How can I tell when they are at welding temperature? Can you point me in the direction of somewhere I could do some research?

http://www.iforgeiro...22-mokume-gane/
some reading

http://www.iforgeiro...ideo-in-german/
a video and more reading.

The metal looks wet and sweaty. It is still solid at welding temperature.

Make sure you wash and flux, I used borax in water to do both at once (don't rinse). Flux again with dry flux (boric acid or borax) when it is hot enough for flux to stick.

It wold look kinda boring if it was just one color.

Phil