Making Mokume?

[Hazmat83]

My fiance has asked me if i could make our wedding bands. this is waayyyy over my head. but by nature i cant not try. she likes mokume, and i would like to try it. i have always wanted a Carbide ring.

So all that was to ask can carbide be forged? could i use a carbide drill bit? and if so what other materials could i fold into the carbide to make the mokume patern? I have a large scrap of brass, some copper , stainless , and some of my grandmothers old gold jewlery.  

[Frosty]

No, tungsten carbide cutting tools can't be forged though it may be possible to introduce some into a pattern welded or mokume billet. I think you'd be very disappointed it'll never be anything but flat gray.

 

Practice making mokume billets with stacked quarters. It makes pretty presentable mokume gane items and is reasonably priced, $1.25 buys a pretty decent sized billet. Best of all you can make all your mistakes on something affordable.

 

Once you have the process down you can start working with gold, silver, copper, etc. One pretty hard rule is never, NEVER put brass and silver next to each other in a billet, it'll make silver solder and just melt. Silver etches various shades of gray and looks well, especially for contrast or to accentuate other colors. Nickle is a popular and effective "silver" color that diffusion welds easily and keeps it's color very well.

 

Copper and nickle is the billet a stack of quarters will give you. there are a number of folk here who do mokume and there are a LOT of instructional sites and material available online.

 

Have fun, it's a very cool and valuable skill set to add the old mental tool kit.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Chinobi]

I know squat all about carbide other than it's tough stuff, but if you want to make your own Mokume wedding bands check out the thread started by Spruce Called Some Newbie Questions. He started from zero and over the course of a few months worked his way up to his own wedding bands from sterling silver and nickel. So that thread should cover just about all of the usual suspect issues. Plus a guest appearance by James Binion :-D

Of course nothing is ever all encompassing so don't hesitate to post up questions of your own.

I suspect the responses will not be encouraging but now I'm curious about carbide behavior too :p

[Hazmat83]

thanks for the input guys I'll try to post my results and lessons learned.