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Making a Seamless Mokume Ring

Jewelry Discussion
#1

When making a mokume ring from patterned stock, it is often desirable
that the pattern flow around the ring without interruption. Forming
the stock into a ring and soldering the ends presents the problematic
issue of matching the pattern sufficiently to disguise the solder
seam. One solution to this problem can be had by forming the ring
without a seam in the first place!

This illustrated presentation from the website of Hansruedi Spillmann
demonstrates a clever trick to the fabrication of a seamless mokume
ring from a twist-patterend bar:

http://mokume.ch/praesentation_e.htm

I imagine the same technique could be used to form a band from
titanium bar stock without the necessity of welding the ends
together.

#2 
   This illustrated presentation from the website of Hansruedi
Spillmann demonstrates a clever trick to the fabrication of a
seamless mokume ring from a twist-patterend bar:
http://mokume.ch/praesentation_e.htm

Hello Guido,

Thank you for this post. A very simple technique with exceptional
results: very interesting!

I don’t do mokume gane yet but I hope to give it a try someday. This
technique is one I’ll keep in mind for then.

Cheers,
Trevor F.
in The City of Light
www.touchmetal.com

#3

Very cool presentation, thanks a lot for the link and thanks to
Hansruedi Spillmann for the PowerPoint-Presentation.

As Always,
David Woolley
Fredericton, NB, Canada

#4 
http://mokume.ch/praesentation_e.htm

Very nice presentation! But just out of curiosity… using this
method, how do you have any idea what size the finished ring will be?
You could always hammer it up, I suppose; but if it’s too big in the
first place, you’d have to start over.

Beth

#5 
    Very nice presentation! But just out of curiosity... using
this method, how do you have any idea what size the finished ring
will be? You could always hammer it up, I suppose; but if it's too
big in the first place, you'd have to start over.

Not neccessarily…

Of course not every shop has one, but the standard upright ring
stretcher usually comes with a set of hemispherically shaped dies
which rotate into position under the stretcher’s anvil. A ring band
which is too large is positioned into a die slightly too small for
it, and when the handle is pulled down, the anvil presses the band
into the die, forcing it into a smaller size, without appreciably
altering the shape.

As long as the ring band being sized is annealed properly between
dies, one can size a band down many sizes without cutting the band.

–Jay Whaley UCSD Craft Center

#6

Plain bands or bands of uniform dimension and cross section can be
easily sized down (shrunk) or sized up (Stretched) on a sectioned
mandrel style ring stretcher. The lower half of this machine shrinks
rings quite handily in the die provided. I also use it to size down
tube sections and jump rings by substituting a draw plate for the
ring die.

Andy Cooperman andycooperman.com

#7

Hi Beth,

But just out of curiosity... using this method, how do you have any
idea what size the finished ring will be?

I’ve not tried this with mokume, but it should get you close.

  1. Determine the circumference of the finger hole of the ring. The
    diameter can either be measured on a ring mandrel a gotten from a
    chart of Ring Sizes similar to the one in Oppi’s book.

  2. Multiply the finger hole diameter by pi ( 3.14) to get the
    circumference.

  3. Make the cut in the center of the billet a little less than the
    circumference to allow for finishing the finger hole.

And you thought there wasn’t any use for that high school geometry
class (bg).

Dave

#8 
   http://mokume.ch/praesentation_e.htm

Indeed, fantastic presentation thanks for sharing!

Cheers,
Taylor in Toronto

#9 
    Plain bands or bands of uniform dimension and cross section
can be easily sized down (shrunk) or sized up (Stretched) on a
sectioned mandrel style ring stretcher. The lower half of this
machine  shrinks rings quite handily in the die provided. I also
use it to size  down tube sections and jump rings by substituting a
draw plate for the ring die.

Mokume is not as easily shrunk or stretched as bands of uniform
composition due to the differences in ductility and mailability of
the laminated metals but I do it regularly with a Kagan ring sizing
machine. However you had better be darn sure of your laminate
quality if you are going to try the technique shown on that website.
The mokume ring in the powerpoint presentation appears to be cracking
in several places along the laminate boundries and he appears to have
soldered the cracks shut to make the ring. This kind of defeats the
"seamless" aspect of the ring fabrication process.