Hello and good afternoon.
I am fascinated by the whole mokume gane metal working technique and
have been researching this for a while now (have not began applying
this yet as I’m waiting until I get my larger work space later this
year).
I understand the basic traditional process of a single strip being
made but always wondered how seamless rings were constructed until I
ran across a german studio’s website that had pictures of their
rings. They showed photos of flat discs (like large washers) and then
I finally realized they cut these out and then pressed them into the
3 dimensional ring shape. (I’m assuming they make some kind of die
and use a hydraulic press to make it into a ring) The site is in
German so I might have missed any explanation.
I have a few questions about this. (there were no other photos of
the process, just the flat washer like pieces of finished mokume
gane).
How does anyone who uses this method deal with waste? With the
traditional method, you create your billets, forge them, roll them,
etc, and then you simply use it. With this “washer” I saw, they must
cut out the discs and have some waste from the corners and inside of
the “washers”. Do they make earrings from the inner cuts maybe? Or do
they send it all back to the refinery?
My other question is…
I can’t for the life of me determine what shape the die would be…
without anyone giving away proprietary drawings or designs, what
would the die look like? A traffic cone type of shape? Very
interesting method but not sure how it can be done efficiently
without a lot of wasted billet from the “washer” cut.
Until I saw these flat “washers”, I assumed seamless rings were
completely CNC machine cut directly into a ring.
Like they say, there is more than one way to do something.
thanks for any input…
Rick in Cocoa Beach