Use of rolling mill

I am new to metal working. I started out cutting stones. I read somewhere that you can imprint shapes of leaves, twigs, and wires in silver using a rolling mill. I had an idea to use sea-oat pods collected at the beach but I am now wondering if that would work. They are about 2 mm thick. Another question is should I run it through the mill with a backing sheet of copper as well as a top sheet?

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Shamus,

Not sure what the items are you want to run through the mill with your metal, but here are some general guidelines that I follow while doing what I call “roller printing”:

  1. make sure the metal you want to imprint is annealed
  2. make a “sandwich” of the rolled object. In other words, put another piece of metal on top of the material you are using to imprint your metal.
  3. Depending upon what object you are trying to imprint, you may want to experiment with the amount of pressure you put on the imprint sandwich with your rolling mill.

Have a blast. It’s a quick and cool way to put design into your metal.

Thanks for the advice.

Note From Ganoksin Staff:
Looking for a rolling mill tool for your jewelry projects? We recommend: