Mokume Gane advice

S

skillgannon

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Apr 27, 2009
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I just got my new Atlas forge today. He sent me the Aussi model for the same price just to try it out. I'm pretty excited.
I had a little soup can forge that I have been doing quarter mokume in but I'm hoping to make something a little more interesting. So I have a couple of questions.

1. Any good sources of information about mokume would be very helpful. All the books that I can find are over $100 and after buying a grinder, forget belts and steel my budget is getting thin so free and cheep sources would be helpful. If anyone is ok sharing a tutorial thread would be awsome.

2. I have had a idea of trying to make it like canister Damascus. Is there something that I don't know that would make this not work?

3. I have heard that you can get some cool colors from acids. What chemicals give what effects?

Thanks in advance
 
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It doesn't work like canister damascus. It would just make a canister of brass.

You need to read up on it and learn about diffusion welding. It really takes a HT oven to do mokume with any degree of success, because the temperatures are very tight. The book, "Mokume Gane", by Midgett, is the best source of temperatures and info. It has become ridiculously expensive, so look around on the internet and see what you can find in articles and tutorials. If you plan on doing really nice mokume the book and a good HT oven will be needed.

A search with the custom search engine in the stickys will find some past threads about it here.
 
For what ever reason the mokume search mostly comes up as AEB-L threads.

I guess I might just have to spend $135 for the book. Darn it that money is supposed to go for a oven.
 
Will a copper and nickle stack work like the quarters? It would be nice to get more nickle in the pattern. Or do the quarters work because the bond is a nickle copper to nickle copper weld?
 
I would recommend that you order some nickel, copper, and brass. These three will weld to each other with no problem. You need to make a little rig to force the metals to weld together, I recommend you go to a hardware store and but some mild steel. Then off two sections of the bar 3"-4" long. Next drill 4 holes ( one in each corner ) on both pieces. You want to uses some nuts and bolts to be able to tighten the rig.

Cut up the copper, nickel, and/or brass and arrange them in the order you want. Any pattern will work, because all of these metals can weld to eachother ( brass is and alloy of copper so it will weld and nickel can weld to most metals ). When you stack your metal in the rig you made be sure NOT to have nickel as the top and bottom of the stack, if the nickel is touching the steel it can weld to it casting you to have to cut your rig off of your billet. When doing this think of nickel as a glue, it will weld to almost anything. Once you stack your brass, copper, nickel in the rig, make sure they are all lined up perfectly, this may take a while. Then tighten the bolts on the rig until the steel is putting a lot of pressure on the non farrous metal.

What you are trying to do is use the pressure from the rig and the heat from the forge to force the metals to fuse. So stick the rig in the forge and pay VERY close attention to the colors of the billet inside. Once the metals start to glow a deep orange you will see nickel 'bleeding' down the side of the billet ( this will look like the terminator from terminator 2). Now this next part is a little tricky, knowing when all the pices are joined together is rather hard. You have to take the rig out of the forge when it is close to melting, so you might end up with a mess of brass and nickel alloy ( this has happened to me a few times because I wasn't paying attention fully). When the rig is removed you can give it a little tap from a light hammer if you would like just to make sure everything gets pushed to tether, but this isn't really needed.

Now that your billet is (hopefully) welded you can forge it out. These metal are now one piece of steel and will work very easy under the hammer. You should work then at a high temperature ( orange or bright orange, be careful not to melt the nickel again). Periodically you can soften the billet because it may work harden a little, you can do this by quenching the billet in water or oil. The rest is up to you, wether you want to do a twist design or a ladder design or whatever you want.

If you want to get really crazy like me, forge out the billet then cut it in two, then try and make a mokume/ San Mai blade (but be sure there is a layer of nickel between the blade steel and the mokume so that it can weld together). If haven't actually done a San Mai/mokume billet before but I'm planning one out.

Ps: don't use zinc coated bolts for the rig, zinc fumes can be toxic

Hope you are successful and have fun,

Kevin
 
Check out Ariel E Salaverria's page. He forge welds and makes all types of creative materials, including mokume. For some reason his website host shows his site as being temporarily unavailable, although you can still access it through the 'Wayback internet archive machine'.

Here is a link to his tutorials page: https://web.archive.org/web/20161013091820/http://aescustomknives.com/docs/tutorials.htm

And as shown on that page, here is the link to his mokume tutorial: https://web.archive.org/web/20161116090958/http://aescustomknives.com/docs/tutorial12.htm

You should also try youtube. I remember watching what seems like a number of vids that showed people making it a few years ago, but perhaps they didn't give the exact details of how they were doing it.

~Paul
My YT Channel Lsubslimed
... (It's been a few years since my last upload)
 
running bird said:
I would recommend that you order some nickel, copper, and brass. These three will weld to each other with no problem. You need to make a little rig to force the metals to weld together, I recommend you go to a hardware store and but some mild steel. Then off two sections of the bar 3"-4" long. Next drill 4 holes ( one in each corner ) on both pieces. You want to uses some nuts and bolts to be able to tighten the rig.

Cut up the copper, nickel, and/or brass and arrange them in the order you want. Any pattern will work, because all of these metals can weld to eachother ( brass is and alloy of copper so it will weld and nickel can weld to most metals ). When you stack your metal in the rig you made be sure NOT to have nickel as the top and bottom of the stack, if the nickel is touching the steel it can weld to it casting you to have to cut your rig off of your billet. When doing this think of nickel as a glue, it will weld to almost anything. Once you stack your brass, copper, nickel in the rig, make sure they are all lined up perfectly, this may take a while. Then tighten the bolts on the rig until the steel is putting a lot of pressure on the non farrous metal.

What you are trying to do is use the pressure from the rig and the heat from the forge to force the metals to fuse. So stick the rig in the forge and pay VERY close attention to the colors of the billet inside. Once the metals start to glow a deep orange you will see nickel 'bleeding' down the side of the billet ( this will look like the terminator from terminator 2). Now this next part is a little tricky, knowing when all the pices are joined together is rather hard. You have to take the rig out of the forge when it is close to melting, so you might end up with a mess of brass and nickel alloy ( this has happened to me a few times because I wasn't paying attention fully). When the rig is removed you can give it a little tap from a light hammer if you would like just to make sure everything gets pushed to tether, but this isn't really needed.

Now that your billet is (hopefully) welded you can forge it out. These metal are now one piece of steel and will work very easy under the hammer. You should work then at a high temperature ( orange or bright orange, be careful not to melt the nickel again). Periodically you can soften the billet because it may work harden a little, you can do this by quenching the billet in water or oil. The rest is up to you, wether you want to do a twist design or a ladder design or whatever you want.

If you want to get really crazy like me, forge out the billet then cut it in two, then try and make a mokume/ San Mai blade (but be sure there is a layer of nickel between the blade steel and the mokume so that it can weld together). If haven't actually done a San Mai/mokume billet before but I'm planning one out.

Ps: don't use zinc coated bolts for the rig, zinc fumes can be toxic

Hope you are successful and have fun,

Kevin
Click to expand...

one piece of steel - Should be "one solid piece of mokume"
If haven't actually done a San Mai/mokume billet before but I'm planning one out. - I think the eutectic melting point of the mokume may cause a problem with bonding the mokume and in the HT.


I had a friend who wanted to start making mokume. I suggested the book by Midgett, but he didn't want to spend the money. He read up about it online and went and purchased pure copper sheet and fine silver sheet. He made 1" thick torque plates and cleaned everything perfectly. He torqued the stack down with a big socket wrench, and fluxed the whole block. He made a large foil HT bag and put a piece of charcoal in it. He stuck it in his HT oven and set it for 50 degrees less than the silver melting point ( 1763 - 50 = 1713F), and cooked it for seven hours to do a diffusion bond ... should have worked perfectly according to his calculations. Unfortunately, he didn't check the eutectoid point for the two metals, and when he opened the bag there was nothing but a melted blob of 50% copper/silver alloy stuck to the torque plate. The eutectiod is 1431F
 
They tried bonding coins of many alloys by many ways including explosive bonding which bonds most anything.
Choice of metals certainly is important ! Cu/Ni phase diagram has no eutectics ! Cu/Au diagram [ a good one ] will show compositions that are "ordered" . Yes metallurgy can be confusing !
It's best to use standard mokume alloys. The Japanese have played with it for a very long time. They also have lots of formulas for coloring those alloys .Sorry I have no sources but I have seen those things on the internet.

Search through www.followingtheironbrush.org
This should get you started !!
 
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I can find pics of the stuff and some YouTube videos as well but nothing great.

The nickle copper brass should be good enough for me. Also I wouldn't mind finding some copper nickle pipe scraps. I love the colors of that stuff.
From what running bird said I should be able to use the nickel and toss in some carbon steel and blue it? I was hoping for some blue color with the copper.
 
You should be able to get some blue with that copper If I remember Cu tends to have blue, green , black, red as major colors!!
 
If you're just wanting to experiment and make some small pieces; Early copper Pennies, Quarters, and Nickles work well enough.The trouble is keeping the stack together while heating and striking the initial weld. I've tried a bunch of methods and never found any perfect solutions. The last couple of times I drilled through the coins and used wire to hold them together for the initial weld. It's tricky and the result is REALLY ROUGH compared to professional mokume but I kinda like the results. I've made a few necklaces and even a knife guard from coin mokume.
https://photos.google.com/share/AF1...?key=U21MZUlURHVnajFaTi04ZmlEMDNpbk81ZTd2M2Fn
 
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