First of all, prepare metals for making mokume-gane.
Strong silver 925 and k18 grade are suitable for making mokume-gane because the beautiful patterns and colors easily appear.
By the way, there seems to be a misunderstanding that silver and gold are very soft metal. Correctly speaking, only pure silver and pure gold are very soft, and an alloy of silver and of gold are very strong, hard and rarely damaged.
That’s why famous jewelry shops sell jewelry made of silver925 and k18. The kind of metal has to be chosen very carefully because it not only determines the color and the atmosphere of rings but also has the strong influence on the price of rings.
Prepare metal without annealing, rough the surface with a sponge file, and cut into the proper size; metal without annealing contains a lot of dislocation that makes diffusion bonding easy. Dislocation means “the corridors of atoms” when the atom of metal goes into the next metal. The more the corridors exist, the easier diffusion bonding occurs.
After cutting metal, wash it thoroughly and remove sebum and dust. Wash metal carefully because diffusion bonding does not occur if sebum and dust remains between metals. After wiping off water carefully, pile metals together very rapidly so that dust and sebum does not stick again.
Choose the material of the jig tool according to the kind and the size of metal and the wood grain patterns that are planned to appear on the surface. The jigs made of titanium and stainless steel are frequently used.
Because titanium and stainless have the different characteristics, choose the jig after understanding each characteristics deeply.
As jigs are not on sale, prepare them through the special order.
Bind metals very strongly with the jig and set it in the fire brick that are carefully encircled.
The next page is how to use a burner for making Mokume-gane metal.