Mokume Gane Rings

Mokume Gane is Japanese for wood grain metal. It’s an ancient technique of mixing metals with elaborate and distinct patterns. The ring shown above is a titanium ring inlaid with mokume gane consisting of palladium, red gold, and silver. It’s an extremely involved process to make it. First the artisan starts with thin sheets of the various materials. These include different colors of gold, gold and copper alloys, silver, palladium, brass, and other materials. The sheets must be made extremely clean and each artisan has their own developed techniques for doing this. The sheets are then stacked on one another in the order that would bring out the pattern. Theres usually around 20 or more alternating layers of material. The metals are then sealed in such a way that no oxygen will get to them in a heating process. They are squashed together with lots of force, and heat is applied in a specialized furnace. The idea is to get intimate contact between the sheets of materials, and the surface atoms will be moving so hard that they actually intermix. This is called diffusion bonding, and is done at a temperature just lower than the lowest melting point of the different metals. If it were higher, it would all melt into a blob and become a single alloy. When properly bonded, the stack of metal sheets will act as a single bar, and can be worked like one. The artisan then cuts grooves through the stack of sheets, exposing the different layers, similar to the walls of the Grand Canyon. He then rolls the material flat and it becomes more like a contour map. Other techniques like twisting or hammer forming are used also. There are usually several contouring and flattening steps involved. The end result is a beautiful combination of materials that would not normally exist together. We were one of the first to incorporate mokume gane inlays into our titanium rings. We have the largest selection out there. They can be seen on this page: www.boonerings.com/mokume.htm With the price of gold and platinum near all time highs, these are very cost effective rings. Some artists make rings out of all mokume material costing thousands of dollars. Our rings have the advantage of utilizing the harder titanium help to protect the softer mokume material, so our rings won’t bend out of shape like those can. Our turnaround time is also typically a day whereas theirs can be several months. Mokume gane in a titanium ring. It’s a beautiful thing. For more information about Mokume Gane please visit www.boonerings.com