Mokume Gane Abalone Ring Making

so in this video I'll be showing you how to use some abalone and silver along with some local bug on a wire that I've made to make a ring like this so if you don't know abalone is actually a shell like this and inside of it is all nice and rainbow we like that well you can get it in a veneer where they basically shave it down enter into this really thin sheet that you can use for different things like this ring or different inlays so we'll be using this and not this as for the band wires these are some of McGann a wire that I made that basically it's copper brass and silver all twisted together and fused to give it this nice twisted and multicolored look kind of like a Damascus look and of course for the inner band we're going to be using some silver and this is a point six millimeter sheet of silver that we're gonna cut a piece off of so to make the actual ring itself you need a size and a ring sizer is perfect for that and this is a thick band ring sizer and this is a lot more accurate when you're making thicker bands versus a thin band so you're going to may be making bigger ones get one of these because a 10 in this and a 10 in this fit completely different so like I was saying a 10 here's what we're looking for and I'm just going to measure right here and we'll get our diameter so now we have to do some math so when it comes to the math I've had a lot of people actually have confusion with it so let me break it down completely so you're gonna want the ring diameter the inner diameter which we measured on the mandrel which was nineteen point seven five and we're going to add the thickness of whatever metal you're using so in my case it is 0.6 millimeters once you have those added together you're gonna multiply it by 3.14 or PI and that will give you your total links in a flat sheet to make a ring that would fit that inner diameter we're gonna take my silver and use an edge that is already completely straight and go in from another straight edge and Mark the length so you might notice I already have a line going this way that was for the previous band and the previous band was a very tall I guess or thick band and I'm gonna be going a little bit smaller than that do that I'm just going to set this to about eight millimeters so I'll just take that and hook it in so your guide line is right here and it's already a straight line and then I'm going to just pull it across making sure to push this down scratch into the metal so there we go so now I have my guidelines for cutting which we'll be doing with the jeweler song if you're using a piece that's this big you're gonna want a bench pin that you're not gonna run into on the top so if it's one that's just wood or a flush or these things called anvil then that's perfect have a little bit of a lip here that if you try to cut something on it yours gonna hit it even if you flip this over you're still gonna hit and then you can't make your cut yeah just keep that in mind when you're using bigger pieces of metal and then I'm just going to use a little bit of salt lubricant and that's all make sure your saw blade is whatever is best for the material and thickness you're using okay when cutting bands like this you're gonna want to clock cut on the outside part of the material keeping so if it gets a little wavy and you cut out a little bit that's fine because we're gonna grind it down to make it straight but if you go in you have to grind all of it down so there we go we have our inner silver band exactly the link that we need you can actually buy strips that are already cut an eight millimeter or whatever a millimeter you want and then you just cut it one line can be done but I buy sheets of metal so I have options whenever I need them so I'm going to need to anneal this because it's just spring hard and that makes it really hard to bend into anything and keep its shape so we're just going to heat it up make sure you have plenty of ventilation going on I have this actually hooked up to a fan in the window so there's a bunch of air being sucked through this and you just want to get this up to a slightly glowing red if porn yeah once you get it all heated up and everything like that you're going to quench it and throw it into a pickling pickling solution to clean off any of this so we could start rounding it and then soldering it together so as us cleaning off let me talk about this ring I actually made most the video on this one already and I ran just so many problems that I had to scrap all of it so this is the new video with all the knowledge that I've gotten from making this ring so this is extremely brittle you can't bend it very much and getting it to go all the way around this you kind of have to bend it at a decent angle and it just snaps off Howard doesn't want to stick so I've learned from making this one now you need to cut this into smaller pieces and kind of layer them into it so we're gonna be doing that and it gives it a really nice look I think at least okay so now that it's all cleaned up I need to make sure that both edges are really flat and since we cut it from a already cut flat piece of metal I only need to do that to one side which is this side so I'm going to use one of these to do that real quick and I barely have to take any material off so now all we do is around this and I you like to use it on the flat back part of the mandrels to make sure everything is as uniform as possible and once I have it like this I take some pliers that have no teeth in them because you don't want to scratch all this up and bend it down basically you want to make this into a D kind of like that and then I push them together and overlap them and continue to overlap so basically it will stay like that and then I will pull it back and it will be spring loaded into one another so now I don't have to worry about a gap being there and all I do is push them down to the line them up perfect and we should be good to go make sure that this isn't off either because you can get it all weird like that and you don't want that so make sure that's straight and everything is flat take this over to the soldering area and soldering so I'm going to use a third hand and put it on top of this just so it's off of my table just hold this and then I'm going to put some hard solder on the inside after I flux this and dry it out so it doesn't bounce around [Music] and with bands like this I use two pieces of hard solder normally to make sure that it flows all the way across so when heating this just make sure that your pieces don't jump around and try to heat the whole piece is evenly as possible and you'll know when your solder is about to flow because your flux will pretty much disappear and turn to like a glassy looking texture I guess [Music] yeah I see how you can't really see that anymore at all just glossy there we go and then I'll heat up the underside to to make sure it pulled all the way through so there we go my solder joint is completely sealed all the way across there's no gaps don't drop it cuz everything's really hot and I'm gonna put this into the pickling solution to clean it up and then we'll round it and continue so I'm going to need to round this out now and I'll do that by just putting it on the mandrel and pushing down until it's basically stops and use a small rawhide mallet to shape it into where it needs to be and I'm gonna try to hit down here because that's gonna be the biggest area and they don't flip it over [Music] [Music] so there we go [Music] and I wanted it to be right in the center of the tent on both sides so there we go so now I need to clean up the outside a little bit to make sure it's as uniform as possible so I can put my outer bands on so I'm going to put this onto a mandrel and use a file and just basically clean up everything on the outside and I'm going to be using a old mandrel of mine I don't mind a messed up as you can see it tipped down these slides to be equal and this is a little bit lower in the center but that won't matter when we're gluing everything in but the outsides need to be as clean as possible because we're going to be soldering up to them so I'm going to be using these as outer bands so I'm just going to take the outside measurement and then use the same math as last time I'll clean up the end like I've done on my other pieces so now I'm going to anneal this piece and then round it and solder it together this square wire and I'm just gonna do the same thing as I've done with the band and wrapped around the flat edge of the mandrel and I'm going to say in a weird little u-shape I'm gonna turn it into a t-shape to make sure everything lines up there we go I'm going to throw this into the pickling solution to clean it all up and then solder it with a piece of hard solder alright just alter this one instead of using the third arm I'm going to use a different technique which is just putting it onto a charcoal block fluxing the area that you want to solder and I'm gonna take one piece of cardstock move the solder joint on top of it [Music] I'll never go so the heat will actually suck to solder up into a feast okay so with that done I also already made the other one and put it on to our center band and as you can see it's it's really on there this isn't soldered yet either this is just how tight the fit is but we need this to look like that so take the mandrel and put your outer band on here go ahead and push down a bit it's going to start to work on you and try not to warp it too much take the rubber or not the rubber mallet B AB rawhide and just kind of tap it and push down [Music] and you're gonna want to lightly tap these because you don't want them to stretch too much because we one of us tight as possible [Music] [Music] basically just wanted to be around and then go ahead and take it off [Music] okay now that it's round but it's wavy so we're going to use the anvil to make this flat and again barely tap this if you have too hard you're going to stretch it and pop it it fit properly okay so we're gonna want to take the center piece and put it into this one and like I said it's gonna be very tight so you can use the mallet to have it in place there we go and then what I'm going to do is make sure that there's a little bit of an edge sticking up from the inner band so when we solder this it'll have a clean edge all the way around and then we'll grind down the sides okay so let's get this ready for the last bit of soldering okay so we're going to need to put some flux on it I'm not gonna do one side at a time just to make sure that everything goes together right and then I'm going to do the inside of that same band too so there we go so I'm going to heat this so it dries up all this and doesn't make all this solder move around and then I'll place all my solder pins and I'm gonna want to flood basically the top of this so I'm gonna place a lot of pieces of medium solder [Music] all right there we go so it's completely flooded in almost everything and we'll cut that down so you won't see any type of gap between this but we need to pickle this now so I'm gonna do the same exact thing on the other side there we go both sides are soldered on so I need to sand down the sides before we do anything else to make sure that there's no gaps because if there's any gaps I'm going to go back put some solder in them and fill it in so this is some 220 grit sandpaper and i'ma use a little bit of water and just do little circles and make sure you do it on a hard flat surface so yeah you can see little things in here now we want to get rid of there we go it's all nice and flush so now I need to do it to other side okay so this side has a couple gaps that I need to fill in because if I cut it down any more than that it's gonna get it really really thin right here so I'm gonna do that okay now that we have the ring to the point where we start putting something to it we need to figure out a way of holding it so there's two ways you can do this one you can use something like this tripod it has a hole in the center and a old mandrel make sure it's an old one cuz you're gonna get glue and you're gonna cut this mandrel up and you can use it this way and just turn it there you go so this will work and you can put something underneath it to catch anything that falls so if it's bluish dripping or whatever or if you happen to have a mini lathe or even a drill you can do this with some of these ring mandrels from ring supplies bomb and basically you can put the ring on here and then use an allen key and tighten it up so it can hold it in place I'm going to need to really turn the lathe on because you can turn the piece to work on it so yeah if you want wanted to use them they come in all different sizes for different size rings you can head over to their website which is rink supplies calm and use the code Gomi operations and you'll get a little bit of a percentage off I think it's like 15 or 10% but still pretty good and these things are really handy I actually really like using them okay so here how here's it basically on the mandrel and on there as tight as I can get it I'm going to clean up the inside of this little bit because we needed to be clean for one so it doesn't so you don't see all this through it and I needed to be roughed up a bit so that adhesive will stick to it as best as it can and then I'm going to clean it off with some alcohol to make sure that it is completely clean of any oils okay so now we need our abalone of venir and you could probably do this any other venir that you can strands on so i need it to fit in be doing here but we need to cut little pieces of it and place them in there so i'm going to be using some CA glue and some tweezers to do this and if you really want to put some gloves on so you don't get glue on your hands okay so I have a little piece like up and as you can see that it's a little too big so I need to cut a little bit of that down so you can see it fits in there it's very tight and it kind of snaps but that's not a problem so I'm going to take some CA glue place it right there and then use a toothpick you spread it around and I can push this over that and push it down so basically you're just gonna stack them and continuing room going until you reach the other side again you okay so now I have the whole thing covered and now I need to fill in the rest of that with CA glue so it's flush with the top and you don't want to put too much on at once because it'll start to get all weird and they just won't dry you can use an activator on this but make sure you test it first on a larger amount so it doesn't turn white or mess up in any way because that happens you just ruin this and cut all this out as you can see it's completely filled in with okay CA glue now and it's all lumpy so you could use the lathe to cut this down like you would use a lathe but you get these lumps often and make sure everything is exactly how I want it we're going to use a flat file and this can be done with the other set of two [Music] so you couldn't just keep going like that and make sure that the CA is the same level as your outer bands and you'll know that because they'll start to grind down so you want to go straight as possible but I'm gonna actually use the lathe now but I'm actually gonna use the lathe now and make sure everything is 100% flush yeah that's pretty much why I bought a leaf so I don't have to do that first part I showed you all by hand it looks like it means go a little bit deeper because there's a little bit of a overlap here and here and then we're gonna have to go through and fix any little imperfections if there are any by filling I met back in with CA glue and then cutting it again so now I'm gonna take a little bit of 220 grit sandpaper to let some water on it and clean it up a little bit a little bit of a white spot right here anywhere else that are noticeable so I'm gonna take that out so to fill it in I'm just going to put more CA glue in right there and then I'm going to use this accelerator and just lightly mist over it from pretty far away [Music] then I wait for that to harden up so there we go now I need to clean off the glue from the sides and the inside and then we can start polishing this up and getting it to its actual finished State so to get it to the point where I can polish it I need to go through a bunch of different grits of the sanding pads that I have and then do a final polish when it comes to actually polishing with a polishing compound I'm actually not using my finger guards so I can feel the heat coming off of this so I know when to back off because put too much heat into this you can actually burn a material and I don't want that to happen and after all that here's the final product so thank you for watching my video and if you liked it feel free to leave a thumbs up if you have any questions or suggestions leave a comment below and if you would like to be updated every time I post a new video subscribe to my channel I try to put out a new video every week well thank you for watching and see you guys next time bye

Channel: GomeowCreations

Views: 120,712

Rating: 4.8772159 out of 5

Keywords: mokume gane, how to, patrick adair designs, wood ring, engagement ring, tempest rings, how to make mokume gane, mokume gane ring, making mokume gane, mokume gane tutorial, beginner jewelry, do it yourself, abalone shell, abalone inlay, abalone jewelry, abalone jewelry making, abalone jewelry facts, abalone shell jewelry making, engagement ring making, engagement ring styles, forged in fire, forging mokume gane from quarters

Id: llGWRNVoqQ8

Length: 33min 54sec (2034 seconds)

Published: Tue May 21 2019