Many people look at our Mokume Gane ring designs and wonder what it is exactly. Our Mokume Gane is all 100% handmade on-site and made of either 18ct white gold and yellow gold or 18ct white gold and rose gold. This technique is based on an old Japanese method of layering metal.
The Mokume Gane technique is created by firstly extensively cleaning then layering 23 very fine sheets of different coloured 18ct gold and placed between 2 heavy steal blocks. The steal blocks are clamped and by using a tension wrench the 2 bolts are tightened to achieve the exact amount of pressure from either end. The layers of gold sheets along with the bolted steel blocks are then all placed in the kiln for approximately 14 hours at temperature’s reaching around 1000 degrees Celsius. With this stage of the Mokume Gane the result we are aiming for is for the lower melting temperature metal, which is either the 18ct rose gold or 18ct yellow gold, to just be on the edge of melting point which at this stage, will fuse to the 18ct white gold. This creates one solid wafer like solid piece of metal that you can distinctively see each colour. If the temperature is to low the Mokume Gane process needs to start again or if the temperature is too high both the metals will become one solid coloured blob of metal.
Once this Mokume Gane process is successful we can commence rolling down the metal so it can be used to create a ring. The metal is continually rolled to 3mm thick which at this point the metal is then punched using various forms of tooling in order to create dints and dimples on one side of the Mokume Gane plate. The metal is then turned over and as a result of punching and dinting one side, bumps are now created. These bumps are now filed back in order to show the various different layers of metal. Once again the Mokume metal is rolled out thinner and is now ready to be created into a ring.
This entire process from start to finish takes around 15 hours of labour time and cannot be rushed as we are now not working with a single piece of metal with one set of characteristics but 2 separate metals now joined as one.
Mokume Gane rings are extremely labour intensive and all patterning although will have similarities; will be 100% individual as it is not being mass produced.
All MDTdesign’s Mokume Gane rings can be customised to create exactly what it is you are looking for!