Mokume Gane Ring

This is a ring I made today for my mom, to give to her on Sunday for Mother's Day. Her birthstone is sapphire, and this is a 7 mm stone I'd bought last year for this purpose. She likes jewelry that is small and delicate, whereas I prefer bolder jewelry. I hope mom will like it! This was as small and delicate as I like to go!

The construction was straightforward, but since I was using a piece of 20 ga. mokume gane ("woodgrain" in Korean) of silver and copper, I was sure to make a template of my piece in copper first to make sure of the pattern I wanted. Mokume gane is a bit pricey, but you use small amounts of it at a time so it's not so bad. After sawing out the shape, I soldered the ends of the ring together. This is where things got funky! When I began soldering the seam closed, the seam actually opened up the hotter it got. Then when it cooled back down, the seam came together again. WEIRD! I figured it was part of the properties of this mixed metal. I actually had to use 2 sets of tweezers to hold the seam together, with the torch free-standing and the solder snippet carefully balanced on top of the seam. That "seamed" to work and when I soldered on the setting for the stone, nothing unusual happened.

I used liver of sulfur (LOS) to give the piece a patina. The problem with LOS is that it also darkens the silver. There is a solution called Baldwin's Patina (sold by Rio) that I need to buy! It only reacts with the copper and darkens that part. Once my mom tries it on, I will see if I need to re-size it, and if so then I will bang the back on a mandrel to stretch out the metal. I will also re-patina it with Baldwin's. That will really bring out the pattern and it will not look so funky as it does now.