[TheForge] daascus ring making--a how to question

[Cameron Stoker]

Hi Justin,

	I made a set last year with  palladium gold liners. I made the liner 
abour twice as wide as the billet portion of the ring, soldered the 
sleeves together, and then slid the billet ring onto the sleeve and 
soldered it in place. Then I carefully started pushing the edges of the 
liner (that extend past the edge of the billet) up to form the sides. 
After the folding was started, i carefull tapped using two opposing ball 
peins to roll the edges of the liner the rest of the way up. I didn't 
have any cracking on the liner solder joints. I also didn't try to 
solder up the side gaps - they show as just a hairline.

	I'm sure you can't use this method with Ti due to it's springyness. 
Annealed ss, maybe. Softer stuff would be easy. As for the etching I 
think you'd be ok using a gold (mostly inert) liner with many damascus 
steel etchants.
The one more usefull data point I have discovered is that people are 
significantly different pH. I appear to be reducing to my ring, and my 
wife is oxidizing the heck out of hers. The patina treatment I did on 
the rings lasted about a week.

	I'd also sugest making several times more damascus than you need so you 
can make matching-ish replacements later if one goes missing :( .

	Btw, this was my first set of mokume wedding rings, so I'm no expert. 
Just a smith who's taken a jewery class and dabbled.
-- 
		Cameron Stoker
		Cameron at stoker.net
		"May you run like a vicuna!"
		pgp key: http://keys.stoker.net