Silver-copper mokume gane pictorial.

Just came back from the shop, where I made my first silver-copper mokume gane billet. It turned out really good, which probably means this combination is hard to mess up...

So here is a short pictorial of what I did.

You need pretty hefty torque plates made out of stainless steel. Paint the faces with yellow ochre so the metals don't stick to them.

11 layers of fine silver and copper.

Cleaning the faces and exposing fresh metal with a scotch brite pad. Works just fine, and is pretty quick.

 Clean off any grease by dipping them in acetone, then rinse with water and dry.

Making sure you don't touch the faces, stack them up between the torque plates.

Compress them as much as you can, and tighten the bolts again, to keep this pressure on the billet. 

In this case the pressure was over 1 ton/cm2!

Stick them in a small forge or kiln, with a small burner... you need to keep the temp below 778 C, where the eutectic alloy between silver and copper melts, and everything turns gooey. 

Let it soak for about an hour, turning it around occasionally to even out the temperature. Also try to keep a reducing atmosphere in the forge as much as you can (I found out it's important but not critical).

What is important is to closely monitor the temperature, hence a pyrometer is needed. Try to insert the probe between the steel plates, as close as possible to the billet.

Finally after some trimming and sanding here is a healthy billet without any delamination. Oh, I also presssed it once more after it dropped down to black heat.

Good Luck!