That looks great, I like to form that kind of thing on pieces of wood. An easily obtainable patina is gun bluing solution, available at any hardware store, then maybe buff it off in the high areas for highlights? Keep us updated on the mokume, sounds like your on the right track. I have heard charcoal is a good reducer if the argon slips away, i have also heard of people just using WD40 for steel (mosaic billets). Also I am coveting your goggles.
Crap I actualy have all that junk lying around too including my own home made press! Now I want to make some too! Only thing I am missing is such nifty goggles ;-( I wouldn't think you have to let your billet sit for so long, but it can't hurt anything. Do you make any damascus (iron mokume basicaly) with that press of yours? The way I am doing it is so messy. Getting sprayed head to toe with white hot borax all the time kind of takes some of the fun out of things.
Mine's a very slow press, and all the damascus stuff I've ever tried has been like yours: hard hitting, with a hammer (and I've watched plenty with a triphammer.) I'd never thought about doing damascus with slow pressure and wonder how well it'd work. Given iron's tendency to oxidise, it'd definitely have to be inert atmosphere. Tell ya what, when I get something set up I'll run a piece of steel/nickel.
I think damascus is done alot with (powered) hydraulic forge presses, especially for mosaic were patterns are inserted into a tube with argon or dubya dee and you don't want any distortion. Of course there is also a rolling mill that people use.. alas our home made bottle jack press probably just aren't going to be fast enough, drat! Mind if I add you?
My next big purchase is going to be a rolling mill, I think. Le sigh. And yeah, homemade bottle jacks aren't very fast at all. Steam and mechanical flywheel presses are where it's at, but those are a bit out of my price and infrastructure range...
fly presses can be faster than hydraulic, but if you get a two stage pump the difference isn't that big. They are also fairly simple to fabricate. Speeking of alternative reduction materials I just heard about a guy that uses a salt bath in his forge, he has a crucible of molten salt and does all of heating with the billet or blade submersed in that and there is no scale at all. But i guess it is murder on the rest of his tools.
I bet it would be: concentrated hot salt is seriously corrosive. They used to bath-solder bikes that way... You reduce the melting point of the salt bath if it's half table salt and half baking soda. It's still pretty much red-hot but it's not as bad as straight tablesalt.
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The charcoal sounds like a great idea. I wonder what other oxygen getters are cheap, now...
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