Bill Seeley

Were you at the 2009 SNAG convention? You sound familiar.

Yes, Reactive Metals Studio goes every year. We had a booth in the vender area. Phil did a mokume pattern development demo. As an aside... we did about two years of development with the Canadian Mint on a Niobium coin. The price jump two years ago caused them to give it up. Bill

Hi, I just received a notice that Mokumé-gane came up in a thread here. If you really would like to look at some of this metal you might look at my site. I am the master distributer of Shining Wave Metals. Phil Baldwin who makes these laminates was part of the team at SIU that worked out how to do this with contemporary metals in the late 70s. There are 18 examples of Mokumé products developed for the contemporary metal smith. We re : <www.reactivemetals.com> There is also a very interesting site making patterned metals out of very exotic combinations like titanium/niobium: http://xpmcorporation.com/ Very cool.

As for me I am the titanium, niobium anodizing guy. Have been teaching and supply exotic metals and the technology for working with them since the early 80s.

If you have any questions about these metals please feel free to contact me. bill@reactivemetals.com

All coins would be unique...

 

Inspired from this:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/70349851@N00/4018610098/

 

Just something random when I was looking at knives. I own a Damascus knife myself and was thinking if planchets were made in such patterns - might be pretty interesting. Damascus is used to describe the wavy grained pattern of two or more different metals mixed together and hand struck. Mokume gane is similar to it and more exotic metal is used.

 

More readings:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokume-gane

 

Now why am I sensing some micro or African nations are going to strike coins in such patterns very soon...