jarkman ([info]jarkman) wrote,
@ 2009-05-10 13:06:00
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Nunome-zogan experiements
Here's my Saturday afternoon experiment, sticking silver to steel by the nunome-zogan process:



More pictures, and a bit of a writeup, are here:
http://www.jarkman.co.uk/catalog/jewel/nunome.htm.

I'm frankly amazed that this process works as well as it does when done as badly as this. Now I just need to work out what to make with it that isn't just a test...

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[info]cybik
2009-05-10 03:00 pm UTC (link)
That looks really really interesting..

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[info]jarkman
2009-05-10 09:50 pm UTC (link)
...and suprisingly straightforward to do, too, if you wanted to have a go...

Also, you have the unfair advantage of a facility with drawing. That means you could have a go at using it pictorially, not just abstractly. If you see what I mean.

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[info]r_is_for_rachel
2009-05-10 05:05 pm UTC (link)
very cute and very Japanese...i approve :)

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[info]e_spy
2009-05-11 10:17 am UTC (link)
Nice going. Biggest problems I have with nunome zogan are the height of the teeth - they can't be so tall that they cut through the top surface of the onlay (I've ended up really good at hand cutting small files though!) - and cutting shapes out of the foil neatly; you end up working with such small pieces that cutting them cleanly without tearing can be a swine. Some of the small craft punches can be fun for quick & dirty shapes to burnish on though.

Have you tried browning with a peroxide/salt/vinegar mix and boiling in green tea? Takes longer than heat blueing, but I like the depth of colour it gives.

Somewhere around I have a cigarette case that demonstrates this onlay technique with multiple alloys; picked it up for about £10 at an antiques stand. Worth every penny just for study. Mind you, having just seen one this on EBay at £120 I'm a bit surprised...! http://i3.ebayimg.com/08/i/001/20/37/7d8c_1.JPG The cigarette cases may have some type of lacquer over the metal too, which would presumably be cut back to the onlay with charcoal.

Talking with one of the curators at the V&A last year, he was adamant that the Damascene (as commonly used to describe nunome zogan) technique was a mix of raised inlay and using stitches to hold onlaid wires in place... Interesting how the same word ends up used to describe such different processes.

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[info]e_spy
2009-05-11 10:20 am UTC (link)
Sorry, that doesn't quite read right in the last para - the wire would be held in place by raising stitches either side of the wire. Studied some under a loupe (should have seen his eyebrows when I said I'd forgotten my loupe, please could I borrow one from him!) and that seemed to be all that was holding the brass wire on.

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[info]jarkman
2009-05-12 07:53 am UTC (link)
By the way, do you have a link for your peroxide recipe ? I found this one:
http://forums.swordforum.com/showpost.php?s=3a05f01f68a6836e16e1bb9ca721b996&p=372208&postcount=5
but the microwave-the-peroxide bit made me nervous.

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[info]e_spy
2009-05-13 09:36 am UTC (link)
It's not in the notebook I have with me, unfortunately - from memory, it was pretty much the same as the swordforums one except I did it on the stove. I've seen recipes for this cold too, which suggests the only reason for warming the peroxide is to get more salt dissolved.

There's some interesting variations with ferric chloride (or in some recipes, HCl and iron...) and peroxide knocking about, haven't tried them.

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[info]e_spy
2009-05-13 09:49 am UTC (link)
Here's a few -

http://www.thecarvingpath.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=1016&st=0

http://ia311243.us.archive.org/1/items/metalcolouringbr00hiorrich/metalcolouringbr00hiorrich.pdf

All the gunsmithing recipes I have for rust browning tend to make me more than a bit cautious - the use of mercury II chloride, for example...

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[info]jarkman
2009-05-14 05:40 pm UTC (link)
I got myself a copy of Angier, on the recommendation of a gun-browning-enthusiast friend (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Firearm-Blueing-Browning-R-H-Angier/dp/0811706109). That has scads of recipes & notes, many of which use mercury. A few of them seem sensible, but they all require the same rusting, waiting, carding cycle.

I'll try peroxide this weekend and see how I get on.

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[info]jarkman
2009-05-11 05:26 pm UTC (link)
How thick was your foil ? I haven't had any teeth poking through, and I think I'd need to take off a fair bit of metal to get that. I had trouble cutting tidy shapes, but it was more a problem of squishiness than of tearing. I'll have to try tiny punches next time.

Having said that, the tooth size does seem to be the most uncontrolled variable in the process. I took to calibrating it by how snaggly it felt to the thumb.

[info]quercus of this parish has a couple of cigarette-case examples which I stared at in wonder. One of them showed the cross-hatch pattern on parts of the iron, and the fine lines were thin enough to show peaks of the cross-hatch on their edges. Which, incidentally, were definitely not held on with stitches.

I tried a brown from the 'Japanese Patinas' book, with no real success. I ought to have a go at the peroxide one. Maybe on the next trial...

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[info]e_spy
2009-05-13 09:40 am UTC (link)
Probably in the 0.15mm range from memory. There's no metal removed in raising the teeth, just raised. Small chisels might be the best way to do intricate shapes; wouldn't really need hammering though. For inlay work, the foils are much thicker - 0.5 seems to be common, so the stitches can be correspondingly taller.

My example has *most* of the cross-hatching burnished out again, but not all.

Hmm. I bought that one too. It has been deprecated in Followingtheironbrush.org - of course, that was posted about a week after I received my copy. Oh well.



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