i certainly consider my company to be theleader in terms of using contemporary metals or alternative metals, whatever you want tocall it. we don't use titanium we don't use tungsten, we're not just machining a ringto machine it, we're doing things with beautiful pattern and actually creating the metals thatwe're working with. the first ring line that we actually came out with and that startedall of this was meteorite rings. we didn't invent the meteorite ring, there have beenpeople making them of real basic quality meteorite without any lining. we'll buy slabs or we'llbuy whole meteorites, we actually have a big whole meteorite in the other room, and thenwe do a tremendous amount of processing to this. that's sorta the secret sauce of whatwe do here so i'm not going to say exactly
what we do, but we go through many steps offorging and it really helps enhance the corrosion resistance; we're unique in that aspect. i'veseen a lot of meteorite rings that are copies of our stuff that have been on white waterrafting trips and seen how they rust and look terrible, and our meteorite rings don't. sowe do a lot of work to that, we combine it with high karat gold or we combine it withplatinum, palladium and other materials and that's how we created our meteorite ring line.while i was working with that i read a book or two and found some references to mokumegane. mokume gane: japanese technique, wood grain metal. it's something that we've reallycome to specialize in. it's multiple layers of precious metals or metals that have beenlaminated together that are then manipulated
to yield a pattern. i firmly believe the qualityof our mokume is really great. we've done a super job of combining the techniques ofmetalsmithing with fine jewelry manufacturing. our polishes are really excellent, our techniquesthat we use and the approach that we take to manufacturing is actually very jewelryend of the spectrum and not metalsmith end of the spectrum, but it took a long time.in order to make just basic mokume, just small pieces for making rings, it took me abouttwo years to figure out in a way that we could repeat it and do a good job of it. as a sideline to that i've always been interested in damascus steel, i've bought some pieces, i'vemade a few knives in my time, and i started working with it. it's a very interesting materialbecause it doesn't have to be as expensive
as the mokume gane. steel is much less expensiveso it can give somebody a lot of pattern for a lot less money than what we charge for themokume gane. of course it's no precious metal component, i really like the precious metalcomponent of things, i think it says a lot about the unity of someone with wedding.
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