Earlier this summer I was asked to do a job for Nicole Jacquard. She had James Viste create a couple of mokume-gane billets for her so that she could CNC cut a pattern into the billet and then have him flatten the sheet to make a larger patterned sheet. I believe her goal is to smith a creamer or some kind of container out of it.
It's really cool to think about mixing digital techniques with the ancient technique of mokume-gane. i was all onboard for this, as it's right up my alley of combining old and new in the hopes of reinvigorating the old or at least building upon the traditions that form the foundation for a specific area of study.
Nicole had previously tried a different machine shop with a different combination of metals, but James was not happy with the result due to the machining done by the machine shop. Nicole asked if it was something I thought I could do on my Tormach and so she sent me some billets and I ran a few tests for her in HDPE before cutting the real deal. I was able to bang the job out in a couple days. It honestly took more time to make sure the result was what Nicole wanted and to set-up the billets on the machine, then it did to cut them. I was really pleased with the finished result. I sent the billets to James for him to take over.
James sent me the last two images as he was flattening things out. I'm anxious to see the finished piece made from these two sheets of material.
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