Following the iron brush

Although not a member of the forum.. Netsuke carver, Peter Welsh has been following this thread and has e-mailed me with an intriguing suggestion... there are a number of critters.. Moon Snails, some Sea slugs and cucumbers as well as some starfish and nudibranchs that have the ability to produce enzymes that soften the shells of the molluscs on which they feed. I'll definetely look into that.. Cheers Peter

Hello,

Dear Clive, dear Peter, thank you for the idea. Not the easiest to prove, tough. Where could I acquire sufficient quantities of sea cucumber saliva? Hungary is an inland country. In fact, I have had some difficulty in obtaining proteinase enzyme in small quantity. Imagine the faces of the personnel in the drugstore, when I will ask them for some cucumber saliva…
In the meantime I will try a simple experiment, and put a piece of MoP into unpasteurized miso, as it contains aspergillus oryzae.

Have a nice day!

János

Hello to all,

I have found it today on the internet:

"Raden in particular underwent a remarkable development. New techniques were introduced, such as the use of wafer-thin shell, prepared by boiling the shell in water for about a week."

The source: http://rca.open.ed.jp/web_e/city-2000/j ... hmain.html

Any thoughts?

Have a nice day!

János

only one way to test this method...try it

I still don't believe it's possible to bend the stuff though

Dear Ford,

I will try it somehow, but will be really hard to boil it constantly for such a long time. I can leave it unattended neither at home nor in my workshop. That would be really hazardous.

Some additional information I have acquired in the past days:
The thickest sheet which can be tried to bend with chances of success is approx 0,3 millimetres.

Nowadays almost all lacquer craftsmen buy shell “ready-sliced”, as in Japan this stuff is easily available from dealers. In use, they soak the thin sheets into seawater (or saline water) at least for overnight to soften them. I tried this part successfully. But experienced real pains in bending thinly cut MoP, as it snapped easily along the inner “pattern lines” in it.

I am still experimenting with that enzyme idea…


About bending the stuff: these images of work made by Koin Maeda tell that bending MoP (in thin slices at least) is possible.




I am sure that we will crack the secrets.

Have a nice day!

János

that box is really quite exceptional, Janos and I'm partial to dragonflies as you know
MI wonder if we be looking a synthetic mother of pearl though...

Dear Ford,

I do not know whether those dragonflies are reconstituted shell or not, but do not believe that they are re-con stuff, as the person who made the box is a quite “old-school” artisan.

http://www.japanupdate.com/?id=4453
http://www.wonder-okinawa.jp/012/004/015/001.html


Have a nice day!

János

This paper's interesting:

http://barthelat-lab.mcgill.ca/files/pa ... PS2006.pdf

My reading of the section on tension in nacre (p.9) is that MOP needs to be in a liquid medium in order to bend and probably would need to be of a similar temperature throughout the piece. It looks like prolonged boiling might be the only way to go. It might have to be done in stages - boiling, bending, boiling, bending, etc. - until the required deformation has been reached.

Has anyone thought of putting an experimental piece in water in a microwave oven and/or a pressure cooker in order to speed up the process?

That's a great paper, Freda

very interesting stuff.

I've send a request for some info to a Mr Kasumi Musose who is a Nat. Living treasure Urushi artist. I haven't seen him for a few years but he is a good friend of my own teacher so I'm hopeful I'll et some feed back. I'll post any response here.

fh

This thread's been intriguing me, Ford. I like a good mystery to unravel! You know what? I reckon we would all have been alchemists in the old days!

You may be right Freda...one way or another I'd have been bound to end up burnt at the stake

Hello to all,

It has been a long and tiresome weekend. I have redone the "boiling the MoP" experiment in the light of new info. I boiled 1,2~1,4 millimetres thick white MoP plates (see the image) made for inlay work in heavily salinated water for a continuous 42 hours.

After about 20 hours fine fracture lines appeared in the plates.

After about 22 hours some plates (approximately half of the pieces) fell apart to two thin sheets along the aforementioned fracture lines.

I continued the boiling but nothing more happened so far. So it was a “half success”. This experiment was good enough at least to prove that you can produce MoP sheets without a fine saw. My sheets are not flat and not uniform in thickness, but sanding this thin stuff (0,5~0,7 mm) to size would be much easier than bringing a full 6~10 mm down to size by grinding and sanding.

Any comments?

Have a nice day!

János

Dear Freda, dear Ford,

I continued the boiling for more than 54 hours, but not much happened. I take a break today, and will restart the boiling at the evening. Dear Freda, I tried to bend hot boiled MoP and it can be flexed if hot. On the pieces I have (approx. 2,5x4 cm) the amount of bend without snapping is 0,5 millimetres in the long direction (as far as I can judge it by eye). And an interesting phenomenon: it bends to one side more easily than to the other. Perhaps the “easier side” was the inner looking, concave side in the shell before the cutting of the blank.
Dear Ford, asking Mr. Murose is a really good idea, I hope he will take the time, and answer our questions. Thank you for that.
Curiosity, stakes, cats...

Have a nice day!

János

Hello,

I finished the MoP boiling experiment. I have boiled the shell pieces for more than 120 hours in total. After about 75 hours I was able to slice the shell with an Olfa cutter, but was not able to produce useable pieces, as the sheets snapped very easily, and the cuts tended to follow the fracture lines I mentioned earlier. I boiled the stuff in the hope that it will fell to sheets spontaneously, but it did not…the damn thing.

I must search further… Any suggestions?

Have a nice day!

János

Maybe... maybe, it's all about the material to start with. It looks like it splits on the layers that are formed by the growth of the shell.
So it may be wise to start with a piece where these lines are visible and at the desired distance from each other. (Slow growing shells for thinner pieces)
Not sure... as always.