Meaning wood-grain metal in japanese, is an ancient form of metal-smithing first developed by Japanese sword-smiths who made samurai swords out of varied alloyed steel to make Mokume swords that looked like wood. This mokume is composed of silver, 14kt white gold, 14kt rose gold and 18kt yellow gold. It starts out as a fused sandwich of those four metals that is then rolled thin in a rolling mill, then cut in half and sandwich-fused again. This process is repeated many times until the desired number of layers is achieved.
