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- Jan 10, 2010
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If you are ever wondering where the fine grain structure in a Japanese nihonto sword forged from tamagahane comes from.. or how the chaotic patterning in wrought iron originates, here is a glimpse. This little project was inspired by the fact that I'm accumulating all sorts of home made steel bits either from the shear steel I've made, my little orishigane furnace, bits of bloomery iron sent to me from a friend (Mark Green from the Fogg Forums), a paper published by Tatsuo Inoue
(http://www.shibuiswords.com/tatsuoinoue.htm) and by a tutorial on Jesus Hernandez's website: http://www.jhbladesmith.com/en/tutorials/the-making-of/lasagna-tanto.html
The goal here is to forge a tanto with heart breaking fine grain structure and incandescent hamon... another blade for the Arkansas show if it works out.
Here is a diagram from Tatsuo's paper that shows basically what I'm doing:
My starting bits are pieces of orishigane that I made by melting wrought iron nails in a carburizing clay furnace that I made. This furnace makes golf ball size blooms of .95ish high carbon steel that is of fairly high quality right out of the furnace:
The other bits are the shear steel I made Ric Furrer's workshop, home made bloomery iron smelted directly from ore (sent to me by a friend), pieces and plates of W2 and 1084 powder. Here is a picture that shows a lot of this:
In this case, everything I'm starting with is high carbon which would not be the case in a traditional situation. The steel powder is to fill gaps between the pieces.. which I don't believe was traditionally done either.
Here is stacked billet showing all the pieces with steel powder and flux. This is wrapped in wet paper towels to hold it all together.
Welding needs to take place in a white hot environment. A lot of these traditional materials weld very easily.. but it needs to be hot.
Here is the first welded billet. Everything firmed up quite nicely after the first go under the press.
Traditionally, as seen in the diagram... the smiths would have just cut and folded and continued. But I'm working in a propane forge that just doesn't have the heat intensity... so I prefer to take it slow and just grind surfaces clean.
Here is where you start to see where you get the type of grain structure seen in wrought iron..all the gaps that never end up welding and filled with flux and whatnot.
But I will be using the angle grind to clean some of those gaps out and back fill with steel powder in the next step. So next will be cutting that billet, filling the gaps, and stacking with plates of 1/8" W2. And then just continue to cut and stack to achieve further refinement of all the slaggy bloom components and weld failures caused by the gaps in the billet.
That's it for now! Hope this is of some interest......
(http://www.shibuiswords.com/tatsuoinoue.htm) and by a tutorial on Jesus Hernandez's website: http://www.jhbladesmith.com/en/tutorials/the-making-of/lasagna-tanto.html
The goal here is to forge a tanto with heart breaking fine grain structure and incandescent hamon... another blade for the Arkansas show if it works out.
Here is a diagram from Tatsuo's paper that shows basically what I'm doing:
My starting bits are pieces of orishigane that I made by melting wrought iron nails in a carburizing clay furnace that I made. This furnace makes golf ball size blooms of .95ish high carbon steel that is of fairly high quality right out of the furnace:
The other bits are the shear steel I made Ric Furrer's workshop, home made bloomery iron smelted directly from ore (sent to me by a friend), pieces and plates of W2 and 1084 powder. Here is a picture that shows a lot of this:
In this case, everything I'm starting with is high carbon which would not be the case in a traditional situation. The steel powder is to fill gaps between the pieces.. which I don't believe was traditionally done either.
Here is stacked billet showing all the pieces with steel powder and flux. This is wrapped in wet paper towels to hold it all together.
Welding needs to take place in a white hot environment. A lot of these traditional materials weld very easily.. but it needs to be hot.
Here is the first welded billet. Everything firmed up quite nicely after the first go under the press.
Traditionally, as seen in the diagram... the smiths would have just cut and folded and continued. But I'm working in a propane forge that just doesn't have the heat intensity... so I prefer to take it slow and just grind surfaces clean.
Here is where you start to see where you get the type of grain structure seen in wrought iron..all the gaps that never end up welding and filled with flux and whatnot.
But I will be using the angle grind to clean some of those gaps out and back fill with steel powder in the next step. So next will be cutting that billet, filling the gaps, and stacking with plates of 1/8" W2. And then just continue to cut and stack to achieve further refinement of all the slaggy bloom components and weld failures caused by the gaps in the billet.
That's it for now! Hope this is of some interest......
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