A couple of my home made patch knives

Bookie

Bookie

Joined
Mar 25, 2014
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When I usually make pattern welded steel, I do it to see if I'm up to the task or want to try a different pattern. Here are a couple of blades I made and gave away to friends. I do not collect knives. If one does not have a specific purpose, it goes to a new home.
GowdyKnife.jpg
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GowdyBlade.jpg
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12PatchKnife.jpg
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PatchKnifeBlade.jpg
[/URL][/IMG] My cartouche is applied thereon.
 
I like that one too, it just kind of grabs ya somehow. That pattern welded stuff is very cool to me.

I just don't get how you can control the pattern let alone try a different one. Your rolling steel over and beating it down and rolling again. How do ya get the pretty pattern?

If it's a trade secret and you'd have to kill me if you told me I don't really need to know that bad.
 
Very nice I really like the stubby guy, looks like a great utility blade, nicely done sir.
 
Bookie said:
When I usually make pattern welded steel, I do it to see if I'm up to the task or want to try a different pattern. Here are a couple of blades I made and gave away to friends. I do not collect knives. If one does not have a specific purpose, it goes to a new home...
Click to expand...

Beautiful work, and a skillful philosophy.
 
There are times when I turn the steel the wrong way when I start hammering. Once, I was trying for a star pattern down the length of the blade and after a few operations, dropped the metal. When I picked it up, the steel was oriented 90 degrees off. The metal was red hot and I failed to catch the altered position. Instead of 3/4" stars along the sides, I had 1/8" stars on the spine. I use two different steels that contrast in appearance. The steel is built up in layers and each layer hammer welded to the other layers. Slag inclusions are a no-no. Samo-samo layers that did not get welded up completely. How you twist the metal, how you drill it, how you file it before hammering, how you taper the blade, and finally, how you hammer it, all control what the pattern looks like. There is simple twist, angel's hair, waterfall or cascade, double twist, bird's eye or shotgun pattern, ladder, star, chevron, and others. Ever seen a shotgun barrel of pattern welded steel where you could still make out the horse shoe nails welded up to make the tube? There was a smith in Europe figured out how to pattern weld his name in the steel without welding inlay/inserts into the blade. He died and took the secret with him. I screw up about 30-40% of what I start on by leaving unseen gaps between the layers, folding the steel too many times which "washes" the pattern out, or allowing the metal to form too much scale. With the pattern running perpendicular to the knife's edge creates a micro serrated edge which cuts/slices longer than a regular blade. Actually, pattern welded steel is easy, but it requires that you know just what grades of steel or their welding characteristics you are welding because dissimilar metals do not always want to stick to each other, and patience. I am not a blade smithy by any stretch of the imagination. I'm better at straightening bent tractor axles, making camp fire sets, meat forks, and such. I am not soliciting any orders, nor do I want any. I do this for my own self-gratification.
 
If you seeking self gratification I'd say you got it made Bookie and for not being a blade smith you seem to be pretty durn good at it.
For a bent tractor axle fixer that is.
 
Bookie I envy your knowledge! I like the pointy one but both are very nice! Love the look of the polished stag and the shape of the stubby one too. Your king of the kornpatch as far as im concerned! Well done sir!
 
Love both blades. Another example of beautiful clean crisp lines. I also really like your maker's mark. (not the liquor, the B on your blades) I love seeing your work. Each and every piece of your work I have seen has just spoken to me. I am in awe of your abilities at tractor repair, if these examples of your blades isn't even your secondary skill.
 
Yeah, those are really beautiful. And normally I'm opposed to pattern welding just because it gets incorrectly labeled as "Damascus", so I think it's awesome you didn't do that.
 
I see another parable in my future. What's the difference between pattern weld and Damascus?
 
Wow. Good job Bookie. They look super! Actually, I really like the long one. Love the pattern, and not to mention the handle. Also, is that a cho on the blade?
 
Bawanna,
Damascus steel was originally made from wootz steel, a steel developed in India before the Common Era. The original method of producing Damascus steel is not known having been lost around 1700. Because of differences in raw materials and manufacturing techniques, modern attempts to duplicate the metal have not been entirely successful, (though bulat steel produced by Pavel Petrovich Anosov around 1838 is considered almost identical though that process is also lost LOL), however current knowledge tells us that the unique manufacture of this steel produced Fe3C particles in bands. This gave the steel very hard bands of the carbides in a ferrite and cementite alloy which resulted in the blades being harder and able to hold a sharper edge than their contemporaries.

Pattern weld has been used for hundreds of years because steel in those days was not adequate for making swords as the forges didnt really get hot enough to reduce the iron oxide well enough to make good steel so steels were stacked, forge welded and folded over and over to produce a homogonized blade. However the current pattern weld steel is usually used for cosmetic reasons though there can be some benefits depending on the materials chosen.
 
It's not a cho. It's a fancy finger grabber so if you loose your grip your finger will snag on the blade and stop or at least slow down. Many knives are sharpened all the way to the hilt. I am not a fan of this because of a few cuts inflicted over the years. Miz Shav is correct. There is no "Damascus" steel being made any longer because no one is really certain how they did it. Not even my ex-Mother-In-Law who knows everything!
 
ROFL Bookie, Your Mother-In-Law should meet my "Dragon-In-Law" I am sure they have MUCH in common including their belief of their own infallability. I would bet yours probably shares the "my (daughter/son) was destine for greatness, till (he/she) married you" viewpoint as well? :D We still go one Sunday a month to dinner. I never did figure out why I agreed to live in the same state as her. I keep hoping she will move to Az soon, or skip the halfway point and straight to the other extremely Hot Destination below...
 
So when you see a knife now days advertised as damascus it's a bald faced lie and not a little white lie like momma used to talk about. It's actually pattern weld?

So now I have to adjust my list of favorite things, remove damascus and add pattern weld along with stag, 45's and girls with well pattern weld.
 
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