cable question

A

agghumi

Joined
Sep 30, 2004
Messages
33
It seems like good practice, but is it a waste of time to forge weld seven lengths of 3/8 cable into one billet for blade steel. I was wondering about heat treating and tempering. The reason I'm asking is because I read that there is a different mixture of soft and hard wire in the cable.
Dave
 
Why couldn't you just twist them together to make a larger cable piece?

When you say hard/soft cable - are you talking about the pieces you have? or just cable in general?

From what I understand (limited), the outer parts of each cable are "decarbed" from being cold-drawn, causing the pattern. I've not heard of it being a mixture of hard and soft wire.
 
I would not use 3/8" cable the individual strands are to small. You will be burning the carbon out of them when you are welding it up. ;)
 
burning the carbon out of the wires?

How does powder damascus work then?

wouldn't you have to get above welding temps to burn out the carbon?

1" cable is easiest .Wayne Goddard welded up a bunch of 5/8" and then stacked em and welded em.
 
Sweany said:
burning the carbon out of the wires?

wouldn't you have to get above welding temps to burn out the carbon?

1" cable is easiest .Wayne Goddard welded up a bunch of 5/8" and then stacked em and welded em.
Click to expand...
I am just stating what I like to make cable damascus out of. Welding temp will burn the carbon, do you thing you can hold a billet at the exact welding temp and not go over????? :confused: :confused: :D
 
I just hammered out a cable blade and used oil as a quenching medium. Seemed to work fine but would brine have worked better?
 
The way I understand it is that the pattern is developed from the decarb on the outside of each wire and between the wires as there welded. You have the high carbon wire and after all the time at heat to get the mess welded up you have a high carbon wire surounded by a coating of nearly pure iron. The trick with cable is to work it enough to get rid of all the cold shuts and flaws, but not so much that you lose the pattern.

On a powder metal billet it's sealed in a can with no oxygen to burn the carbon out.

Oh yea, oil will work fine, as long as you have enough carbon to get good and hard. If it doesn't harden properly then I would try brine or water, but only after an oil quench.
 
IG I ain't trying to start no argument just discussing it :)
So here's my theory. Carbon loss comes at much higher temps than welding heat. Ric Furrer at Larry Harley's hammer in said that nothing you could do to the steel in a froge is going to make an appreciable loss in carbon.

NOW I know he wasn't talking about fine wire either. BUT it seems to me a carefull watch on the weld temps and useing a carburizing atmosphere it should be doable.

Not certain it is profitable but it should be doable.

Course the easy way to weld up the cable would be to heat em twist em up tight and shove em in a cannister. :D:D:D


I welded up a billet of bandsaw blade once, nothing else but bandsaw and got a neat little pinstripe effect. I flipped the billet edge up and forged it flat so the edge layers were then on the face of the billet

I lost the two outer pieces of bandsaw though, my forge wasn't all that good then. I got the silver lines just like in the cable. Not sure how it would decarb in the center of the bar though. Seems like it would be a weld line rather than a decarb line in the steel.

IF you "carburize" a piece of mild steel you need pack in a carburizeing material and bring it to welding heat for 4 hours or so.

So if we keep it under that time won't we have achieved our goal??

my .02
 
if your concerned with carbon loss you could always do like the japanese when they forge their swords. you could hammer out your cable billet then let it soak in a charcoal fire. this will add some carbon back to the steel. and then you could wrap the billet in a clay slurry to help seal in the carbon.
 
IG.. I agree with you on the opinions part ................for sure!



icon6.gif




Why waist time and fuel? The bigger the cable the more steel you make at one forging.

I always make the billets as big as the forge will stand. Some operations require smaller things but if your just welding up cable or stacking billets to combined in other projects I would go all out.

This also allows your billet to weld much better because you have large block of heat that wont cool to fast.

This will yield you plenty for layered up billets to play with!

 
My understanding was that decarburation on the outside of each wire was what caused the pattern to form. The cable blades that I made had to be quenched in brine to effectively harden. They were made from 1 1/16" rusty cable that was found at the naval air station; the guy who gave it to me told me that it was an arrestor cable but I don't know if that was true or not. I haven't used anything smaller, but I would agree with Darrel in that little stuff would be harder to work with and take more time for a given amount of finished barstock.

Daniel, the cold drawing might affect the grain of the steel, but I don't think that it would cause decarb. As a matter of fact I don't think that the cold drawing would have any affect on the finished product; I believe that the repeated elevated temperatures used to weld and draw out the billet would negate it. Anybody, anybody, Buehler? Those who know for sure please speak up now. :)
 
IG I got way more opinions than I do A##holes :D:D:D

And I dang sure agrre about the one inch or bigger being more profitable.

Mainly I'd want to weld thr small cable into a billet now is cause everbody advises against it. I'm just naturaly perverse that way. :p:p:p

oxygen and decarbing the small cables was mentioned. The flux if properly applied should shut out the oxygen.

Probably I've gone on longer than the subject allows but it is so good to duiscuss something with out somebody getting P.O.'d :)
 
You could take a page from Wayne Godard's page and weld up the small cable for the center of a dagger, just weld up larger cable for the outer wrap. The smaller cable would have more iron to steel mix after welding and wouldn't get as hard, just the way you would want the center of a dagger. :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top