Or from a scrap yard. The way I learned was making "frontier" damascus with a little hands on from Bruce Evans. Basically start with a fairly large piece, say a piece of leaf spring, add a small piece of something different and preferably that you think will contrast when etched, like a piece of saw blade. Hand weld those together and add another piece of something, a piece of a broken tool, a chunk of a knife blade you screwed up, a ball out of a bearing, a couple nails, what ever so long as you don't get too much low carbon in the mix and it's all carbon steel. Get a good stack welded up and hammer it into a billet, fold, repeat to the desired layer count.
I mostly buy 1084 and 15&20 in 6" pieces now, but every once in a while will mess with frontier damascus. You can come up with some pretty interesting patterns and since it's all scrap steel your only out time and gas for the forge and a little borax. The main thing is it teaches you how to forge weld by hand, and what's needed to forge weld and what to look for.
