Damascus from scrap

Yeah i think i'll go and raid the tip shop and find some good ole tools! :D I'll try that method cos it sounds easier than mucking around with steel dust and cannisters. Cheers fellas for the help

P.s. Ebbtide that knife is mighty awesome!
 
i get powder from my band saw by placing a sheetrock pan under the cutting table it catches most of the powder and keep the dust from going in the floor . its mild steel but it producies a lot of dust .when cutting copper or brassi remove the pan if cutting wood i leave it in place the wood will help comsum the 02 playing with powder is fun another place would be your local machine shop lathe turning make for some interesting stuff but the best place to get powder is from kelly cupples give im a call ,then you know what you have
 
hey IG how did you get the copper in the /on the blade
least it looks like theres copper on there looks real nice
butch
 
butcher_block said:
hey IG how did you get the copper in the /on the blade
least it looks like theres copper on there looks real nice
butch
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I have my blueing salts in a rusty old cast iron pan. :D :D
 
any one have good tips for cable damascus? i just salvaged a nice 3/4" wire choker and wanted to try forging it.
 
I don't like to use cable under 1". The strands are smaller and has a tendency of burn the carbon out when weld up. You may try a blade and don't temper it. cable is the easiest to make. Just heat up slowly and flux and brush the hell out of it.Good luck.
 
indian george said:
I don't like to use cable under 1". The strands are smaller and has a tendency of burn the carbon out when weld up. You may try a blade and don't temper it. cable is the easiest to make. Just heat up slowly and flux and brush the hell out of it.Good luck.
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Something I found out the hard way. I looked all over to find some cable and when I found some I baught 3/4 inch. I made a nice liittle knife that wouldn't harden at all as far as I could tell. You've heard of "ASO's" (anvil shaped objects? Well this was a KSO (knife shaped object. I did get it sparking a couple of times so I'm going to give it another try. If I can keep it from obviously overheating and the same things happens I'll buy some bigger stuff and use what I have for fittings or something. I'm pretty sure that it can and has been done. Maybe going easy on the first weld pass and folding one or more times might help?

Anyway, with the last billet I did I cut a piece off, hardened and etched it to make sure I had what I intended before going through the trouble of making a blade.
 
Mike Ferrara said:
Something I found out the hard way. I looked all over to find some cable and when I found some I baught 3/4 inch. I made a nice liittle knife that wouldn't harden at all as far as I could tell. You've heard of "ASO's" (anvil shaped objects? Well this was a KSO (knife shaped object. I did get it sparking a couple of times so I'm going to give it another try. If I can keep it from obviously overheating and the same things happens I'll buy some bigger stuff and use what I have for fittings or something. I'm pretty sure that it can and has been done. Maybe going easy on the first weld pass and folding one or more times might help?

Anyway, with the last billet I did I cut a piece off, hardened and etched it to make sure I had what I intended before going through the trouble of making a blade.
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Bro: The more you fold it the more carbon you are burning off and the pattern will also be affected.
 
Don't know if this would affect things or not, but a guy I know told me that WD-40 had recently altered their product and that it doesn't contain the volitals as before, and it won't burn. I don't know how to test for this, unless it's the famous hairspray trick of spraying it with a lighter in front (Disclaimer! don't try this!) Anyone hear about it?
 
rhrocker said:
Don't know if this would affect things or not, but a guy I know told me that WD-40 had recently altered their product and that it doesn't contain the volitals as before, and it won't burn. I don't know how to test for this, unless it's the famous hairspray trick of spraying it with a lighter in front (Disclaimer! don't try this!) Anyone hear about it?
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Robert, I did up a canister last week and used a new can of WD40 and when welding it up you could see a little flame shotting out of it. ;)
 
thanks for the tip i'll try to hunt down bigger cable. i just got my forge running a few weeks ago. salvaging anything i can at work that might even make a letter opener.now all i have to do is convince the little woman to let me play :barf:
 
indian george said:
Bro: The more you fold it the more carbon you are burning off and the pattern will also be affected.
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I had to go play with this because I have all this 3/4 inch cable. I think I mentioned that my first effort with the 3/4 inch cable yielded a blade that wouldn't harden but I also know that I got it sparking pretty good a couple of times.

I welded up another piece being more careful. I also used charcoal rather than coal. Call it a technique issue if you want but the coal I had wasn't the best and the fire would quickly go from "clean" to clinker clogged yielding a cold fire one second and a really hot one the next making it hard to to control. No clinkers in the charcoal. Anyway, with this new piece, I stopped welding on it while I still had a piece thick enough to work with. I lopped of a chunk and water quenched and it got extremely hard...no file bite at all. But, I had one section right in the middle that didn't weld completely. I don't think I twisted it enough. ok, I admit that much of this can be attributed to technique issues but with all this F-in around my welding is getting better honest. I went ahead and quickly forged a blade in the hopes that the additional compression would finish the weld. It's a shame because I really liked the way the blade turned out eccept for the open spots in the weld right at the ricosso. I think it would have held together but I knew I wasn't going to like the way it looked. I set it aside in the lessons learned pile (which is getting pretty big) and started over with a new piece of cable.

I twisted it more (maybe not enough still) and was careful not to draw it out too much. I cleaned it up and could clearly see a few spots where the weld wasn't complete. Rather than heat and beat on it some more and risk getting it too small I folded it and rewelded...just just to get more mass. I cleaned it up and it looked completely welded. I cut off a chunk, heated and water quenched and it got glass hard. I went ahead and forged a blade which isn't quit finished yet. Hey, give me a break, it was hot yesterday and I spent WAY too much time in front of the forge.

The bottom line is that I ended up with a thick enough piece to forge a blade out of and, as of the time I started the blade, it was still hardenable. When I finish the blade I'll see what effect it had on the pattern. Again, I concede that there are probably some technique issues here, in that, if I weld small cable it may be too small before I get it completely welded especially if I make sure it doesn't get too hot. A better welder might pull it off but folding it might just work for me. And if it works, I know where there's a bunch of smaller cable that I can get for the asking. If not, using up all this charcoal will get the wood pile gone and make the yard look better and...look at all the welding practice I'm getting!
 
I have welded 1/4 inch cable by taking 4 pieces and tacking the end together,then welding a billet.Twist then hammer to weld the billet.It makwes for a great pattern with small cable.You might try tacking 2 pieces of this cable together and weldi t.

Now as for that learning proccess pile,make frontier Damascus out of it,just start welding the blades or pieces together and fold or twist and you will get a wild pattern along with welding up the old pieces.The more you fold cable the straighter the pattern becomes and eventually it will look like a regular bar of Damascus with layers.to make a bar of Damascus look like it has more layers than you have in the billet just make a billet of cable and fold a couple of times then make a bar and cut into sections and use it as alternating layers in a stack to begin a new bar of Damascus.As you heat weld and strectch then fold you are making the cable look to have many layers in it and it looks great mixed in a mix with lower layers.Just a way to salvage the first trys and not feel like you are messing up all the time.Plus you get a great billet of steel.
Bruce
 
tke your first mistakes and weld them into a billet and fold a couple of times,you will get a great looking bar of Damascus,and if you add a couple of layers of regular steel in as you stack them up it will look even better.
Bruce
 
Now take all those pieces that you said didnt weld up correctly and weld them all togetehr,twist that and flatten,then fold and weld a couple of times and you should end up with a really wild and cool billet.
Bruce
 
Now take all those learned from pieces and weld them together.fold a couple of times and maybe even throw a twist in there.You will like the wild and cool pattern you come up with.You will like it more if you add a couple of pieces of carbon steel to the mix.
Bruce
 
For those of you who use WD-40, give Starrett M-1 a try. It's cheap. It works much better than WD-40, and it don't stink like WD-40 does. It will also leave a light dry film on machinery to prevent rust. It's all I use now. :thumbup:
 
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