damascus or mokume in a vice?

C

clockworkfish

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Dec 1, 2010
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Hey i was just curious but if you do not have a hydrolic press could you use a vice instead? Or is this just a horrible idea?

Logic comes from the fact that both exert force in a fairly straight line, and the reason for my curiosity is my school has one of those awesome old vices that you stick to the side of a log, as well as a forge but they do not have a power hammer or a press but i am very eager to try some damascus or mokume for that matter.
 
Not the same at all. You either need tons of pressure that can be delivered fairly fast, or 50-100 pounds of impact that can be delivered repeatedly in quick succession. Neither will be possible in a vise.

Your arm and a six pound maul are the closest you will come to doing damascus welding and folding in the shop. It is a process not particularly suited to a class shop, though ( flying slag and flux).
Mokume is an entirely different process from damascus, and requires ovens and much more.
 
I think I recall seeing a reference somewhere by JD Smith about using a big post vise in welding- incomplete info though, it may have just been a preparatory step. It was covered in his damascus tutorial video...
 
There was a thread here a while back where a guy did a small (folder-size) San Mai billet in a large bench vise, so it is apparently possible, but far from ideal I would think. At the very least I would expect lots of trial and error, and probably some voids in the welds, as the pressure will not be enough to make the surfaces deform to mate perfectly, leaving any slag, scale or other impurities in the interior of the welds. I would not expect great results at any rate.
 
If all that was being done was fusing three pieces ( san-mai) then it is possible to bring them up to welding heat and use a vise to fuse the joint.. But the weld will be very iffy IMHO. The production of damascus won't work without a lot of hammering or pressing.
 
bladsmth said:
If all that was being done was fusing three pieces ( san-mai) then it is possible to bring them up to welding heat and use a vise to fuse the joint.. But the weld will be very iffy IMHO. The production of damascus won't work without a lot of hammering or pressing.
Click to expand...

Possible and feasible are not necessarily the same thing, I would say that this probably straddles the one without touching the other. A good weld made with this technique would probably be an outlier, rather than a predictable and repeatable outcome. But as soon as I say it's impossible, someone will do it just to make me look dumb:rolleyes:
 
Agreed. I will post ,"You can't use a Zippo lighter to HT a knife." and someone will surely post, "Well, I did it back in 1980 and it wasn't the best knife I ever made, but it sort of worked."
 
Here it is. From Jock Dempsey's (Anvilfire guru) review of JD Smith's damascus video: "J.D. Smith uses a large leg vise to start the welds, a hydraulic press to continue the welds and start drawing, an air power hammer to draw out the billets, a chop saw to notch the billets for folding, a Bridgeport type milling machine for stock removal pattern development, arc welder, oxy-acetylene equipment, and an angle grinder to clean up billets between folds."

I guess he's setting the welds a bit to begin with. I'd really love to see the video, but it costs $130 right now...
 
I watched a stack of quarters get turned into mokume-gane using a vise at a hammer-in 2 years ago. Seemed straight forward, mostly due to cupronickel's low melting point. It became about 1/2" shorter in the vise.
 
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