Disastrous void in purchased damascus, need solutions. Diagrams of problem included.

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Zambash

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Hi Everyone.

I am a hobbyist level tinkerer and I love making things. I am working on making a kitchen knife for my wife's birthday, but have run into an extremely unfortunate issue. I am working with a piece of 1095 + 15n20 damascus that I purchased online. It took a ton of work to get the piece perfectly flat and even and ready to go for cutting out the shape of the knife prior to heat treating. I have cut out the knife blank and sanded it, and woe is me, there is a little slot of delamination exactly in the center of what is to be the cutting edge. I couldn't get very good pictures of the problem, so I have created some diagrams showing it. The picture below illustrates the problem from two different views (the red is the slot of delamination):
MIFnO3A.png

Now, given the material cost and the amount of effort that has gone into this thing already I really don't want to purchase another piece of metal and start over. I'm not a pro at this and don't have the tools or skills to do anything very quickly, so it might not look like much but a lot of hours have already been invested into this piece of metal. I have already changed the profile of the knife quite a bit as I attempted to grind past the delamination, but I don't want to alter the shape any further and I have no way of knowing how deep the slot goes, all I know is that it doesn't go all the way through because it isn't visible on the other side. I am looking for any possible solutions. One silver lining in the problem is that the slot is right in the part of the kitchen knife that really doesn't ever get used. 90% of the work of a kitchen knife is done with the belly of the knife and the other 10% is fine work with the tip, and luckily this delamination slot is in a small area between the two.

The first, most obvious solution that came to mind was to simply heat up that part of the blade real hot and smack it together or squeeze it in a vice in an attempt to get the layers to weld together. My main issue with that is that I have no good way to clean out the slot since it is so tiny, so I doubt I would be able to get a good weld. Any thoughts on this idea?

The other potential solution that I have thought up is to grind down the edge in that area, similar to a cavity in a tooth, and then fill it up with a tig welder bead and grind it down flush. I have created a diagram for what this process would entail:
W08OECd.png

It seems like it could be a decent solution, because I would only file down about 1/16th of an inch, and I am planning to do the final grinding of the secondary bevel after acid etching the damascus, so the whole edge would be shiny anyways and you shouldn't be able to tell there is a small portion there that isn't damascus. Since that portion of the edge doesn't really do any work it doesn't really matter that most welding materials won't hold a decent edge, it would be mostly cosmetic. Does this seem like a decent solution? If so, what welding medium should I use to fill the "cavity"?

EDIT: I have a friend who is a great welder and I have the pieces of the metal I sawed off when cutting out the knife blank. I could have him use a tig torch and pool some of the cutoff into the gap, obviously with a big pre-heat and post-heat of the welding area, that might do the trick.

I would love any tips and suggestions about how I can save this project. Thanks for reading!
 
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I'm aware that it's pretty much a disaster and starting over would be best, but I'm not sure I would be able to get a replacement and with my busy schedule I hate to waste the hours that have already gone into it :(
 
Grind it back. If you get past the problem, great. If not, there's nothing you can do that would be cheaper/easier than starting over. It sucks, but that's the reality. I've been there myself.
 
Willie71 said:
Grind it back. If you get past the problem, great. If not, there's nothing you can do that would be cheaper/easier than starting over. It sucks, but that's the reality. I've been there myself.
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You don't think there's any merit to the tig welding idea?
 
No. I've tried brazing, welding, forge welding. If it didn't stick the first time, it won't work now. Maybe if you used a hardenable rod to Tig it, but the shock of the quench will probably rip it apart regardless of what you do.
 
Willie71 said:
No. I've tried brazing, welding, forge welding. If it didn't stick the first time, it won't work now. Maybe if you used a hardenable rod to Tig it, but the shock of the quench will probably rip it apart regardless of what you do.
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Yeah I was planning on using a hardenable welding rod, but that was my one concern, whether or not the weld would hold up in the quench.
 
skillgannon said:
Is it possible to change to a chisel grind?
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That is an idea I have considered, and am still considering. The problem is that my wife does not have great knife skills, I've been teaching her but she is very small and can't handle our 8 inch chef's knife very well, which is why I wanted to make her an undersized knife for her birthday. Chisel ground kitchen knives require a lot more skill to use effectively for a beginner. Also, I still can't be sure how it would turn out since I don't know how deep the slot goes.
 
Zambash said:
Yeah I was planning on using a hardenable welding rod, but that was my one concern, whether or not the weld would hold up in the quench.
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Worst case scenario is try. You might luck out. I haven't so far though. It's more likely that clean looking blades crack or come apart.
 
Doing a stress relief cycle after the welding will increase the chances it survives a quench from austenitizing temperatures. 1200F for 30 minutes, cool to black. Then harden. Or, normalizing and thermal cycle after welding.
 
kuraki said:
Doing a stress relief cycle after the welding will increase the chances it survives a quench from austenitizing temperatures. 1200F for 30 minutes, cool to black. Then harden. Or, normalizing and thermal cycle after welding.
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Absolutely, if I do attempt this crazy welding solution I will definitely take all possible precautions to relieve stresses.
 
When I used to work at Leeson, there was a little automated shear that cut insulation (paper backed Mylar) which were stuffed into the stators before winding. The blades were something like a very acute angled scissors, Japanese, and extremely expensive. We could resharpen them by grinding them back only so many times before they would not have enough length to cut, given the stroke of the shear.

I rewelded them 3-4 times with a TIG, and re-hardened them each time before replacing with new. I never actually had a weld fail, and the welded blades lasted nearly as long as the base material only blades. But that was welding clean steel. So it can be done, but whatever caused forge weld to fail would be what causes this weld to fail, in my opinion.
 
kuraki said:
When I used to work at Leeson, there was a little automated shear that cut insulation (paper backed Mylar) which were stuffed into the stators before winding. The blades were something like a very acute angled scissors, Japanese, and extremely expensive. We could resharpen them by grinding them back only so many times before they would not have enough length to cut, given the stroke of the shear.

I rewelded them 3-4 times with a TIG, and re-hardened them each time before replacing with new. I never actually had a weld fail, and the welded blades lasted nearly as long as the base material only blades. But that was welding clean steel. So it can be done, but whatever caused forge weld to fail would be what causes this weld to fail, in my opinion.
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Good to know that this sort of thing is at least possible. Out of curiosity what sort of welding material did you lay on? Or did you use the same material as the blades were made out of as I am thinking of doing?
 
IMO, delamination is a fatal flaw,much more so that a cold shut. Try and get your money back, but either way, start over.
 
It's junk.
Throw i
Zambash said:
Good to know that this sort of thing is at least possible. Out of curiosity what sort of welding material did you lay on? Or did you use the same material as the blades were made out of as I am thinking of doing?
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Dude - somebody just needs to tell you - if the blade is split along the cutting edge, which almost directly indicates layer welding flaw - that blade is toast. You can't weld or braze or forge weld that thing for a myriad of reasons.
Insist you get your money back from that guy.
Buy Damascus steel ONLY!! from reputable makers, and not somebody off Ebay or something like that.
Toss it and start a new project.
 
First, take good photos and send them to the seller. Damascus has bad spots from timer to time. Sellers will always send a new bar with clear photos of a delam or cold shut.

After that, just grind back the tip past the bad area. Change the blade shape if needed to a wharncliffe. Whatever you do, you have to remove all of the bad weld... every bit of it. Otherwise it will split open in HT.

Salvage it as best you can. Trying to TIG up the bad weld will not work. There is a big difference with trying to re-weld damascus and doing a mono-steel blade like kuraki mentioned. In probably twenty tries to weld up a bad spots in damascus blades, I haven't had one work well enough to call the blade acceptable.
 
Karl B. Andersen said:
It's junk.
Throw i



Dude - somebody just needs to tell you - if the blade is split along the cutting edge, which almost directly indicates layer welding flaw - that blade is toast. You can't weld or braze or forge weld that thing for a myriad of reasons.
Insist you get your money back from that guy.
Buy Damascus steel ONLY!! from reputable makers, and not somebody off Ebay or something like that.
Toss it and start a new project.
Click to expand...

Got it from Poshland Knives through Amazon.

I'm not trying to be argumentative or anything, but could you give some of those reasons? From a metalurgical standpoint there really isn't any reason why a bead over the void shouldn't stick.
 
Zambash said:
Good to know that this sort of thing is at least possible. Out of curiosity what sort of welding material did you lay on? Or did you use the same material as the blades were made out of as I am thinking of doing?
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Weld Mold 935, iirc. We had two different tool steel rods, H-13 for welding molds and I think that 935 for blades.
 
Assuming that it will even "stick' without burning the carbon out of the edge of your blade, would an ugly bead of dissimilar steel that will look like a grey turd be a sufficiently persuasive reason? You asked for advice and you have received it from a number of people who have made a fair amount of pattern welded steel in their time.;)
 
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