For those who make damascus, do you grind off the mill scale?

Tom Lewis

Tom Lewis

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Feb 24, 2000
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For those who make Damascus, when you put a billet together do you grind off the mill scale? I have always done so, but I kept hearing that it was not necessary. So I put a billet of 15N20 and 0-1 steel together and did not grind off the mill scale. The result was a perfect piece of Damascus. I have ground a blade out of it and can not tell any difference between it and a piece that had the mill scale ground off when the billet was put together.
 
way back when I didn't know that it was bad and wouldn't work I didn't clean it up either..Just welded, and in coal of all things :eek: Never had any problems, hot cut and folded it without clean up too... Now since the internet I feel ashamed if I don't clean it all good ;)
 
I grind it off... But most mill scales is so thin it dosen't matter. Have some 1080 with no scale, then some 1084 with a very heavy layer. I've also had some steel with deep pits under the scale that created small cold shuts. If ya always get a good clean billet without grinding scales, then there is no reason to grind. :)
 
Soak it in a bucket of vinegar and water overnight and in the morning you can wipe it off. Have a second bucket of baking soda and water to rinse it off, it will neutralize and stop the rust. Wipe dry and you've got scale-less steel.
 
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I grind it off. Why take the risk? I can probably count the number of cold shuts I have had one one hand. Of course, they always show up at the worst time. I had a tiny one show up on a knife that a Chinese buyer wanted at Blade 2013. I still sold him the other big damascus blade that I had brought.
 
Tom Lewis said:
For those who make Damascus, when you put a billet together do you grind off the mill scale? I have always done so, but I kept hearing that it was not necessary. So I put a billet of 15N20 and 0-1 steel together and did not grind off the mill scale. The result was a perfect piece of Damascus. I have ground a blade out of it and can not tell any difference between it and a piece that had the mill scale ground off when the billet was put together.
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I recently welded up some O2 and 15N20 and had read about that just before. My though was the same as others. Would the bit of millscale ruin the billet? probably not. But if I have 50 dollars in steel, 5 hours of labor and a bunch of gas in a billet, why risk it?
 
Salem Straub said:
I grind it off too. I can't afford failure for not taking a bonehead easy precaution. Failure then comes for somewhat more worthy reasons...
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The only thing worse than failure for something you know you should have done is proper Bozo mistakes such as breaking an endmill by forgetting the milling machine is in reverse.
 
What gets me, is running work in the mill... and then leaving a sharp cutter in the spindle, while re-configuring stuff in the vise etc. It's happened a few times that I thought "I should take that cutter out while I do this..." but didn't, and then snagged the back of my hand on it real good. Now I make myself remove the cutter while fixturing, just like taking a hardy out of the anvil right away or never leaving a key in the lathe chuck.
 
Salem Straub said:
What gets me, is running work in the mill... and then leaving a sharp cutter in the spindle, while re-configuring stuff in the vise etc. It's happened a few times that I thought "I should take that cutter out while I do this..." but didn't, and then snagged the back of my hand on it real good. Now I make myself remove the cutter while fixturing, just like taking a hardy out of the anvil right away or never leaving a key in the lathe chuck.
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Oh if I had a dollar for every time I've done that..
 
Salem Straub said:
What gets me, is running work in the mill... and then leaving a sharp cutter in the spindle, while re-configuring stuff in the vise etc. It's happened a few times that I thought "I should take that cutter out while I do this..." but didn't, and then snagged the back of my hand on it real good. Now I make myself remove the cutter while fixturing, just like taking a hardy out of the anvil right away or never leaving a key in the lathe chuck.
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I run 60 degree scribing cutters in the high speed mini mill. I've left those in the spindle a few times and if that won't make you swear when you run the back of your hand into it. WOW. Humans, we learn, slowly sometimes, but we learn.
 
No one would purchase commercial steel that had layers of oxides in it. I don’t know why damascus would be any different.
 
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