l6 katana help

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elvenbladesmith07

Joined
Jul 29, 2004
Messages
663
i have been thinking about making a katana out of l6 steel latley and i need some advice. i have band saw blades that i can forge weld toghether but i havent forge welded l6 before and i want to learn how. how do i weld without burning out the carbon? is there a special flux? i know borax wont work because the nickel in the l6. i also heard it is hard to get a hamon line and the clay cracks off the blade because it expands at its quench temp. of 1500. which is a problem because i only do differencial hardened blades, i forge straight and the when i harden it it curves to approx. 1" sori`
maybe i should buy a piece of l6 but the only l6 ive seen for sale is 1" by 3/16" by 4' but again with that size i cant cut the curve into the blade i would have to diff. harden it to get the curve but the clay will crack of because of the expanding metal.
any body got sugestions, or know where i can get a piece of l6 that is 2"-3" wide by 1/8" by 40" ?
thanks for the help
 
Regarding welding your bandsaw blades together, I tried a method I read about on "The best of the forge" site (Ron Reill) that is titled "Low temp welding" on that page- it could also be called no-flux welding. You get the laminations squeaky clean and smooth, wet them with kerosene or something similar, stack them and arc-weld the sides and ends leaving a couple small vent openings. After welding it up, put a few more drops of kerosene in the vent holes to make sure the stack is wet. Then heat to yellow-orange or yellow and hammer it shut. The kerosene keeps oxygen out and vents out when heated and since the metal is clean and smooth
with no oxygen to foul the weld, no flux is needed. I welded up some med. carbon steel banding and I was amazed at how easy it was and the billet came out so clean that it's hard to believe that it was welded together.
It's really just canister welding without a press.
 
thanks for the help but is this gunna have hollow pockets in the weld? thats what it seems by the way you explained it, probly not tho because i said i needed it for a blade so i dont think you would suggest it if it had hollow pockets in the weld. as for the diff. hardening i will just make the blade with curve, harden it, then take a propane torch to the back off the blade while cooling the edge wit a wet rag. the homon wont look great but im looking for functionality not traditional looks!(for this blade anyway)
 
I got no pockets or flaws at all except for one minor unwelded spot in the corner of my billet where I didn't hammer it enough. You must thinking that the kerosene leaves pockets, but it vaporizes and exits the billet through the vent holes. The post I learned this from also claimed that any residue
from the kerosene (or similar product) gets incorporated into the steel, to what effect, I don't know.
 
Most sawblade steel is 15N20 and not L6 which is a completely different animal. Your saw blade steel can be welded together with no problem, either with borax flux ( I weld nickle steels with borax all the time) or a closed weld as mentioned above, which also works very well. I'm getting good hamons on saw blade steel using clay with not much trouble, although my main steels are 1075, W2, 1095, and 1084. I'm also using oil for my quench. You will probably have trouble getting a good hamon using L6, although it can be done :D

Don Hanson lll sunfishforge
 
i dont have access to an arc welder is their another way? i do have access to a oxycetelne torch but these blades are only 1" wide(after i grind the saw teeth off) and i want a 1 inch blade, so i was goining to laminate 3 pieces wit 2 sticking up higher then the middle 1 to make grinding the bevels easyier. so when i finish welding the billet it will be about 1 1/2" to 1 3/4" wide and about 1/8" to 3/16" thick after i finish th weld i was going to grin off the back of the blade untill i got the blade to 1" wide(this stuff is so easy to grind even when fully hardened).im not dead positive this is l6 steel but i have made knives out of the same band sawblades before and they were easly to grind and shape, flexible, i couldnt bend them, its easy to harden, its still flexible and needs no tempering even when fully hardened. and it holds a far superior edge to all other sword steels, it even risist nicks in the blade from other knives and swords!(i did a little damage testing). it truly is THE SUPERMAN OF STEEL!
 
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