Looking to do a stainless piece for a friend

D

Doc Hollywood

Joined
Jan 24, 2003
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Thinking of a Texas toothpick style blade, but he wants stainless damascus. While I do have a forge here I am very lacking of knowledge when it comes to stainless.

I could use some advice from those who are skilled with forging stainless as to materials and heat treating/tempering. I am not set up here for complicated techniques like cryo or the like.

Any and all help appreciated.

Doc

dcaldwell at colsa dot com
 
Doc, I don't forge but it makes little difference to your question. For stainless you will need control in temperature and atmosphere with the heat treat. The atmosphere control does not have to be expensive but temperature precision is if you do not already have the proper equipment (thousand dollar range or a little less). Cryogenics is very beneficial regardless of stainless or not and is an additional equipment cost of a few more hundred dollars.

There may be someone here that will be willing to HT your forged blade for you at a bargin. There are the pro heat treaters too and many here have good or great experience with some of them.

I suspect you don't have to HT your own forged stainless just because you forge it.

Roger
 
Inreference to heat treating or not, because of being a forged piece, I would think that would be all the more reason to heat treat it. In my mind the only way to handle forged steel properly (not stainless) is to anneal, harden and temper. I would think it would be the same regardless with stainless since it is a steel nonetheless.

I may send the finished pieces out to one of you guys that know how to handle it better than I for the heat treating and hardening. Never would I fear what I know, but the immense amount that I don't know leaves me with many questions.

What about material? What is going to hold an edge and give a nice pattern? I am not doing anything elaborate for the pattern (never have), but would like something that will show up well when etched.


Doc
 
Damascus made from stainless will be very difficult to weld, I would think, unless you are doing it in a can to eliminate the oxygen. The welds won't take doing it regular-style, unless there is some super-flux out there that would make it work.

Commercially available stainless damascus is available, called Damasteel. There are a couple dealers in the US. It is made in Sweden via a powder process of some sort.

Forging stainless is a PITA, too. I did it once, years ago, forging a 440C bowie. More grinding than forging got done on that *&^%*&^ piece of steel. Be very careful of your steel composition. It is hazardous to forge steel with much vanadium in it. Use serious ventilation. Since the stainless steels are air hardening, forging is not typically recommended. It can be done, but there is a serious learning curve, here. Sean McWilliams used to forge stainless. He ended up very, very ill from vanadium poisoning, I believe.

If you haven't done stainless damascus before, I will just say that most all the SS damascus blades you'll see are stock removal.
 
I would have tied it without an answer and would not have paid much attention to the makeup of the steel I used beyond hardness and brittleness.

Thank you for the info. Will look into damasteel.

Doc
 
Doc, single exposure probably wouldn't bother you. Like most metal contaminantion, it is the persistent exposure that'll get you. I wouldn't wnat anyone hurt from me not mentioning a toxicity issue, though.

Damasteel is pretty decent stuff, by all reports I've read. Sort of a damascus ATS-34-like steel. (Actually, RWL34 from Sweden) Roger Linger has been messing with it of late, I think. He may be able to give us some commentary on what he thinks about it. I have two bars here but haven't played with it yet. I'm gonna grind, and not try to forge it. Though an interesting experience, forging stainless is difficult and has not been established to give any really pronounced improvements to it's blade characteristics, other than grain flowing with the blade curves.

You are most welcome if I have helped in any way.
 
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