low carbon damascus

[JMJones]

what would you recommend for low carbon, non hardening, high contrast damascus for the outside of san mai billets?

 

[jawilder]

Why not use high carbon? The reason I ask is because the carbon from the core piece will migrate to the lower carbon sides, leaving you with a softer core. Using high carbon keeps this from happening. But if you must, I imagine you could use 1018 with no problem.

 

[JMJones]

There are some advantages of using the soft cheeks with a hard center on the long kitchen knives that I make. Namely that the blade can be straightened cold. Not huge bends or anything just the subtle straightening needed on long thin knives. If the billet is set up so that the high carbon core is wider than the low carbon steel there is no worry of carbon migration in that part of the core that will become the edge or I could put a thin sheet of nickel between the two different layers.

I am considering A203E or 15n20 as the nickel bearing steels with 1018 and hoped someone had some experience.

 

[Don Hanson III]

1018 & 203E or nickel 200 would work well. Have done both. The nickel will always stay bright, good stuff!

 

[A C Richards]

1018 and pure nickel. Easy to bring up in etch and as Don mentioned it always stays bright.