quadrillion

[mrapex]

Am I wrong, or would it only take 54 folds to make quadrillion layer Damascus. Would it be worth the effort? would it work?

 

[mrapex]

I don't know, but it sounds interesting. Thoughts?

 

[A C Richards]

You would lose all definition and have pretty much mild steel by then. A friend of mine did a 1 million layer billet and it had no definition but did shimmer. 54 folds not practical but maybe fun to try. You might not have much material left though.

 

[Karl B. Andersen]

You would be able to say you did it.

Would it be worth the effort? would it work?

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Yes, the number of layers is the exponential power of two of the number of folds. for 54 that is 18,014,398,509,481,984.. or roughly 18 quadrillion.

As you pass 7 folds the pattern stats to get rather fine. At 10 folds ( 1000 layers), it starts to disappear, by15 folds ( 32,000), it just has a shimmer, and by 20 folds ( 1,000,000) it looks like a mono-steel.

Some tamahagane blades have over a million layers, often going into the billions.

 

[TonyRV2]

Am I wrong, or would it only take 54 folds to make quadrillion layer Damascus. Would it be worth the effort? would it work?

Save yourself some time. You can be just north of 1 quadrillion layers with a mere 50 folds.

 

[mrapex]

That makes sense, I guess the look would be lost. I assume there wouldn't even be a shimmer because just 1 quadrillion is 1000, 1000, 1000 million. Would the steel be ridiculously perfect in holding an edge, taking an edge and overall strength?

 

[Tenebr0s]

If you did everything absolutely perfectly..... you would end up with an edge that might hold up almost as well as some mild steel fresh from the mill

 

[FunkCoaster]

As a partial technical explanation of why it would be bad, there would be a few contributing factors: (double check my chemistry)
1) Carbon migration. The carbon content would become closer to homogenous throughout the steel, resulting in less definition between steels
2) Oxidation. The scale/rust flakes off and reduces the overall mass you're working with. Also the outer layer of the steel may react with the atmosphere to cause carbon + CO2 to become 2CO, therefore losing carbon from the steel. If you control the atmosphere, you can actually introduce carbon by having a CO rich atmosphere, but no matter what, changes happen that you don't have visibility into.

 

[Robert Erickson]

You would be able to say you did it.

And you could copyright it as Quadrilli-Mai and get to send out kind and gentle cease and desist letters

 

[TonyRV2]

And you could copyright it as Quadrilli-Mai and get to send out kind and gentle cease and desist letters

Too late.... I've copywritten Quadrilli-Mai just 5 minutes ago...now if you would kindly delete your post.

 

[Bo T]

Me thinks tis the beginning of summer or some Smiths have been running their forges a little rich while sniffing thy fumes.