San-Mai blade of 1084 and Wrought Iron

[Tom Lewis]

I found a buggy wheel maybe 40 years ago and had not done anything with it until a few weeks ago when I began to make guards out of it.
I have long admired San-Mai blades, especially the ones Karl Anderson makes. I think his have stainless on the outside. His are stunning to say the least.
Some day I plan to try using stainless but for my first one I used wrought iron from the buggy wheel.
I ground the rust and pitting off the wrought iron and using borax welded the two outside pieces of wrought iron to a center piece of 1084. It welded very easily.
10-15 years ago I bought a hydrolic press and it came with some ladder pattern dies. I like a twist pattern on Damascus better than a ladder pattern and had never used these dies. I forged the sanl-mai blank to a little over 1/4" and using the hydrolic press and those dies I pressed the pattern in the blade. Then I ground off the high parts of the pattern and then forged to shape.
The handle is Red Heart wood with turquoise inlace stars. The guard is wrought iron.
Something that surprised me is how hard the wrought iron was to grind. I annealed it and it then was a lot easier to grind.

 

[Nic.]

That's really cool! It looks nice, love the pattern, and also the buggy wheel leaves it with neat history!

 

[Tom Lewis]

The buggy wheel has a interesting history. It belonged to a man who was murdered in 1881, the same year, and in the same county, (Lincoln) as Billy the Kid was killed.

 

[Metalhead0483]

I've been working with a lot of wrought recently myself. I never thought it was all that difficult to grind, but there's a definite difference between it's annealed state and after it's been work hardened.

Maybe it's just the way the picture is taken, but does the wrought go down into the cutting edge?

Cool history behind the wrought iron!

 

[Tom Lewis]

Metalhead, the wrought does in places go down to the cutting edge. But, the 1084 is centered, so when I sharpen the knife I expect the cutting edge to be all 1084.
How do you finish your wrought iron? If you have pictures I would like to see them. I have just started using wrought iron, this was my first blade made of it.

 

[Metalhead0483]

Oh cool. I wasn't worried about it, just curious

I'm putting together a work in progress thread. Should be posting it this weekend (having problems uploading the images) The blades I've been doing haven't been san-mai, but instead are in a medieval style where the majority of the knife is wrought Iron, with a strip of high carbon on the edge (I've been told that trade knives were made that way also up in to the 19th century) Makes for a cool looking blade, and are quite functional in the little testing I've done. So far all I've done are butt welds, but I think I'm going to branch out into different edge welds soon. There are at least four or five documented welded edge "types" that I've found.

As for finishing, I give the whole thing a dip in FCl after I take it to about 600 grit, then give it a rub down with oiled steel wool.