thanks to all, for the + comments,
legato1, im no expert but i have done a fair bit of forge welding in general, and yes you are right it does appear to be simple looking. but to weld nickle in my opinion is a little more tricky than anything else. it takes an awful lot of heat to weld nickle to nickle and as a general rule for myself i assume i just cant weld it to it self. there for you gotta make sure of where it's at in the billet at all times, and keep a layer in between it. i think that billet had less that 20-30 layers in it and it was cut and folded over 1/8'' 1084. and drawn into flat bar then its basically stock removal from there because forging something like this would only distort the pattern, and i wanted to keep it uniform.
sorry for the long winded speech, anyway banding material (what i call it) is the straps used to hold bundles of new RR ties together. band saw blades also work fine, but you also gotta be careful when working with such thin layers, that there's more room for error, when you have 20 layers at 1/16'' thick or less than there is when welding 5 layers that are 1/4''.
as far as suppliers ????????? i get my stuff where i can, the nickle in that piece was just random cutoffs, that were all different sizes, and the banding material i got along the tracks. i believe that jantz and the other places sell nickle, as well as many on line suppliers, just google it. and find someone that works with band saws and have them save you all the old blades, or look around when there working on tracks in your area.
i believe in using new stock for my knives, but in this application the used material is merely cosmetic and has no affect on cutting ability because the core is brand new carbon steel.
will be finishing this up in a bit , will post pics of the finale piece.
Andrew Takach
