Stainless damascus question

jim moyer

jim moyer

Joined
Dec 8, 2005
Messages
1,158
Why is trying to find info on making stainless damascus so difficult. Does any one have a tutorial on their site or know of anyone that does. Or know what stainless steels are used in the welding process.

Happy New Year to all,

Jim
 
Bill I found this on the 308 and the AEBL is similar to the 440C.

Steel name: 308 Stainless Steel
Diagram No.: 2857
Type of diagram: TTP
Chemical composition in weight %: 0.043% C, 1.96% Mn, 0.62% Si, 0.011% P, 0.015% S,
9.98% Ni, 19.96% Cr, <0.01% Mo, 0.04% V, 0.57% Ti, 0.002% B, 0.03% Cu, 0.011% N.
Note: Precipitation diagram. Phases in stainless steel. Solution annealed at 1080 oC
(1976 oF) for 1 h, water quenched. Aged at 550 to 850 oC (1022 to 1562 oF) for 1 h to
10,000 h. TTP diagram summarizing aging behavior of homogenized type 308CRE
stainless steel.
Source: J.M. Vitek, S.A. David, "The Aging Behavior of Homogenized Type 308 and
308CRE Stainless Steels", Metallurgical Transactions, Vol.18A, July 1987, p.1195.
 
Don from additional research on the steels Bill mentions I see why not many are making stainless damascus as I guess it does not perform well with larger knives but works well for kitchen and pocket knife blades.
 
Jim, it's very difficult to make and very easy to screw up some expensive steel. I talked to Devin a few years ago about it and he said the learning curve was huge. But he has it nailed down now and makes some good stuff. SS damascus is popular with some folder makers and like you said, some kitchen knives. I myself will stick with good old carbon steel, no stainless of any kind for me :)
 
I recently had a maker inquire for info about making D-2 san-mai. I told him to try welding two sticks of D-2 together. Once he had that down pat, the san-mai would be easy.

Welding stainless is difficult at best. Welding hundreds of layers is even harder. Equipment and materials outlay will be large, and as Don said, the expensive mistakes and messed up billets will be useless scrap.
Stacy
 
jim moyer said:
Why is trying to find info on making stainless damascus so difficult. Does any one have a tutorial on their site or know of anyone that does. Or know what stainless steels are used in the welding process.

Happy New Year to all,

Jim
Click to expand...

It is only possible to keep secrets between two people when one of them is dead. Expect a call from me tomorrow.
Delbert
 
As has already been said, there's not a lot of info out there because not a lot of folks are doing it. I've researched it a bit and will happily share what I know.

  • All steel must be ground completely free of any scale or oxidation of any kind. If in doubt, grind it clean.
  • You need to completely exclude oxygen from the surfaces to be welded. ANY oxidation will kill your welds. This is primarily due to the fact that chromium oxides cannot be dissolved by any flux we have available to us. The most common methods are either laying your pieces up in a can, or TIG welding all of the seams between layers shut.
  • You will need longer soak times than you are used to. I've heard that a soak at temp of 45 minutes is not at all out of line.
  • Make sure you are certain of the temperature window that you have to forge in. Stainless alloys are much more picky than carbon steels about this. Some will go red hard and not move at certain temps, and go red short and crumble at others.
  • You will need a lot more force to effectively forge stainless.

The only stainless welding I've done was a mix of ATS34 and CPM3V. 3V is not a stainless, but it's a crazy high-alloy, high carbon steel and has a lot of the same problems. I did manage to get fusion of the steels, but ran into the problem for forging the 3v at too high a heat and it just crumbled. Round two will be coming sometime in the future, and I'm confident I can make it work, but it's not for the faint of heart or short of funds. You can pretty easily blow $100 in materials in a single failed weld.

I know there's more to say about it, but my brain just isn't spitting out all I know about this right now. Feel free to fire away with any questions you have and I'll answer if I can.

-d
 
I read somewhere stainless is easily welded if you nickle plate your stainless pieces. Is it still considered stainless damascus if there is nickle present?
 
Mike Quesenberry said:
I read somewhere stainless is easily welded if you nickle plate your stainless pieces. Is it still considered stainless damascus if there is nickle present?
Click to expand...

Seems like a good idea no the surface of it, but I bet that there would be similar oxidation issues anyway. If you've ever used pure nickel in pattern welding, you know that it's a real pain in the tail if you don't get things just right. the difficulties are caused by one of the issues I mentioned in a post above. Nickel oxides are relentless and will cause a weld failure if you don't completely avoid their formation. To my knowledge there is no chemical process that can strip nickel oxides once they've formed, so if a weld with nickel fails, scrap the whole billet....ask me how I know... :rolleyes: I'd imagine that the cost of nickel plating would just make an already expensive failure that much more hard to swallow when it happens....

-d
 
Wow if nothing else this has been quite a learning experience for me and hope for others as well.

I know that I still haven't mastered the W2 Don (but getting close) so I will put the stainless way back on the shelf and stick with the high carbon steels.

I know Burke is tooled up for this stuff and way more knowledgeable than I. I have read the tutorial you linked to Bill and the steels he uses are hard to find. I had my nephew track them down through his suppliers with no avail.

Thanks everyone for the feedback.
 
Jim, stainless damascus just isn't worth the expense and problems to me.

Especially when 1084, W2 and 15N20 work so well :)

.
 
jim moyer said:
. I have read the tutorial you linked to Bill and the steels he uses are hard to find. I had my nephew track them down through his suppliers with no avail.
Click to expand...

Don't get too hung up on specifics of alloys. As long as you find alloys with compatible heat treatments and moduli of elasticity you'll be fine. the process is the important part.

-d
 
Having worked for Devin a # of years I have first hand knowledge of the large amount of material that was scrapped. Some days everything would weld flawlessly and some days nothing would weld. The only thing that changed was the day. Unless Devin changed recently Aebl and 302/304 was the mix. Once we did get billets welded and bars forged we had another challenge we refered to as "annealing". It was a minimum of a 16 hour process if it worked the first time around. I don't recommend the "Insanity of Stainless" unless you have a lot of time, material and prozac to waste. :D
 
A.J. Hubbard developed a method of creating stainless steel Damascus in the 1980's. He stacked stainless steel shim stock in a airtight cannister and welded all of the layers at once. He called the product "Precision Engineered Damascus". I once met him at a knife show, and was impressed with his work.

I had heard that Mr. Hubbard (now deceased) patented his method. Using Google's patent search, I finally found the 1989 Patent, entitled "Method of making heterogeneous blade-like metallic cutter member". In case my link fails, the patent number is 4,881,430.
 
Arthur Washburn said:
Having worked for Devin a # of years I have first hand knowledge of the large amount of material that was scrapped. Some days everything would weld flawlessly and some days nothing would weld. The only thing that changed was the day. Unless Devin changed recently Aebl and 302/304 was the mix. Once we did get billets welded and bars forged we had another challenge we refered to as "annealing". It was a minimum of a 16 hour process if it worked the first time around. I don't recommend the "Insanity of Stainless" unless you have a lot of time, material and prozac to waste. :D
Click to expand...

You have answered my questions Arthur, I think I will buy a stainless if I ever need any.

Thanks to all the contributors and a happy New year
 
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