Hello all!
Pattern welding of stainless steels in a normal forge using the usual process and the usual fluxes is impossible. The chromium content in the stainless steels will build up a layer of chromium oxide immediately when heated. This coat can't be flushed away with a normal welding flux and prevents the two surfaces of joining together at welding heat.
Two of the first people making stainless damascus were Friedrich Schneider and Richard Hehn from germany. At least one part of their stainless damascus is 440c, the other part i don't know. They stacked precision ground and precision cleaned plates of different steels and welded the joining seams closed, so no oxygen could enter during heating in an electric or gas fired oven. No oxygen means no chromium oxide, so that a "normal" forge weld could be realized.
The other method which is used to create a stainless steel "damascus" is the Damasteel powder metallurgic method. They use powdered RWL 34 (same composition as ATS 34 plus some vanadium) and PMC 27 (same as Sandvik 12C27). They fill layers of the different steels into a stainless tube under vaccuum, close it, cold press it up to 4000 kp and heat it to nearly 1200° celsius in an isostatic press and press it with about 7000 kp. What you get is a 100 % dense, completely homogene material with very fine carbides, all the advantages of the powder steels and all the beauty of damascus steels.
The darker steels are always the ones with higher carbon content.
I hope this helped a bit.
Achim
