Turkish damascus bowie, extensive WIP

[Manuel Quiroga G.]

Hi to all,
For some time now I started working on a 8 bar twisted damascus blade, for a bowie I have in mind. I took a lot of pictures of the process and I will start showing them.
Note: when I decided to take pictures of the process I already had the base damascus already made, so I took some pictures of other damascus proyects, as the procedure is the same.

Cuting and grinding the layers. I use 15n20 and 5160 for almost all of my damascus now...

Ready to arc welding

Handle

And kersosene. I have seen in american WIPs that you have translucent kerosene, here kersonse is red.

And forge

And welding with press

Grinding the arc weld stitches

Now its clean and we can continue

(here you can see a W arrangement, not the billet I actually used, but wanted to show my whole process)

Ok, after that re stack and welding again.

Now we start with the real billet.
It has a diferent arrangement than the merovingian, but a similar principle. The merovingian has a sandwich of many layers-3 thick layers-many layers. This one, has many layers-3thick layers-many layers-3 thick layers-many layers.

Now we start drawing it out

For me power hammer is faster

Here is the first jig I use in my turkish damascus

Nothing fancy, but really helps in achieving even bars.

Second jig, this one is really good for squaring up any diamond shape.

Looking good

That is one bar, the original billet was cut in half because the bar would be very long, like forging a wire.

I didn't cut the billet in equal halves or it wasn't really even at the time so it yield one longer bar than the other one, so I seize that mistake later on, you'll see.

The twisting machine

 

[Manuel Quiroga G.]

I have to thank Luciano Dorneles for showing me this machine, it really takes twisting to another level.

Another forge for this job

Looking really good.

And my loyal companion, Diego

Ok, hope I didn't bore you with so may pictures, and I will continue tomorrow.
I will gladly answer any questions.

 

[orca8589]

Very cool. I love the process as much as the finished product. I'll follow this thread for a while; thanks for posting.

~Chris

 

[Burl Source]

Great WIP!
I will be looking forward to see what comes next.
Thank You for posting this Manuel.

 

[RogerP]

Good knife stuff - and cool shop dog.

Roger

 

[Kislinger]

nice WIP thanks for show. I am looking forward to the finished
take care
Milos

 

[GTCknives]

Thanks for the pics!

 

[Bruce Bump]

Very interesting. I made popcorn and waiting for the welding of the twisted bars.

 

[JParanee]

Very interested

Great dog

 

[RonNewton]

Looking good so far Manuel. It appears you have a well equipped shop.
Ron

 

[John White]

It's fun to see the creative process at work.

Looking forward to seeing how the variation in lay-up turns out.

John

 

[D lisch]

thanks for showing us that twisting jig I like that it can go away when your done twisting what size did you take your bar to before twisting looks like about 5/8

 

[Manuel Quiroga G.]

David, my twisting bars are 10x10 mm, more like 3/8" right? I'm not good with inches. I think in mm.

Here are today's pictures:

A detailed picture of the twisting jig

All 8 bars are ready now:

And again to the squareing jig

All 8 bars squared

And then I flatten them

And finally the little bars are ready for cleaning and welding

So here you can see what I'm gonna do with the difference in lenth. The long bars will go in the edge side middle and the short ones in the back part of the blade.
When I first started making turkish patterns I did it welding the two halves and then reorienting the bars to make the edge and the back bar to convenge in the tip, but I never like the way the rest of the bars meet with each other, the tip doesn't have a clean look, IMHO. So now I make the hole tip to turn and then cut the excess. You'll see...

At this point I decided to make a light welding in the tips and heat it up to press everything together before preparing the actual billet.

I number them

Notice the piece of mild steel in the tip, that is just to have an even pressing later on.
The lateral welds are really superficial so there is no contamination of steels.

Kerosene

I looks like a good weld, right?

I'll continue tomorrow.

Thanks for looking

 

[Zuluninja]

that looks awesome! Quiroga and Guiraldes...pretty strong last names u got there. Any relation to the writers?

 

[Manuel Quiroga G.]

Zuluninja, where are you from? I'm surprise you know them. Ricardo Güiraldes was my grandfather's uncle, on my mother's side. I don't have a know relation with Horacio Quiroga, but you never know, Quiroga is a very common name in this parts...

Glad you like the WIP

 

[NickWheeler]

Very very cool stuff Manuel!!!

I see in that last pic you have a pipe threading machine set up for twisting. Why didn't you use it for this? Is it too much for the small bars?

I really like your other twisting rig too! I built something VERY similar, but need to make some changes to mine. It looks like yours has a few differences that would make mine work much better.

And that press is a BEAST!!! :thumbup:

Thanks Manuel!!!

 

[Manuel Quiroga G.]

Thank you Nick!
I bought the pipe threading machine some months ago, intended for twisting big bars, but I couldn't use it with the 3 point clamp because it rounded the bars while working. I decided to adapt a 4 clamp lathe plate but haven't been able to buy it yet. Although I think that for small bars like this ones it would be better the manual one, for better control.

Thank you for looking.

 

[Karda]

Manuel,

Please update your usergroup to reflect your paid status by clicking this link, selecting your paid membership and clicking "save".
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/profile.php?do=editusergroups

 

[Karda]

Thank You, Manuel!
it makes it much easier for the mods and supermods and shows that you are proud to support bladeforums!

 

[Manuel Quiroga G.]

Thank you Karda! didn't know how to do that...