Using Meteoritic metals in Damascus forging

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Bazzaa

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Sep 6, 2007
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Every now and then I come across a damascus style blade which is said to contain (pretty much always a little bit of the 25 known tons of Namibian Gibeon meteorite) a meteoritic layer.

From what I can see, Gibeon's was an iron-nickel meteorite that took thousands if not millions of years to cool down and "crystalize". However, apart from the novelty of having a blade that was forged with a little pre-dinosaur meteorite iron, does it add any exceptional or noticeable value to a blades strength or characteristics?

Cheers!
 
Metallic meteorites are not alloys by strict definition. Each individual one has a different variable metallic composition. They are more like a random mixtures of metals. Some by chance may approach the composition of a known iron alloy but this is by chance. From the crystal structure of some I have seen the large crystals indicate a longer cooling periods. This is a physical characteristic which can be changed by heating and cooling the metal differentially. Throwing some meteoric metal in a knife blade alloy is a novelty. I suppose if you had a complete analysis of the meteor you could purposely add a measured amount to the mix and improve its properties. This would give you improved characteristics only within the limits of modern metallurgy.
 
Correction - the meteorite did NOT take millions of years to cool down !! Popular misconception. The interesting pattern of Gibeons is called Widmanstatten lines. If you heat and/or forge it the pattern will be destroyed !
 
"There is substantial evidence that iron meteorites are the shattered remains of differentiated asteroidal cores 10 to 800 km in diameter violently disrupted through impact. Most appear to have gone through a liquid state about 4.5 billion years ago, slowly cooling at the rate of 0.4° C to 500° C per million years, to the region in which the Widmanstatten Pattern forms through diffusion at 700° to 450° C. Dr. John Wood of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory estimated that an asteroidal body larger than 850 km would not cool to below 500° C at the center within the age of our solar system. "

Interesting, wouldn't you say Mete? Perhaps the doctor is wrong then.;)
 
Perhaps Dr Wood could explain how I got Widmanstatten lines in my first college metallurgy course - it took far less than a day !!! Here's the picture !...Perhaps a clarification on the wording.Regardless of how slow the meteorite cooled the formation of Widmanstatten did not take long.Only a short time , like mine , going through the transition around the critical temperature .
 

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But never the less wouldn't all that grain growth be un-beneficial? And couldn't you buy some of the best modern steels for the price of a meteorite?
 
Boys, Boys, now settle down or you'll have to go to the principal's office.

The problem with meteorite stories is the confusion between what happened to a asteroid sized piece of metal (850km is a BIG rock) and what happens to a meteor (from a few millimeters to a couple of dozen meters). If an 850km meteor hit the earth, this discussion would be unnecessary for a long, long time.

When a meteor enters the atmosphere it is heated (often superheated) and then cools slowly after impact. Depending on the size of the meteor and the depth it is buried, the cooling may be fairly rapid to very slow. The cooling may allow various patterns and crystal structures to form. When etched these can be attractive. Whatever the structure was prior to entering the atmosphere (formed by cooling very slowly for eon in the vacuum of space) it will be changed when heated upon entry. All this is a pointless discussion if the meteorite is used in forging a blade, as the structures will be undone and reconstructed as new structures when the metal is heated and cooled in forging and HT.

Why put a piece of a meteorite in a blade?
Nostalgia for the old.
Unique selling point.
You watched that old Bowie movie.
Just to say you did.

A better use of a piece of meteorite with a unique etch is to slice/trim it to a useful shape and size and make a bolster or inlay for a handle.That way you really have a piece of heaven in the knife. If you mix it in with other metals, it just becomes part of the same batch of elements and minerals that the solar system was formed from.
Stacy
 
You've hit the nail on the head Stacy - which is where my initial interest started and the question boiled into form.

Have a look at this item number on Ebay: 330166162658. Use a decent piece of damascus blade and play around with some golden inlay - and you got yourself a nice project.

Oh, sorry boys, I've already bought that item on ebay! Good luck finding another Gibeon piece that size...

And oh, Mete, good work on your college project, but the real thing is still much nicer... ;)
 
oooh... kind of like galactic mokume...

5b40_3.JPG
 
Mill Moran memorial said:
One of his most unusual knives was made out of a meteorite. "I tried to forge the meteor into a flat shape, and, of course, it started to crack because it had dirt in it," Mr. Moran explained on the American Bladesmith Society's Web site. "So I started folding it. I folded it ten times and then welded a piece of W-2 steel in the center to make the blade."
Click to expand...

Does anyone have a picture of this?
 
There are guys slicing up quality Gibeon meteorite to size. Usually sold by weight. It's usually a lot cheaper buying it that way because you're paying for weight after cutting, not buying a chunk and grinding away half of it when you go to use it.

The stuff guys forge into blades is, from what I've seen, the stuff that doesn't have good aesthetics to begin with. It's the stuff left over after you cut out all the pretty sections. I've seen this stuff sold for forging purposes and it's always the ugly stuff.

Problem with the whole thing of forging it into a knife is good, luck proving you used meteorite. After all the welding/forging, I suspect it might be kind of tought to verify--maybe impossible.
Maybe you could test by isotopic analysis (like they did with the moon rocks), but I'm not sure if all the forgework and mixing down with steel would mess that up. :confused: I suspect it would.
Such analysis would likely cost more than the knife anyway, so you're just taking someone's word for it. Even if you can trust 'em, what makes someone trust you when you go to sell the knife?
 
I for one am just trying to make a beautiful knife for my son to inherit later on in life, not for selling it.

But if you are going to sell it, well, then I guess you could probably charge a pretty penny. As for identifying if forged steel contains meteorite iron/nickel, it would probably depend on how much you used versus the full metal amount of the forged blade.

Taking into account that meteorites are far less radioactive than normal earth metal (thanks to Chernobyl and other Nuke testing grounds), you could probably verify the proof based on the radiometric radon response you are getting from the blade. Just ask any radiometric survey company and they could probably test it - mind you, I'll ask our technicians to give it a test when I get back to South Africa.

Alternatively, you could ask the seller of your meteorite supply to prepare a certificate denoting which meteorite was cut up, with a picture of the initial meteorite supply, the forging process and perhaps a couple of pic's through the rest of the blade making procedure - as verification that you made the blade using your meteorite.

Anyhow, I'm just gonna cut up the piece I've bought into two, its only 3 mm's thick - and use that as an inlay over stabilized golden maple. Reckon it could turn out quite nice. Blue dyed mapple would also look good mind you...

I'll buy an upgraded account and upload an image once I'm done in a couple of weeks.

Cheers guys and have fun!
 
Well, staying away from the geophysics side of it, no. However, if you haul a piece of metal from a WWII submarine out and match it to current metal, you'll find it much less radioactive due to the natural shielding of the ocean (water). So in theory, and this is where it goes tits-up, is that the meteorite would also respond with a lower gamma ray emitance because it started off with pretty much zero energy when it fell fom the heavens. Anyway, thats only if you wanted to go the scientific way to prove a point.

But no your right Keith, a certificate will have to do (or your reputation as a knife maker)!
 
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