Using swarf for Damascus?

G

Gosolo

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Sep 17, 2020
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I have a good source for machine tooling cuttings. This is all tool steel curly ribbons from an industrial machine shop. They are fairly oily with cutting oil, but don’t really have any other contamination. This is not floor sweepings or grinding dust.
Does anyone know if there’s a practical way to utilize this in canister Damascus?
I believe it will be fairly easy to rinse off the oil in a solvent. I have not yet tried to get powdered steel fully packed around and into this stuff, but I’m pretty sure it would have voids. Does anybody here have experience with this?
 
I’ve done it using a pipe and compressing the turnings with a press and a cylindrical bearing and capping both ends. Works fine and very few voids. I’m sure it helps to have a 300 ton press.

Make sure it’s all the same alloy with no contamination from non ferrous metals.

Clean the oil off, leave a weep hole, soak longer than if it was solid material, good luck.

Hoss
 
DevinT said:
I’ve done it using a pipe and compressing the turnings with a press and a cylindrical bearing and capping both ends. Works fine and very few voids. I’m sure it helps to have a 300 ton press.

Make sure it’s all the same alloy with no contamination from non ferrous metals.

Clean the oil off, leave a weep hole, soak longer than if it was solid material, good luck.

Hoss
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Yeah, I was thinking of trying something similar. I have a 16 ton press but maybe if I use some bar stock that fits the inside of the canister I can mash it in layers with a sprinkling of powdered steel. Maybe 3/4”at a time. Guess I will be experimenting.
What kind of pattern do you get?
 
I would go canister with 1084 powder. The curlicues should show up as all sorts of shapes. Crunch them down before vibrating in the powder.
 
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