Washed out damascus?

Will52100

Will52100

Joined
Dec 4, 2001
Messages
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I recently managed to forge a flaw free blade out of chainsaw chain and while it's got a nice pattern, it's all washed out and "dirty" looking. Last chain I forged, roller chain, turned out great with differant shades of blue and gray. This turned out pretty bland and "dirty" looking. I've tried a new batch of ferric and water but got the same look. I wonder if I got it too hot for too long? Maybe a couple more normilizing cycles would help? It cuts good and holds a good edge. The chain was from a skidder saw, the kind mounted on comercial logging skidders and is made by Origon and is the bigest chain saw chain I've ever seen. I've got several chains and would love to use them.

Any ideas?

thanks
 
Maybe try some Muriatic Acid (0.375N Hydrochloric). It runs about $3.00/Gal at most hardware stores. Be careful, HCl is the strongest acid and even at 3/8 strength it will smoke you.
 
Not implying that this happened, but generally when damascus looks "washed out" or "dirty", it's because something went wrong in the welding process. It could be a number of things including too much heat for too long (most common), some "dirty" flux, or any number of other things. I have a huge supply of the exact same chain, and can tell you that it can be very finicky to weld.
 
I've welded smaller chain without the problem, could be because it is larger and took longer to weld that I held it at welding heat longer than normal. My guess is that to long at too high a heat, though the dirty flux could be the problem, I'm using 20 Mule Team borax. I did the first three folds with no grinding like I normaly do, then ground for the rest of the folds. I've got anouther billet welded up and I'll see how it goes. Thanks, I'll play with this one some more and probably destroy it in testing so it isn't a complete loss.
 
Rather than buy a gallon of muratic acid and have it sit around ...you could just go to the grocery store and look in the toilet cleaner section. Many of the toilet cleaning products contain muratic acid ...just add enough to mix up the strength you need. When you're finished with it just dump it in the toilet and scrub away. Two birds with one stone :)

It's amazing what hazardous chemicals are sitting right on your grocer's shelves.
 
Will the problem with a lot of these things is guesswork. I had a lot of sucsess with chainsaw chains I liked the smaller ones the best. I never had any problems. The chains I used you could see the teeth were a brighter and harder metal. Being a guess or a straigth out red herring perhaps the larger industrial chain is all the same type of metal. The only time I have washed out contrast is when the metal is the same like in a bundle of banding strap.
If you do that the oly contrast is the actual welds a bit like cable sometimes goes.

Experiment is the only way to be sure make 2 billets at once one small chain of a brand you have had success with before and one out of the new big chain. Don't go as far as making blades until you have etched it and see how it goes. If the small is good and the big is bad probably just the steel is too similar in carbon or chromium or what ever else makes them etch differently. I don't have the science in me to be more accurate than that. I am guessing it is nothing you have done could have been that wrong to change the metal.
I blame the type of chain.
 
I'll know for sure when I finish the other billet out, but it does look kinda like cable, no real contrast with the differant metals.
 
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