Welding tange to damascus?

[Eriksen]

What welding methods can be used to weld a tange to damascus? And does it matter what type of steel you use for the tange?

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Any steel will work since the tang does not need to be hardenable.
I use my MIG, but stick, TIG, or forge weld all work.
You should give it a 400F temper after the weld to remove any joint brittleness.

 

[Eriksen]

Any steel will work since the tang does not need to be hardenable.
I use my MIG, but stick, TIG, or forge weld all work.
You should give it a 400F temper after the weld to remove any joint brittleness.

I got a reply on facebook where a guy told me that I also could braze it together with a v-grove on the blade. Do you think that will be just as good?
And which metode are you using to temper the weld with 400 degr fahrenheit and for how long time?

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Brazing has to be done after HT. It may cause some temper issues at the ricasso if not sufficiently kept cool. If you are good at brazing, I suppose it would be fine. You would then need to grind the addition flush and taper it with the tang.

Normally I weld the tang extension on and grind it during the shaping pre-HT. It then gets HT and temper as part of the blade.
If for some reason I have to weld the tang after HT, I temper the blade in the oven for an hour.

 

[Alex Topfer]

Forge weld would be traditional
Quickly looking around i found a 930c brazing rod (nickel bronze), so you can probably braze before heat treatment if you use the right rod

 

[Ken H>]

As other folks have said, any steel works, but I like mild steel since it doesn't get hard in case I need to drill a hole later. With San Mai my usual process is to weld a 1" wide strip to billet as the edges are welded up. Then the weld is stress relieved during normal forge welding, normalization, and HT. While I've used stick in the past, now I use mig for welding the edges and tang. The tang gives a good place to hold billet with tongs during forge welding without affecting the San Mia billet itself.