Working a Meteorite

Gary Mulkey

Gary Mulkey

Joined
May 14, 2001
Messages
1,414
A couple of years ago I bought two pieces of Campo De Cielo meteorite which I am just now getting to work. I plan on welding them into damascus billets along with some 1080. The Campo meteorite has 8-9% nickel which gives some high contrast making for a very attractive damascus. The drawback that I have found with it is that it has so much natural fracture that it is difficult to cut.

Since I had no good way of securing it for the bandsaw and was afraid of it breaking into multiple pieces anyway, I came up with this method: I decided to imbed the chunk(s) in a wooden box filled with Durham's putty.

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Here you can see the fractures that I was afraid of.

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The putty will easily break free from the sliced meteorite. Now I have a flat edge to weld to the 1080. Hopefully this will work. (My first attempt at welding it.)

Wish me luck.

Gary
 
Real interesting...Remember to post more photos as you go.....
 
Gary, Very cool process! When you Heat the Meteorite to weld with the 1080, Doesn't it loose the Natural grain structure from the Heat?
 
Gary, this method of holding irregular shapes may be old school to some, but it's new to me and I thank you for posting it. I'm sure I'll be using it in the future.

Chuck
 
That's a very creative solution to the problem - well done. I look forward to seeing what you make of this meteor.

Roger
 
stabber said:
Gary, Very cool process! When you Heat the Meteorite to weld with the 1080, Doesn't it loose the Natural grain structure from the Heat?
Click to expand...

Yes, you loose the pattern of the meteorite. What you gain is a high contrast because of the high nickel content.

Gary
 
I didn't have the size bar of 1080 that I was after so I make one of W2. I wanted something a little thicker to reduce the percentage of meteorite.

Here's the meteorite tacked to W2 bar.

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I did the priliminary weld with very light taps from a 2 lb. hammer. With each reheat, I increased the weight of the blows until I had flatted the top of the meteorite. Once I was confident of a good weld, I went to the press.

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Here's the bar after the finish weld on the press. One layer W2 & one layer meteorite.

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Maybe I just got lucky but it seems to have welded O.K. I worked it a little extra hot (2400 degrees with a lot of flux). Don't know if this helped but it seemed to.

Gary
 
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Gary, that is very interesting. I am very curious as to what the end product will look like. Keep us posted!
 
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