Other than ordering 1084 and L-6 to make a brick, (along with a list off suggested steels) Is there a general rule to what will make a good combination.
I can't seem to find anything that everyone talks about.
My local steel shop has tons of nice bar stock that nobody in there myself included knows what is. Take some Aisi 01 for example.
Sorry for the question but I haven't been able to find a list of things that go together, off from the repeated combinations.
-Thanks
Unless the L6 is from Admiral, in which case is it 8670M, I would strongly advise not mixing it with a 10xx series steel. I know you will get many makers who will tell you that they have combined these two with great success, but there are also a very large number of makers who believe that any saw steel is L6, that Admirals "L6 alternative" is L6, or that there is no difference between 15n20 and L6. I however know actual L6 quite well and have worked with it my entire career and I would not mix it with a shallow or water hardening steel if I could avoid it.
15n20 is not L6 but it is a fantastic alternative that mixes very well with any 10XX steel, it would also work great with W1 or W2. It welds and works much easier than L6 but heat treats just like 1075 or 1084 and when mixed with any of these carbon steels will give a beautiful high contrast and really great cutting ability.
8670M (or Admirals L6 alternative) is a very good steel by itself but also welds very nicely to many alloy steels. It heat treats quite similar to 5160, and gives a rather duller contrast. It wouldn't be my first choice to mix with 10XX steels but I would put it with them before ever considering L6.
O1/L6 is the mix I am known for and I have been playing with it for more years than I can count (or care to
) , it is a real powerhouse on performance, but I will be flat out honest with you that I don't believe the trouble it is to work with would be worth it for most folks. The reason I stuck it out and worked around all of its quirks is that it best matches my heat treating set up, and I already understood it inside and out before I realized how much of a pain in the @*$ it really was compared to other combinations.
A good way to see if a mix is something you want to spend much time on is to weld up a bar of the two steels with around 40 layers or more and twist it up good before forging it into a square rod. Normalize it to room temp a couple times and sight down it. most mixes may corkscrew just a bit if not matched pretty well in their cooling curves, but a poor match will really spiral on you. This will be that kind of distortion you can expect in heat treating the stuff, and some is bad enough to pull itself apart.
The best performing damascus will not force you to make choices on which of its components will be heat treated properly. The best performance I have observed came from well matched mixes allowed both steels to be heat treated to their best. 15n20 and 1080 would be one of those.
