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This page is dedicated to those who teach themselves and others how to do blacksmithing skills. Damascus Billet Demo with Mitch Wilkins
(1) Selection of steel. Since in my case, I'm making a tool (a knife...) I'm first of all
concerned that it will do it's task. So without question, it must be
high carbon (thus, hardenable) steel that I'm to use. That said, there
are many many carbon steels to choose from so what are we to use? Well,
for a first effort, and in pursuit of some sort of success, we will use
"contrasting steels". That means steels which have similar carbon
contents for the most part but some chemically different contents so as
to look different when "etched" with acid. So I've selected 1084 and
15N20 for our use here. The "1084" in steel talk means a "10" series
steel with ".80" percent of carbon. And yes that's 80 hundredths of a
percent not "8" percent!! Steels with even a whole 1% of carbon are
rare, it just doesn't take all that much to do the job. (2) A proper weld. This is hard to convey. If you've ever heat welded mild steel or
wrought iron, try and erase that from you memory: those are forgiving,
carbon steel is not. Remember we're making a knife: a tool. This tool
must posses integrity for it's intended use so in the case of carbon
steel.... we cannot afford to burn or compromise the steel in any way!
That's a mouthful but necessary: temperature is critical. Forging temp
for carbon steels is generally 1500 to 1800 oF but to weld, you've got to
come up with at least 2400 oF. When I first started welding up billets, I
would get lots of "cold shuts". That's where you only get a partial weld
and latter, when you least expect it, a place shows up that didn't
take... oh what misery. That is inexcusable in good bladesmithing so let
me tell you the single most common mistake in welding up a pretty good
chunk of steel: it is trying to weld to "early"!!! (3) Fold and weld. It's just like it sounds. Note that of course when you hear people expostulate of how many "folds" their "Damast" (as it's called in Germany) has, that the numbers increase exponentially. We will start off with a stack of 5 pieces of steel for our billet. One fold (the first fold after the initial weld) will give us 10 layers, a second fold 20, a third 40, the forth 80, (now for the magic of multiples!!) the fifth 160 and the sixth 320 layers! one more fold and you've 640!! and by just 8 folds you have!!!.... uh... a homogenous steel that appears to have no pattern at all. That's right, you can actually blend two steels until it's almost unrecognizable. when etched. That's not our aim of course. There is a trick (a critical step...) to folding: you always want to fold the "bottom" of the billet, forward toward the top. This I will show you at the demo and there are a few tips to remember in order to do this... (4) Form the final stock. Oh... did I forget to mention that while doing all the above that you have to keep in mind what the heck your going to make out of this stuff??? ,well, you do. For the purpose of the demo, we will be making a knife but you may wish for something different. The aim is to end up with a piece of "stock" in the shape you would normally use for that same purpose in say, mild steel or in our case here, flat stock with which to make a blade. There's many different ways to come up with great patterns in pattern welded steel and we will discuss these at the hammerin. At this point we "should" be able to treat this piece of stock as we would any other as far as forging, hardening, and tempering. I will assume you all know something of these processes and if you don't or need help there, we ("I") will gladly go over the basics with you at the demo. I could say "well, that's about it for pattern welded steel" but that would be the proverbial band-aid for the machine gun victim. There is just no end to discussing this form of steel "blending"!! The possibilities are substantial and varied to say the least. The above is just a bare bones outline for what we will be doing so be prepared with questions and I'll try and answer. Remember, I'm not afraid to say "I don't know"!!! In the event I've left something important out here, (like the salt from bread dough!!) please email me and say so! I am happily a flawed person in a flawed world, help me out a little here won't ya?? With compliments and regards,
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