Ozbow

Hi all as you may know I have been dabbling in the dark art of knife making.
I had a go at Damascus last weekend, as the wife/boss was working/away from home and did not give me any jobs to do.
I grabbed some scrap from work in the lines of packing strap and what is called wear bands, spring steel I think. Stacked 1 spring 3 packing ect to 50 layers 60mm long. Heated hit repeat. Drilled some holes 3mm deep on both sides and finished forging. I took it to work to surface grind so I can now file in the bevels.
It will be just under 6" long and about 30mm deep.
I think it might just work.

Great raindrop pattern. If you are going to put in that much work though maybe you should get some steels you know are going to perform, make the effort about knowing your knife is durable at the end. It would be a shame to spend a hard day hammering to find your blade wont hold an edge.
Looking forward to seeing it finished.

Looking good mate; I hope it turns out well for you.

True Mick, this is a learning curve for me. I have not been successful in this type of Damascus before so I did not want to waist money on good steel. But having said that I have made scrapers and blades from both the steels I used and I did a test to see how hard this would go. It skates a file.
Even if it does not harden I will learn from it.
Ron

Very nice Woodie, I like your method of creating the raindrops in the pattern.

Here is where I'm up to. I have been interrupted with work so it is taking a bit of time.
I have started to file in the bevels and I am about half way so a quick etch.
A bit hard to see but there looks to be a nice pattern.

Coming along well mate.

Jeff

I read the other night that kerosene as flux is to the forge I went.
Using the same material as the blade as I get it for free.
11 layers stacked, tack welds, soaked in kero while the forge heated up.
To my surprise it worked. The stack was 28mm wide before forge welding.
After the weld I turned it and hammered it to square it off and gave it 2 turns and it stayed together. It has been flatten out. I then quenched in water, not the best thing to do but it hardened it to its hardest so I can do a break test that showed small grain structure. I put it back into the forge to anneal. This is the end grain structure. The pattern, hopefully.
At the end of the day this was a test to see if kerosene works as a flux, I think so.
Or I was lucky.

This is the blade out of the forge this afternoon from the bigger part of the billet. I'm not sure how much of the twist pattern will be in the but hay it is keeping me out of the pub.

Enjoy the learning process mate. It is interesting stuff.

Jeff

really really interesting, thanks for posting this woodie

regards Jacko

No worries pass on the info so we all learn.
Just don't use it when the steel is hot for obvious reasons.

Here is the blade after heat treatment and a bit of a polish and etch. Stay tuned, more to come.

Nice!!!

Hi all been a little while. How is everyone?
I had a go at making a ladder pattern blade but I failed so I cut and restacked.
There was 28 layers of spring steel pallet strapping and bandsaw blade. I cut that into 6 and rewelded, now I have to think what to make.

Here is the blade that came from the block. I still have to finish the grind and glue together.
This is what I used, wear band, pallet strapping and bandsaw blade.

Love the look of the blade mate. It should look good once finished.

Thank you Jeff.
I finished it off this morning. Well just have to go and sharpen it

That's a handy little knife.

Looks great.