@@liquidmidnight0748 Take it from another knife maker grain structure has to do with the heat treatment not the cold shuts in the steel so Cutting it up and re-welding in forging it back out would’ve been good.
@@Rosewayforge I agree. Through the restacking and reforging(under the proper heat), this billet could be reused to make useable blade steel. Though the original pattern would most certainly be lost.
Videos like this are great...they don't work out all the time, but as someone whose only metal working background was a machine shop, it's really interesting to watch, and better even for learning. I don't really have space to do this kind of thing, so watching you, and others practice their craft is enjoyable.
As much as I enjoy the complete projects, I also really love coming along for the ride with your mini-projects. I find it very inspirational in my jewelry making. Thank you and keep them coming.
A little late on here, but I'm sure having the solid steel san-mai type core may have been good! I'd love to see a re-attempt of this, definitely has potential.
Love the creative thinking! Just thinking out loud with a suggestion…maybe cleaning and welding the bars before cutting the tiger would have made it work better? It’s awesome that you allow “failure” of process to be part of the process. You do good work bro
That's a nasty burn on your arm. Or are you getting a branding done purely for aesthetics? Edit: sleeveless welding...I see you like to live dangerously
There’s a lot of empty space (i.e. air) in a powder. Maybe try using strips inlayed into the cuts? That means you’ll need straight and uniform cuts. Do you have a mill?
A simple, light, and small vibration tool can be made with a simple battery powered motor out of a toy, added weight on one side of the shaft, in a hand held shell would work great for setting the steel dust.🤔. Or even a small speaker hooked up playing low frequency 🤔🤔🤔
These companies must use the new math, 22,000 miles in 72 hours, 305 miles an hour. What kind of car did she actually rent? Not any normal car. A fighter might average that over that course, but no car I know of from a rental agent. Must be new math, I never learned the new stuff, only the old math.
How about this for a stupid idea? Make a single steel billet that is 2 inches thick. From the top, drill down with quarter-inch holes about a quarter inch from the edge. Have both edges drilled down but offset like a ladder pattern. Down the middle do the same but one hole for each left and right bracket of holes on the edges. Then use your forge press to seat whatever metals you want for your Damascus into the round drilled holes. Of course, that or those metals would need to be shaped to fit first. Then forge as usual.
What if you tried a ladder pattern cut, but just stopped short and alternated your cuts, that would look like the tiger stripe pattern but you should keep your integrity?
I'm a bit confused and maybe it's because I as a viewer don't see everything. But in my experience almost any high carbon steel water quenched will break apart super easily when hit with a hammer. Even W1 & 2 which claim to be water quench steels. Just seeing that your welds held together through a water quench made me think you must have had pretty good forge welds, even if the grain structure was bad. But as far as I know you didn't do your normal normalizing cycles or temper it down after the quench and that's what's confusing. I didn't really see the steel itself fail. Maybe you did temper it down and it still broke in that case it really did fail. Anyways great video otherwise. Just curious about all that.
Okay here's what I would have done. I would have used an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel to get some v gouges about 90% of the way through the steel. I would have done 1084 to fill. I would have not used primer as it off gases and can get into the gaps in powdered Steel and cause bad welds. I would have simply encapsulated in very thin sheet metal. As you forge the sheet metal should deteriorate through scaling. Using the V gouges I would have a differential in thickness to each line. That could give you a tiger stripe pattern. Furthermore on initial heat I would have got it much hotter. Look like you are around a 2200 to 2300 hundred degree range. I would have liked to see that up towards 2500
I made this comment on another of your projects, and thought I was posting it here. Oops. But the comment I wanted to post here was just something I was wondering as I watched. Combine rasp bars already have raised ridges for threshing grain, and the steel (no idea of what it is), sure is long lasting. Most any ag dealer might have a pile of used rasp bars around, and it might be a good source of unique material for your projects. Just an old farmer letting his mind ramble. I sure enjoy your site.
Wouldn't it have been much easier and better to use a cutoff wheel? Seems like you're not exactly giving a tiger stripe just a very very thin line of 1084
So why wouldn't you have just forge welded those together to begin with and started with a solid bar? I'm working on a project currently that I had to weld five bars at 1/4 in just to get the thickness that I needed.
Love the concept of the pattern! Couldn't the same pattern be achieved by normal stacking and grinding down (same pattern as the cuts) to the next layer and then drawing out into a bar?
Well, since that billet is a fail, why not stack it, forge weld it and see what you can create out of that? It may not be the pattern you are looking for, but who knows? when you quenched in water and broke it, I immediately thought of tamahagane.
Cut the slots in each of the pieces on their own, they do not have to match, in fact, best they do not, each one will support the next layer. The difficult part would be the 10/80 powder, ensuring it fills all of the cut slots. Perhaps use 4 or 5 layers rather than 3 to build a stronger more complex support structure to start.
I second that. Put the layers in the box one at a time and fill with powder, stack another, fill with powder etc. I’m also thinking the stock should be no more than 1” wide and the layers should be about 1/8”, and maybe 6 or 7 thick?
Very interesting. I would try it with the pattern being a polar opposite of the one it was placed to. If the first is cut 🔺🔻🔺, the second is cut🔻🔺🔻, then the third is again cut 🔺🔻🔺 and so on. the pattern wouldn't really change and the holes in one piece, would be supported by the adjacent piece.
Maybe, after cutting, you could swap the middle one around (back to front), but this will mean putting the powder in on both sides, which could be a problem. Maybe you could leave the sides off and put the powder in from both sides, tacking the one closed after the powder has bee inserted. As they say, it is better to make mistakes and stay humble, than to have (constant) success and become arrogant. The important thing is to learn out of your mistakes! When I saw the small photo of your video, I thought they were nails (one up one down) fitted inside a cage with powder filling in the spaces.
Thanks for sharing your experiment. It's always useful for me to see something tried that I haven't fussed with, especially when the result is less than hoped for.
Hmm I'm late to this...but....wire edm might be just what your looking for...if I had the cash and a shop id splurge for a wire edm to try stuff like this...I have seen some very interesting cut outs with it...dolphin and fish hook canister damascus might be possible with a wire edm cutting out the dolphins...
Next time, clamp the porta-band saw and use it like a stand up band saw. As for the cracking, curious if you flipped the middle layer, so the saw cuts don't all line up would make it stronger like plywood 🤔❓
This is just my observation. This is by no means critique. But I think cutting each piece individually would have worked better. Also a mounted portaband so it works like a table saw. Then one piece of cut metal and powder then the next piece turned 180° to keep the lines from being on top of each other then more powder and so on. The paint was a beautiful idea and I expect more of it in the future.
Suggestion: 4, 1/8” layers, 1070-1095 HC, randomly cut with the bandsaw. Clean up each layer and weld the cuts with a hard, high nickel bead, mill flat, repeat 4 times. Stack and edge spot weld the 4 layers, rip it down the middle, stack both halves onto a solid core of thin leaf spring and draw that out. 🤷🏼♂️
Dang it! That would have been really cool! Try again. If don't mind I might try it and see what happens too. More cool videos please! Keep up the good work.
I am glad to see you doing ambitious canister experiments. To many smithtubers doing the same stuff. For this one i would say go bigger, thicker steel, wider curf, but also start with a thicker billet to have you more room to compress the material on all sides. The solid center design sounds cool but you would have to make the frame, add powder, weld on 1 face, flip the canister, add power and weld on the other face. Or not have your center stock be the same size as your tiger scales to allow the powdered steel to work through.
Ever thought about maki'n the cuts when the Steel is on temperature? ;) Do you got a cutting device for your press, or for the Hardy hole of your Anvil? If you know Niels Provos, watch his Video about " How the Snake is comming into the Sword?". ;)
Nice experiment. I have seen both Steve Schwarzer and Jay Nielson say that canister needs to be forged at near welding temps, at least initially. Unfortunately 52100 red shorts so those high temps are tricky.
That wasn't Damascus. That was fill the cracks with powdered steel. Had you folded it a few times it may have had a chance. But nice try. More experience in how to use your tools and a few more attempts, you'll get something. But that... wasn't Damascus anyways.
just an idea for you. what if you used a canister and do what you tried in this video, but use 15n20 for the base and filling the cutouts with 1095 powder?
Glad I’m not the only guy that turns quality steel into garbage. I seem to have real gift for it 😋 Of course I’m just trying basic Damascus not fancy out of the box stuff like this. Hopefully you try again because that could turn out pretty cool looking.
I think if you went 2 short/shallow cuts then a longer cut in the steel then flip the middle piece you would get a rather interesting pattern. You could also try doing four pieces with the cuts and a solid middle for a five-layer billet. These are just some other ideas to try.
I do like the concept of what you were trying to do. I'm not a metalsmith, but as someone with artistic skills, I think forge welding two types of steel first and then cutting in shallow lines on either face down to where the metals meet and then pressing the billet to stretch out the material, allowing both metals to be present on either side of your blank... like a raindrop pattern with lines instead of dots. and presumably less layers, though you could fold several times before cutting in your lines, which would give us the alternating dark and light steel layers exposed in the areas where material was removed and moved.
Great to see you try new patterns. Still would like to see the cheeta forge weld. (Medium darkness etching blank, drilled small holes (5-10mm) in it the diameter of some pipes (~1mm wall with bright etching meterial) and into the pipes some rods with dark etch. Then forgeweld them together and stretch it out a bit. Schould lead to the round geometry get a bit more natural looking.
