I love watching videos that allow people to understand life is not Instagram. We live in a social media Fantasyland, and you brought a refreshing truth to combat the fantasy. Respect. I know it's a bummer to lose that much time, but the next version will be amazing. Thanks for the video!
Thank you, I appreciate it. Yes, life isn't really perfect despite what social media would lead us to believe. These failures are the price of successful builds.Thanks for watching!
if you dont mind a suggestion, i use fire brick on the bottom of my forge and switch it when im forge welding and have another set for non forge welding. dont have to fight the flux that way
Grab some of those copper wool bundles for soldering iron tips or braided copper wire used to clean up residual solder and soak up all the flux in your forge with that.
Man that really sux that those imperfections had to happen. The pattern on that was wicked and would've looked great fully finished. The honesty and you not selling is great to see, kudos to you dude.
That sucks. I woukd still buy that blade. It went through a 2x4 without issues. It woukd be an honor to have something you made. I woukd never use it like they do in competitions. It woukd be used to chop meats and veggies in my house. Maybe use it to whack a palm frond down to roast hot dogs or marshmallows in the firepit. That would be the toughest thing I put it through. If you want to sell it, I'll sign a waiver or whatever and won't hold you liable if it breaks or snaps. I understand that it's nitmup to your quality, but your standards are way above most companies.
FWIW, as a geologist, I think that's a very interesting pattern - it looks very much like a breccia - a sedimentary rock composed of angular pebbles or gravel. Hope you can work the bugs out and get a solid weld in the future.
First, thanks for trying with the little cubes. Glad you did all that work, not me!!! Second, I add my respect to your other commenters; I wasn't sure what you were seeing until the closeups at the end of the video, and I am forced to agree with you. If that came out of my shop I couldn't sell it in good conscience, even if it was just going to be a wall hanger. Like you, I don't want my name on less than perfect product.
Still a beautiful looking Damascus!!.. you don't see patterns like this.. And thanks i learned what it looks like overheating.. I did this on a twist pattern and couldnt figure out what it was..
Bummer you had to stop.... But, thank you for posting instead of just sweeping it under the rug....shows that even a "pro" can make mistakes and learn what not to do next time. I applaud you sir. Looking forward to next time👍👍 Take care, ~Jonny5🥁
There are thousands of people that buy knives for shelves bro, like 100x more than ones entering chopping competitions. I sell knives and people say oh i dont need a belt clip option, its for show... waste sometimes but people like pretty stuff
That's a total bummer that the blade can't be sold, I'm sure someone would have loved to have that... I would. That pattern is different and really cool. When you pulled the canister out of the forge, the first thing I thought was, man, that looks awful hot.
Next time you cut up small pieces like that keeping them separate from fillings attache a bar underneath about 3 inch away from stock with strong Magnets to catch filling and the small cut section will just drop of or use glue gun on end of work piece that's more easier And yes it wouldn't hurt to clean up messy work area leads to messy working environment that's how thing's can go horribly wrong SO START TODAY 1HR CLEAN UP AT END OF EACH DAY IT'S GOOD PRACTICE FOR THE NEXT DAYS WORK WITH A MUG OF COFFEE IN HAND GOOD START TO EVERY DAY
I would have just charged double for the unique pattern, but you had to let your integrity get in the way of a good pay day hahaha Seriously though, that thing was looking nice! I saw your email, I'll get back to ya today!
Isn't that the purpose of the powdered steel to fill the gaps and act as a binder of the solid metal and when you etch it shows the difference of hardness for each metal by differences in color?
Thats a real shame cause you put a lot of work into it and its very cool unique looking damascus. Disappointing but still something to try again later Thanks for sharing
Bummer, was shaping up to be a beaut of a rattleskin pattern. Definitely put that on your mulligan list. Simple kitchen strainers with adequate mesh spacing work wonderfully for separating grinding/cutting dust from larger parts. I use them just about every day for separating graphite particle sizes. Depending on your media, you can chuck them in a tumbler afterwards without knocking the edges down, or even an ultrasonic tank comes in mighty handy. I'd also recommend a type R or S thermocouple to get an very accurate read on your forge temps (type K are the most common high temp but only go up to 2200*F/1200*C and burn out very easily if you run them right at the edge). If I recall, type S are more common and more affordable as they are somewhat of a consumable (the probe part after enough time). If you don't need to set them up to activate or deactivate feeding meters, a simple PID will read the temp just fine. Or you can go overboard and set up electronic controls with servos and such to turn that forge into a blast oven with programmable settings. Auber makes great PID boxes for either use case, and you don't need to do much homework to program them if you go the complicated route.
Wow…looked like a cool pattern. Sorry about the loss of time invested. One question: many of the squares from the first cut had paint on the end. Did you keep those or toss those cubes out as they may not forge weld?
I like the blade profile, it resembles the Hudson's Bay knife profile, a very useful design. A shame about it not being up to standards, but it's a learning experience, right? Subbed to see you take another run at it some day.
On one hand I'm really sad it didn't work out as the pattern was turning out really special. Then again you managed to get a forge so hot that it can wreck steel, while its in a canister! Which is not what you want to happen but its still impressive in a kind of crazy physics and chemistry kind of way like when a drag car manages to blow a supercharger off an engine block kind of mess- so I am genuinely impressed that could actually happen. Tough way to learn than it can though.
hi, can you please explain what is the main issue with those 'imperfections'? The pattern is great anyway and the blade seems to be holding up jst fine!
This was my question too. As someone who isn't a metallurgist or a smith, not sure how forge welded cracks like that would result in a dangerous blade.
@@FireCreekForge That pattern, with the cracks are really cool. Instead of keeping it as a chopper, could you mitigate the possibility of it breaking by reprofiling the knife into a kitchen knife or something else that won't be taking impacts? From an integrity standpoint, I appreciate that you don't want to have a knife that you made a mistake on out in the wild. Especially in the sense that you don't want other blacksmith's seeing the knife and judging the whole of your work on it. But, to the untrained eye, that pattern is wild, and would be a heck of a discussion piece in a chef's kitchen.
I don't understand why its not sellable. Do those little cracks affect the strength of it? Will it break easily? Couldn't it be used as a fruit or vegetable knife instead of a wood chopper?
So my question is, if you make those aware about the very interest texture in the pattern that doesn't effect it for say use in a kitchen, why would you not sell it for that?
i have some black sand from arizona that 92.6% iron and it also has gold rhodium titanium cobalt copper ect ...would you like a couple pounds of this matterial for a knife.....
Wait, didn't you do performance tests on this blade? 2x4, shaving and whatnot. I'm soooo not a smith, but don't those tests show that the knife has been properly normalized, hardened and tempered and is therefore structurally sound? This is a legit question, and not some internet troll comment. I've been watching your vids for a while now and have learned a lot about forging, etc from you. I don't remember a discussion about overheating ruining the steel.
It might perform just fine forever, the inclusions from burning the steel have been closed back up. But the little striations are from the carbon starting to burn out i believe, so the state of the steel has been altered and i can't say in confidence what the true condition of the steel is now.
Sorry this one didn't turn out, it is a VERY cool knife. You are popular enough that can probably sell these RU-vid failure knives as collector pieces, as-is, no warranty, no handle, no edge, and maybe signed on one side. If you do them as an auction, you could probable make up the cost of the material at least if not all of the T&M cost due to the FOMO people would get.
I mean…..it passed the chop test, no damage. If you’re not gonna sell it I would use the shit out of it and try to break it to see if that metal migration really was that detrimental. I think it’s a bitchin looking pattern 👍
Great video. Are you worried it overheated in the canister? If that's the case you shouldn't have really lost much carbon, just pushed it around a mm or two. The grain structure and alloys are not uniform but it should be uniformly hardenable. I don't think anyone who buys a canister knife made with powdered steel that crosses the edge expects uniformity though. I personally found powdered steel makes a slightly porous edge and try to avoid it along the cutting surface but I see other guys who don't seem to have that problem. It's a great looking pattern I'd be tempted to finish it out. There's people here who seem interested in buying it! But if you can't stand behind it hats off to your integrity.
Thanks Steve, I do think it overheated and the canister did appear compromised, but I didn't think much of it at the time. Then I found the striations and it looks like oxygen got to some of the canister and started burning out carbon, hence the lighter color to the lines. While it all welded back up ok, there's obvious issues, so I'll have to try the pattern again sometime.
Could have used some CA glue to glue the rods together before cutting them and then just toss them in some acetone to dissolve the CA glue and clean them up.
Awesome pattern. Im no knifesmith, so dumb question here. Are the cracks an aesthetic thing, or do they weaken the steel? Just curious. But like some other posts, I think it looks dang good like it is; but appreciate your honest assessment of your work.
Man, that looks beautiful, sometimes mistakes make the piece even better, there are thousands of examples, I sell it, if you don't feel satisfied with the result, sell it for less, but in my opinion that looks awesome
Idea -- use a switched magnet to contain the final cubes as they are being cut. Also, if the 'cracks' have no inclusions and the welds are solid, shouldn't it be a good knife? Are the cracks just cosmetic?
Separating different small sized material? Cymatics, certain frequencies, will separate the large from the small, one material from a different material, etc.
Live & learn, it’ll still work very well for you & now you know what doesn’t work & especially why, that’s the most important part. Thank you Sir for this lesson. A question do you use the cutoffs for future projects ???
Yeah. I was going to say as soon as you said the crack thing. It definitely sounds like it got hot short. Tbh, it could potentially still be usable. But you wouldnt really know without some micrographs if it did or didn't end up with some wierd microstructures.
I get why you wouldnt put a handle on it and sell it as a finished project. But I'm sure you could recoup some lost costs by selling it as is, a non functional display piece. The pattern is amazing. The overheat flaws make it a special talking piece to own.
That is one of the unfortunate things of forging experimentation. However now, after you get a template drawn and cut out for it. You could possibly cut it up into little pieces and forge it back into another piece billet style. Like cut it in half, leave the handle and have the blade to use as the moving platen. The rest get cut into triangles or whatever and stacked, heated forged together again and it drawn back out. Heck even the handle could be heated and folded in to make a new folded billet to work off of. Keep that piece that was cut off initially to work back in to rehomogenize it all back together probably to experiment to see how well that result would turn out.
I don't know if someone else has suggested it yet, but why not use a magnet to collect the cubes as you cut them? Sure, you'd pick up the shavings, too, but you could sieve it afterwards to keep just the bigger pieces.
