Tim, if you want to do version 2.0 of your aerospace damascus idea, ask your supplier/sponsor if they can get you PH 13-8 Mo (AMS5629, XM-13, UNS S13800). It is also martensitic, it is also very low in carbon (max. 0.03 wt%) and it is compatible with the aging temperature of MAR250, meaning you can precipitation harden your damascus at 950°F and get both component grades to high hardness! PH 13-8 Mo is also considered to be an aerospace grade and it will be interesting to combine with MAR250 because both are martensitic and heat treatment compatible, but the 13% Cr in PH 13-8 Mo makes it a stainless steel grade. If PH 13-8 Mo is not available, try getting either 15-5 PH (UNS S15500, XM-12, AMS5659) or 17-4 PH (UNS S17400, type 630, AMS5643), both are also martensitic, can also precipitation harden at 950 °F, but they are not so low in carbon.
Right, next time, after getting a heart, I should *not* edit the post, not even for correcting typos. Heart/like goes away. If you do manage to get PH 13-8 Mo, you will have a valid excuse to play around with dry ice and acetone because PH 13-8 Mo benefits from a cold treatment after solution annealing. Soaking it at -78 °C / -100 °F after solution annealing will transform the left-over austenite to martensite, improving mechanical properties even further after aging/precipitation hardening.
Uhhm if u forge it doesn’t the martensit diffuse back to ferrit/perlit/cementite? Parts? Because it gets heat treatment while forging so its kind of a tempering? Idk explain pls Sry for my bad language i am nit native speaker
@@user-mf7li2eb1o The PH grades are stainless steel martensitic. After forging the steel needs a solution heat treatment, which passes AC1 and AC3 to 1050 ⁰C / 1950 ⁰F or so, so fully into austenite structure, and a cool down to room temp where it fully transforms back. At that point it's martensitic again. Precipitation hardening (ageing) follows afterwards and is a relatively low temperature heat treatment so you keep the martensitic structure, with in some cases a little bit of newly formed austenite, depending on which temperature you decide to age.
I don't think you overheated it. This is common in CuMai forging because copper has a low melting point compared to steel. Basically, the material melts and becomes like solder between the layers. You just have to weld it airtight and then don't hit it after it gets to temp (maybe a light tap or two if you have gaps between your layers). Let it cool and consolidate on it's own.
The way you go in at these projects by trying ideas and thinking about whats happened, whats going to happen and how it turned out is your best teacher! Cool stuff tim!
How can I resist subscribing to a channel with a legitimate mad scientist? You are experimenting with metals I will probably never even see, but I can't tell you how much I enjoy your approach and your candor.
To have a better matching melting point you should go for Inconel/niobium layers. If you want to make it hot enough you will need to go for induction heating.
Something like s60v might be a good choice for welding to maraging steel to.. You might need to do it in a sealed canister or with an electric furnace with an argon atmosphere as s60v is a stainless steel. The reason for choosing s60v is that it has a high tempering temperature, so if you could get the two welded, you could harden with specs for the s60v, which should not affect the maraging steel, but then temper at 900F for 4-5 hours, which should leave the s60v at a 50-55 Rc but also result in the maraging precipitating martensite and carbides, also ending up around 50-55Rc... Not the hardest steel, but should be very usable in a blade and may be all but unbreakable.. An alternative would be to get maraging TIG rod (yes, that's a thing) and weld it to regular steel, or conversely, get tool steel welding rod and weld to the maraging...
Browns start at 18v, blues start in the 20's, greens are in the mid 40's (very tight window), brassy colors are in the high 50's-mid 60s, and the purples are in the mid60-70's. I'm using TSB detergent as my electrolytic solution. Good luck!
Dwell time strongly relies on accurate voltage regulation. Dwell time only increases the depth of the color. Most companies don’t increase dwell time as it doesn’t increase the surfaces hardness or ability to retain color when damaged. The longer the dwell the more likely color irregularities can present themselves as voltage across the object is not evenly dissipated.
Is this on titanium or Niobium? I am using the liquid TSB detergent, seemed to work pretty good on the titanium hammer I made awhile ago. Thanks for your help and info, I appreciate your time.
It would be interesting to hammer a chisel into that and see how well the layers are really bonded. This is pretty fascinating. Thanks for your hard work.
Next time try welding the niobium in place onto the canister so that it doesnt move. It should prevent condensing and will allow a more even damascus. Keep it up and if you need any more ideas I'm a blacksmith too so I can always try to help.
niobium and titanium might work well together since they both have high melting temperatures or maybe tungsten. lots of fun rare elements that have some pretty cool aspects
Tim wow your videos are always interesting to see because you always are testing different kinds of mutuals. learning as you go it's always very cool to see. Can't wait to see how this space Damascus goes for you both. Keep up the great craftsmanship and hard work and education of this beautiful craft. Forge on tim.
Interesting. You did solder niobium plates with steel. Niobium melts in 2477C, which is 1000C more than steel. No risk to melt that in a forge. That material could have some interesting properties so I hope you revisit this again. Maybe drilling Niobium and then put shavings into that container with steel
Timothy, I believe that the perfect combination for that Damascus is the Niobium with titanium! I know that would be little expensive, but you can anodize both and obtain different colors of material with the same process!! About this experience it's like you said! It's not a failure but a learning experience!!
@@erikcourtney1834 there is a gap between 800º Celsius on the melting point between materials!! Maybe because of that nobody tries! Plus it's a expensive!!
I can't stop drooling over your forge! Really neat idea forging those two materials! That is outside the box thinking man. It is important to keep things fresh and continue experimenting and learning along the way! Great channel here man! Thank you!
DUDE! You should try to encase some regular damascus metal inside of that stuff and try to melt it and just let it cool without tampering it and see how it looks like when they combine. Like melt the metals and let it cool then forge something from it after peeling the casing Off first 💪
You put that block on the anvil, and I was amused to see you apparently using the titanium hammer you made in the video I watched just a couple of days ago. I'm glad you like it enough to use it for this!
Part of me wants to see osmium/iridium Damascus, but that would be both insanely expensive and really hard on any of your tooling. I think osmium in powder form can form osmium tetroxide, which is toxic. That also probably puts a damper into the idea.
Well you don't really have to forget weld it. It almost cast itself in the canister. If the stuff that melted is still strong after it cools down you could heat it back up (hopefully without melting it) and forge it out. If the other metal in the canister was tac welded together into a pattern it should keep that shape and the other stuff should fill in all the gaps. You might be able to make something cool out of it. Idk if you understand that word vomit of a thought but I'm not words-ing good right now lol
Good thing you didnt use the power hammer. Lol would have hurt. But it dose look really cool how it turned out. Nice job great vid. The blupers where funny 😆
Hi Timothy - like your experiments - that´s the way to find out what´s possible... Maybe a way to connect the niobium with maraging steel is with diffusion welding. Both materials should work good with this process. That just as a first step to get a layer structure with a good bonding. After that forging should be possible.
You should handle your Niobium with gloves. Certain people's sweat can etch the material while other people are actually allergic. I learned this when I worked at the NSCL in Michigan.
Hi Tim. I did some research, and I found that in order to make a Damascus type artistic look you would need a much closer melting point. Because the difference between steel and niobium is so great it is difficult to control the reaction. I also found that tantalum has a much closer melting point to niobium of 3017°C. Niobium being 2477°C, could give you that Damascus style you're looking for without it being so difficult to work with. Niobium has a similar ductility to iron. I belive that if you preheat the tantalum, then add the niobium in layers alternating between the two while you forge it, could yield better results without melting the niobium. Also; using the box seemed to have been working well. Perhaps a flat tool that fits in the box in combination with the hydrologic press could help in keeping the pieces organized.
Great job! The end result may not have been exactly what you wanted or hoped for but giving it a go and taking a chance to learn something new is awesome. Hope to see you keep going and trying new things like this. Failure or not its great to see just what happens. Keep up the hard work. 👍🚀🔥🥇
Haven't watched the full vid yet, but if you want a bit more commercial variety, Inconel 718 and Vanadium would make a really slick aerospace damascus.
A really cool experiment, l think that the 2 melting point are too much difference. But love the fact that you are experimenting. Also like seeing the big guns on your videos
I bet you could put some niobium spacers along the side to keep them from collapsing in the liquid steel. Getting them to be the exact thickness of the steel plates would be the trick tho. Neat idea overall. :)
Bend or cut the high temp steel and weld it into a cool pattern, then put it in a canister and allow the maraging steel to melt around it. Could make some really cool mosaic tiles!
If you're still interested in the tool steel side of this experiment, you could maybe try damascus made of A-10 and M-4. The A-10 has 2 percent nickel, and they're both high-alloy, so should be 'sort of' compatible for forge welding. Plus, tool-steel damascus should be plenty tough and sharp, and maybe even kinda cheap compared to the exotics you've been tinkering with.
What if you encased some lower melting point metals in a nyobian case. Those metals can melt and maybe swirl some. Then let it cool cut of case, and work with that billet. I think pattern might be interesting.
I am not sure you realize the sheer potential of what you have actually done here. You might believed you failed but in reality you actually succeeded in something far greater than your original goal. Incredible. Absolutely mind blowing incredible.
Forge welding metals and Mokume Gane is basically the same proces. The proces is called diffusion welding/diffusion bonding. Its putting 2 or more dissimular metals together using heat and pressure. You dont need to melt one of the steels to get them to attach to each other. I have read in an artikel you only need to go up to 70-80% of the temperature needed to melt the metal that has the lowest meltingpoint in the stack. If you are planning to fuse more than 2 metals , the in between layers need to be the metal with the lowest meltpoint .The reason why you did not get a stacked billet using these 2 metals is because you got the maraging steel way to hot.( you did no forge welding but you were in fact brazing ) I did experiment with titanium and steel ( experimenting with some more affordable metals :) )...in the end i used a copper layer as a binding layer to get the titanium to stick to the high carbon steel. Aplane encasing did not work to get the billet oxigen free....i used a 2 feet long tube to feed the encasing with pure argon ...that worked. The plan was to first make a grade 2 and grade 5 mix timascus and use that as the sides to carbon steel to make a san_mai pocket knife......i did not get that far yet. I very much enjoy these video's from people trying to do things that are rare or are even never done before...very inspiring work Timothy (sorry for the bad English).
The problem trying to match pure niobium to steel is that niobium and iron have a eutectic point where the melting point is as low as about 2500F. Even though the melting point of the two metals is much higher, the Nb dissolves into the steel until there is enough to lower the melting point. That looks like what happened here. Even if you did manage to forge weld this at lower temperatures, it probably wouldn't be useful for knife making as the combination of Nb + Fe forms some hard and brittle phases which would ruin the properties of the steel. Niobium is used in a lot of steels at tiny percentages, and nickel superalloys use about 4%, but applications for pure niobium are virtually non-existent.
Niobium is one component used in VERY LOW %'s to make Cro-Mo Steel into Tool Steel. I'm thinking the Niobium plates sacrificed a thin layer to the Maraging Steel, and made a Tool-type alloy. This stuff demolished his cutting wheels and other tools 🤣
I would like to see you try "TItanium & Steel" Damascus. I dont know if that is possible but I really like the Idea of a Knife or Sword made out of that
great to see someone using a respirator. Consider switching to a full-face (or getting a swing-down face shield). The acids used in anodizing can really bad if they happen to splash into an eye. And if you can smell the tanks, you shouldn't be breathing that air unfiltered...
You could mix the Metals by first melting the Niobium and the putting the other Steel inside. But If You Do, it could happen that the Niobium splashes, because of the different melting Temperatures, maybe increasing the Steel's One, slowly
Hey guy! The design that was generated was very cool, something like abstract modern art, you could cut a slice from that block with that design and make a pendant or some other artifact. The flaw was worth it, you could even make new designs by melting the metal that way. Next time try forging the niobium with metals with a similar melting point.👍
I just wanna say... You not only make great content, but your creativity is second to none. Even I can't compete with that. Excellent work and how goes the titanium knife project?
I wonder if you heated the two metals separately and then forged what you wanted in one shot, before it totally cooled. Or, have your buddy stand there with the torch as you forge to extend the time you have?
Before you started swinging the hammer, I was having serious flash backs to that Mythbusters episode where they did the exploding jawbreakers. That could have been bad. To quote The Simpsons, "Ze goggles, zey do nothing!".
If I'm not mistaken you said one of those metals had a melting point of like 4600 degrees and the other was 2600 degrees if that's the case then that will cause one metal to liquefy before the other even turns red...
Huh. That's exactly how I imagined it going with two metals of extremely different melting points, like encasing lead plates in a welded steel box expecting them to forge together. Both are fascinating yet incompatible forging metals, though maybe the ideal marriage between these two is to craft a rigid structure from the niobium and simply forge maraging steel around it. One has high temp and hardness, the other is malleable and strong. Maybe a core structure of niobium leading to the edge of a blade, encased by maraging steel to support the niobium and prevent a brittle blade. Maraging 350 is a superalloy, with a respectable Brinell of 601, while niobium is way past that point at 736...surpassing even nitinol.
I have no idea if this would actuslly work, but if the metals maintain their drastically different melting points after forging, could you completely melt one out of a finished piece? Make a sort of skeleton demascus
They do that in jewelry making, but it’s a corrosion process. Basically pattern weld gold and maybe copper together, and let some acid eat up the copper. Don’t know about steel but would be very interesting I think, most likely it’ll make a mess because the metal when melted just kinda stay there or not drain completely, but I won’t knock it till I see it.
Loving the content. I'm also jealous that you have a supplier that will give you just the amount of material you need. As a hobby smith and living in a less civilised society I am constantly butting heads with local suppliers who want to sell me industrial amounts of steel. They never seem to appreciate that selling to the small consumer still increases their sales, even if only a small amount. If they only sell to industrial buyers they only maintain their current rates. More is more, even if only by a small margin.
This channel is so underrated. Love your stuff. Great editing and filming. You also seem like a hell of a dude to kick a beer back with. Keep the stuff coming!
Does this mean you're going to finish the zirconium knife or show the last part in finishing the side blast forge? I've seen you using it but it would have been nice to see the finishing and the install and the first firing up of it...
So b4 I comment I don't know much about the materials used here but honestly, next time I would keep the damascus at a lower melting point (like 3900°) so that the steel doesn't just melt when u hammer it down, I feel you would get a better compression of the two materials here. Other than that, very interesting vid, I absolutely love your curiosity here, and very much look forward to your next video. And I'm curious, if you can get the damascus to do what you want next time, can you run some "forged in fire" style tests to test how durable ur damascus is?
Cool content. I wish to see if you would melt this steel with dust of naobium in so it melt together in one chunk. Thank you for your content big time! Regards Andrew Zozulia.
Props for going along, even though you learned about the correct melting temperature of MAR250, and the huge difference to the melting point of Nb. If I were a blacksmith (but I'm not) I would have ditched the initial plan. You "failure" was no failure at all, it was highly informative/interesting. But please, wear eye protection when you're working with chemicals, ok?
