Southern Alberta Hammer-In

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by glatt

Impressive! So what's that glowing liquid dripping out when it was first being heated up with flux?

That's slag. It's a combination of flux and oxides/scale.

Flux just lowers the melting point of the oxides and allows them to run off the metal. If you don't use flux and have any oxides or anything in the weld you will create cold shuts (or inclusions) which pretty much ruin your weld. Cold shuts can cause the weld to break, which in laminated steel can be pretty spectacular/dangerous.

I hear British blacksmiths must make a clean weld without flux for their master test.

[Lola Bunny]

Super cool! I was hoping to see the final product though. A tad disappointed.

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by Lola Bunny

Super cool! I was hoping to see the final product though. A tad disappointed.

This isn't the billet from above, but it's a really nice one by an awesome father and son team:


I wish I could afford $200 for a billet that you might get one or two knives out of. I would be too scared to touch it at this point.

Here's a completed knife by J. Nielson, who was also demonstrating at the hammer in:

[gvidas]

What's the relationship between intricacy/beauty of a Damascus knife blade and the durability/strength? Are they related, like the more pretty swirly bits the better it keeps an edge? Or do they diverge at some point, with "pretty but not so functional" over in a adjacent room from "pretty but functional"?

[Lola Bunny]

Thanks, Perry! Those are absolutely gorgeous knives! I would love to have a neck/keychain knife one day....sigh. And I'm with Foot3. It would've been really nice to be there.

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by gvidas

What's the relationship between intricacy/beauty of a Damascus knife blade and the durability/strength? Are they related, like the more pretty swirly bits the better it keeps an edge? Or do they diverge at some point, with "pretty but not so functional" over in a adjacent room from "pretty but functional"?

There's a lot of debate and little testing that I've seen.

You can see in the above Damascus blade that the maker went to a deal of trouble to ensure that one kind of steel ran almost the entire length of the blade. I'd bet that's the higher carbon steel. The entire blade is probably tempered with that as a consideration, too.

Some say this is pointless, as Damascus is inherently weak. I think I accept this when it comes to the coarse patterning. I don't think it's a concern with the tight patterns, like the classical "watered" look. In that case the steels are so well mixed that you're not going to have wildly differing properties.

I have seen one damascus blade that delaminated in use. It was 5160 and 1084 (I think). 5160 is known to be an impossible steel to make a good forge weld to other steels.

Mokume tends to be a lamination of copper and brass or gold and silver. Very pretty, but not really any function to it beyond the decorative.

Originally Posted by Lola Bunny

Thanks, Perry! Those are absolutely gorgeous knives! I would love to have a neck/keychain knife one day....sigh. And I'm with Foot3. It would've been really nice to be there.

Ed, and some other guys, make pens out of Damascus. The day he makes a Damascus fountain pen is going to be sad day for my bank account.

[Lola Bunny]

Originally Posted by Perry Winkle

Ed, and some other guys, make pens out of Damascus. The day he makes a Damascus fountain pen is going to be sad day for my bank account.

OMG!!!! I want one! I'm gonna have to start saving.

Btw, It never occurred to me that a damascus blade knife could be weak.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's weak compared to modern steel alloys, but in it's day it was far superior to anything else. While I love the look of the Damascus blades ( I have several), the pens not so much. Maybe it's the way they were photographed, but looking at the link, they looked like plastic novelties from 1950s Japan. I'm pretty sure they probably look much better in person.

I would commit some extremely large sins for the Bat Knife.