Southern Alberta Hammer-In

[Perry Winkle]

A couple of weekends ago my wife and I went to Canada for a knifemaking geek event. She took a bunch of pictures. Some of which are here.

I'm still trying to write up a trip report but I'm stuck wandering around the writer's block.

[casimendocina]

Boring questions but who is the report for and why do you have to write it?

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by casimendocina

Boring questions but who is the report for and why do you have to write it?

And a good way around writer's block is to write something completely irrelevant.
Let us be your irrelevant draft. Just spill it out and come back to tidy it up later.
The Cellar likes that kind of reportage. Or just ignores it.
I should know.

What I have seen in the pics so far doesn't have much context for me, althouth it is interesting.
I'd just love for you to add some as I am interested in you (and by connection your partner).
If there are too many photos - which can be daunting - just give us a selection and again, that's practice if you are feeding back elsewhere.

Perry, pet, you lived in Newcastle.
You can take on the world.

[glatt]

I'd like to hear more about the damascus steel. How it's done and why.

I see some sheets being spot welded, and then borax? being poured over the bunch and it being forged and pressed. And molten stuff dripping out. There are also the cross sections of the finished block, which look neat, but what do you do with that block to make a blade?

[Pete Zicato]

Originally Posted by glatt

I'd like to hear more about the damascus steel. How it's done and why.

The key to Damascene steel is its impurities. There was a fascinating article in the Smithsonian years ago describing the recreation of Damascene steel.

This is a different article, but I think its worth reading.

It's a pdf.

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by casimendocina

Boring questions but who is the report for and why do you have to write it?

I just want to write it up for myself. Maybe post it to a blog I setup for smithing tales.

Originally Posted by Sundae

Perry, pet, you lived in Newcastle.
You can take on the world.

I just laughed out loud. It's true. Newcastle was a very special experience...

Originally Posted by glatt

I'd like to hear more about the damascus steel. How it's done and why.

I see some sheets being spot welded, and then borax? being poured over the bunch and it being forged and pressed. And molten stuff dripping out. There are also the cross sections of the finished block, which look neat, but what do you do with that block to make a blade?

Thanks for the questions. They give me a jumping off point to start telling the tale.

Damascus is a big topic fraught with controversy. We don't know the real process with which it was actually made. What we make today is similar in concept. Since that's what I know, that's what I'll describe.

The main reason modern knifemakers use Damascus is artistic. Collectors will simply pay more for a Damascus knife because of the way it looks and the mythology of the material. It does have a practical advantage in that you can combine the properties of two types of metal into one blade.

More technical, less loaded terms for Damascus are pattern welded or laminated steel.

When you are planning to build a billet of Damascus, you often choose to include a steel that excels at holding an edge and one that is resilient. The part that is magic to me is that at the end of the process of making the billet (which I'll describe later), you end up with the edge-holding steel along the blade edge and the resilient/springy steel backing that up to prevent breakage under heavy abuse.

Some time I'll describe the bladesmithing Journeyman trials and you'll understand why these properties are important and how they must be balanced.

Anyway, on to forging a Damascus billet. There are as many ways to do this as there are smiths. I'm just describing one of those.

The billet I'm going to describe is (as far as I can remember) made of 15N20 and 52100. You can see the actual properties of these steels on Ed Caffrey's site. Ed is the guy forging this billet and is also the master smith who will be teaching me bladesmithing all of next week.

Thin strips of these two steels are welded together in alternating layers with the process most of you are familiar with.



This block of steel is then welded to a handle made of rebar or pipe.



The raw billet is then brought up to forge welding heat, which is around 2200 degrees Fahrenheit. It's then covered in flux (anhydrous borax, in this case). The flux helps prevent scale (impurities) from forming and being smashed into the billet while welding.



At this point the metal is about as hard as modelling clay. This soft glob of steel is then pressed in a large hydraulic press, which smashes the layers of steel together causing them to permanently and solidly weld together.



This billet is then reheated and pressed further down to a working size of about 1" x 1".



This square bar is then "re-squared." This is hard to describe. You basically press each corner so that the sides become the corners and the corners become the faces.

The welds are then ground out since they are junk and will interfere with the patterning.

That bar is then cut into several pieces and welded into another billet and then forge welded again.



Now you can see the pattern in the end of the bar.



The billet is accordion folded and flattened. This brings the pattern to the surface. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of this part.

The resulting bar is then forged down into rectangular bar stock. A common size is 1.5" x 0.25" x however long you want it to be.



That gets forged into a knife shape and then finished in a painstaking process I'll describe some other time.

[Perry Winkle]

By the way. There were three smiths doing demonstrations. Together they finished this knife:

[glatt]

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

[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.

[BigV]

the last two pictures in post number six are the final product, a billet of Damascus steel.

one thing that can be done with such a billet is to make a knife, shown in the following picture.

I was not disappointed. Thank you, sir.

[Griff]

Fantastic! I hope I live long enough to add pattern welding to my list of skills.

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by Lola Bunny

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

Originally Posted by BigV

the last two pictures in post number six are the final product, a billet of Damascus steel.

one thing that can be done with such a billet is to make a knife, shown in the following picture.

I was not disappointed. Thank you, sir.

Originally Posted by Griff

Fantastic! I hope I live long enough to add pattern welding to my list of skills.

I am only disappointed that I wasn't there, too.

Long live Vicarious Pleasure!

[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"?