new to the trade but having fun

i kinda get that and... well... lol how do you get the thin shims or plates for damascus, i know it was originally cast with extra carbon and smiths use thin layers alternating high n low carbon ( i read this, not trying to sound like a know it all ) but how do you get thin shims... forged or bought??? i really need to find suppliers for several things, steel is hard to get now, i mean the steel yards only want to sell to companies and hardware stores want to sell you a 6' piece of 1x1x1/8 angle for like $20 God forbid they ever get in square stock...

can't even buy coal around here that i know of...

Yes, there is such a thing as too much flux. It's not glue, and it's primary purpose is to keep the welding surfaces from oxidizing while being heated. It's secondary purpose is to be slightly corrosive and clean the area to be welded. But when you're up to welding temp you want that flux OUT of there so the metal faces will fuse together. Too much flux and it gets stuck in there as an inclusion.

Nope. Give it a decent smack, but don't beat the snot out of it. The welding surfaces will be in a molten to semi-molten state, and while you do need to expell that flux you don't want to expell the molten metal.

Did business with Pacific Steel in Oregon recently. Price was half what another popular source was charging for 5160 (22 foot minimum but the price was right). I expect shipping rates vary according to location of the source and destination so if your on the east coast you'd probably be better off buying from over there. Lately discovered a place one town over from me that says they'll can supply more unusual steels as well as some silver and copper sheet in smallish quantities (looking to try my hand at Mokume). Yet to look hard into this though. It pays to talk to folks who use the stainless and tool steels to find sources. I did a lot of web searching and came up blank but the guy at the local welding shop pointed me to another local dealer who in turn pointed me to the jackpot.

GA

Well, they don't start out thin, they get thin during all the folding and drawing and folding and drawing and... I start with nominal 1/4" stock and go from there. I've found a trick that makes welding easier; keep the block as close to a cube as you can during the folding phase when you're trying to get the layer count up. It's a surface area to volume thing, less surface area equals slower heat loss equals better faster welds. After you get the folding done, you can draw it out to shape. Watch a Japanese Mastersmith, he works a fist sized lump until he's done folding, then draws a blade out at lower heat.

Try the junkyard for material. Structural steel is usually 1025 to 1040, which will do for the 'soft' part. Leaf springs are usually .50 to .60 carbon, which will do for the 'hard' part. Axles are good too, but may have quite a 'memory' so you'll probably have to use bigger hammers to convince it to change shape for good.

Start with a five layer stack with three hard parts and two soft parts. Every time you fold, the layer count doubles. 10, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640... it adds right up. Depending on how fine or coarse you want the finished pattern, you can stop folding anywhere.

Charly the Bastard wrote: (snip)

I remember one time when I was talking with somebody (Aussie gallery owner) who was insisting one of her swords had been folded 10,000 times. I got her to under stand the folds/layer differential (5 fold = 160 layer) but she still insisted that it had been folded 10,000 times. I'd like to see somebody who could do that many folds outside of a vacuum chamber and have anything but a pile of scale at the base of their anvil at the end of the process.

Well it does sound like a lot, but 11 folds equals 10,240 layers. Granted,

11 folds is way too many for me, but who knows?

If its not a pattern it might not be too bad of a loss. Ive had to add a billet a few times just because of realizing I wont have enough for the final size. After a uncovering those inclusions during a final grind, I began grinding off the scale between folds, loose even more metal, but havent wasted a billet since. BTW would a person even be able to detect a pattern in that many folds?

Forger wrote: (snip)

I did the math at the time, if I remember right the theoretical layers would be sub-sub-atomic range.

I would think you would need a microscope to see them,,but I would suspect that they would be there, unless the base steels are all just higher and lower carbon content plain carbon steels. In other words if they started with just 1005 and 1095 carbon steels I would think by that many layers and reheats the carbon migration would turn the whole billet into something like 1045. but if they started with say,1005 and

52100 then the layers could be seen if magnified high enough.

Bear

You can stop carbon migration cold by using 'shims' of nickel 300 between the high and low carbon layers. Fold it seven times and it polishes up like a chrome fingerprint in the steel. You can also use any really high nickel steel, like the 'food' stainlesses and get pretty much the same effect. Remember, 200 and 300 series SS is not heat treatable, and will be part of the 'soft' part in the finished piece, but the 'hard' part will still be quite hard.

With supercharged gas and a powerhammer, you can fold seven times in about two hours in a single heat. For this old fart, that's a Day's Work, YMMV.

Charly

I find it amazing how much the price of steel varies in a region. Pretty easy to find 2:1 prices I've found. Of course, now it' s more like 4:2.

Steve

Greyangel wrote:

What you do is stack up a billet of whatever you have thickness, maybe

1/8" or thicker. Weld the pile and draw it out 2x in length, fold it in half, weld again, draw, etc. After you do that 5-6 times, the layers are really thin. So you don't need thin stuff to start.

Steve

me wrote:

still workin on the burner... i thought this would be the easy part but it's not, can get it to mix just right and i've tried making a mongo style but... the only refrac. i can find is furnace cement & i'm learning to hate that stuff, so the optional addition they mentioned in directions was now obsolete, the burner does pretty good in open air, but in forge it pores blue flame out the doors and in or out it will burn a few sec then ignite back at the jet... choke it down it goes back to tip but with in seconds it's backlit to the air induction again...

signed Frustrated in Carolina lol

You're running out of air, that's why the combustion front is back-crawling on you. Figure out a way to get more combustion air into the box. Just what exactly are you using for fuel, 'gas' covers a lot of territory. You might have and exhaust flow problem. The air in the box is consumed and heated, but is restricted from leaving, which gets you a reducing environment at above ambient pressure and nothing can get in to feed the fuel. Normally-aspirated forges can be tricky in the firebox, and unless you have a blower somewhere in the mix, that's what you have. Natural Gas and Propane forges work because more heat is poured into the box than can escape, so the temp rises over time. A blue flame runs about 4500 degrees at the 'best combustion' mix, but the box will only make

3000 max. Think jet engine, it's just a piece of pipe with a fan in it and a burner, but the shape of that pipe gets us around the world at 600 mph. Hot gasses take up more volume than cold ones, so if you constrict the exhaust, the pressure goes up. Look at your exhaust setup first.

Charly

i'm using propane, the weird part is that i can slide the choke open till i get apparently too much air because the flame will leap off burner tip and ignite, and even when it's in open air i have the same problems i have when burner is placed inside forge, the jet tip i drilled a 1/16 hole... i'm thinking this may have been too large, at this point i'm grasping at straws...

back-crawling on

I'm thinking you might be right, 1/16" is pretty darn big jet.

In Colorado (at 5000 feet) I used to use a #58 drill, which is 0.042" diameter. Quite a bit smaller than 1/16". Maybe a little larger for lower elevations, but 1/16 is too big.

Steve

me wrote:

me wrote:

Okay, flame separation is too much gas pressure. A .063 jet isn't out of the question, but you'll need to tune it a bit. first off, give up the idea of moving the burner in and out, mount it and be done. The 'housing' for the burner (I'm assuming an atmospheric, ie non-supercharged, burner) needs to help feed air to the burner so that there's no possibility of inflow air constriction. It's all about air pressure differential, similar to a carburator. You control the mixture with the air valve AND the line pressure. Mount the burner, then open the air all the way. Start with a three to five PSI gas line pressure and light the burner with a wad of newspaper. Observe the flame for color, burner face retention, and 'steadieness'. Add gas by increasing the line pressure until the flame disconnects from the buner face. This will be the max pressure for this burner. Observe the flame for color and if too lean, (orange-red weak looking flame) cut back on the air until you get the blue fiend. If too rich, (fat yellow 'lighter' looking flame, cut back the line pressure until the fiend comes out of hiding... new max line pressure. It's tuned. Let it run for about twenty minutes and see how hot it gets the box. Remember that hot burner exhaust has to go somewhere, build a chimney on the back of the box. If the box doesn't make it to bright yellow in a half hour, you need more fire, add another burner and increase the chimney throat area by 50% to handle the increased exhaust. These are 'internal engineer ballpark figures', don't take them as Gospel, but they 'feel right'. Use a long feed line the first time you light it off. Kindling first, then air, then fuel. Mine uses city gas with a blower, you never want to get the order of starting wromg, backfire, flameout, hung start, just like an early jet engine. Don't turn your back on it until the inside of the box gets to autoignite temp.

Let me know if you keep your eyebrows...

Charly