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If you've ever seen a Damascus Steel knife blade, you may have thought how Cool it would be if you could make one. Well, you can. You have to pay attention to some details, but you can make a piece of Damascus Steel. I did it and I ain't that good at the forge.
Damascus Steel is created by forge-welding several layers of steel into one piece - then drawing it out and folding it over onto itself and reforging it until you have 100 or more layers of steel. After you've shaped the Damascus into whatever you want - a knife blade, horseshoe, or decorative wall hanging, - you can treat it with acid and see the separate layers of steel that look like woodgrain. Modern day "pattern welding" uses a combination of tool steel and steel with nickel in it that makes the grain really stand out. |
| Like I said before, knife makers use a combination of steel to make blades more unique. In my research, I found that the combination of tool steel (1084) and tool steel with 2% nickel (15N20) was a good choice, because the forging heat was about the same for each. Note that the 2% nickel appears silver. You can purchase these and other materials at: Knife and Gun Finishing Supplies. For information, call: 928-537-8877 |  |
| To start your first forge-weld, you need to stack a "billet" of steel and nickel seven layers high, starting with the tool steel and alternating between that and the nickel. Then tie the stack together with bailing wire to make is easier to forge-weld the first time. |
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I started with an 8-inch billet and ended up with a 10-inch blade - not counting the tang. Always err to having too much steel. You can always use the extra to make a paper weight or something. Now, it's time to forge-weld the billet into one solid piece of steel. I can't really tell you how to do that successfully, because I don't really know why I've been successful with my forge-welding so far. I can tell you to take your time, crank the gas pressure up to 15-20 pounds, do about an inch or inch and a half at a time, flux the heck out of it, overlap each heat, and don't hit it too hard when you pull it out of the fire. I ended up with 112 layers when I was done and I managed to avoid having any impurities or voids in the welds. One of the reasons could have been that, when I drew the billet out, instead of folding the piece over when it was yellow hot, I cooled the piece and cut it exactly in half with a chop saw. Then I tacked the ends together with a torch. That way it was completely clean of slag for the next weld and the ends matched each time. |
| Most of you don't have a power hammer to draw out the steel and you can work a long time doing it by hand if you don't do it right. First, you need to own a few different sized tongs. Maybe you can borrow them from someone for this project. The original billet will be about 1/2 inch thick and you'll eventually be working with a 3/16 inch blade. Then, I'd recommend that you buy at least a 2 lb. hammer. Use the horn of the anvil to draw the steel out, because the curve will cut into the steel and push it length-wise instead of squashing it sideways on the face of the anvil |  |
| I talked to a fella down at Arms and Armor, a place that makes Mediaval weapons and he suggested that I limit the number of layers I made so the pattern would be more bold. So, after making 56 layers, I decided to do a test etch of the steel to see what I had. Considerng that I was going to be grinding the blade on both sides to the the edge, I determined that I would be looking at just 28 layers. The results were O.K. but a little boring. |  |
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I decided to go with one more forging to make 112 layers and add a little "twist" of my own. I drew it out, forged it together, and then forged the bar into a square rod - 8 inches long and 3/8 inch on each side. then, I heated it up to a yelow heat, put it in my vice, and gave it a full twist. It looked kinda like the picture on the left, but with one less twist. |
| Then, I flattened it out and started shaping the blade. I was going to make a dagger, so I made just a rough shape of the point and the two-sided bevel with the hammer. I wanted to cut across all the layers with my grinder and if I had forged the bevel completely, the layers would have been parallel with the shape and there wouldn't be any "grain" visible. |
| Before you etch the blade, all the shaping has to be done and the blade has to be free of scratches. That brings you to the most time-consuming part of the job - grinding the shape and polishing with whatever tools you have at your disposal.
Here's a list of the tools I used to finish the blade: |
| It's hard to photograph steel that looks like chrome, but this is a picture of the polished blade. There is no evidence of any sort of pattern or grain visible in the blade before you etch it with acid. I had no idea if my plan for twisting the steel would do anything good or if I was going to throw the piece away and pretend I'd never tried to make a Damascus knife. The polished blade was almost too pretty to etch, anyway. |  |
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You etch the blade with Ferric Chloride found in PCB Etchant Solution that you can purchase in a 16 oz. bottle at some Radio Shack stores. I found it in the Shoreview store. It's used for etching circuit boards on electronics. I mixed the solution about 1/2 and 1/2 with water. I was told that a slower etch is a "prettier" etch. I don't know what that means, but it sounded good to me, so I planned for a slower etch. Cooler solution will etch slower than hot solution. I made a PVC tube with a cap on the end to hold the solution. Use a vice to hold the tube solid. Make sure you make the tube long enough to emmerse the whole blade. |  |
| I drilled a hole in the tang of the blade so I could use a piece of bailing wire to suspend the blade a little off the bottom of the tube. Before you try to etch the blade, the steel has to be absolutely clean from all oils, or grease - including oil from your fingers. Any finger print will leave a spot that is not etched. Use Acetone and a clean rag to clean the surface and every indentation or crevice. I used rubber gloves and cleaned and dried the blade twice with Acetone to make sure. After the blade had been in the solution for about 15 minutes, I checked it to see if it was etching all over. Apparently, steel that is not etching will look silvery. It looked O.K. to me, but I still checked it every 15 minutes to see how it was doing. I was told that the blade would turn black, but it didn't seem to ever get that dark. I left it in the solution for over an hour before I took it out. In retrospect, I think I should have taken the blade out sooner. You'll be able to feel the grain of the layers. Even though it looked great when it was done, the grain seemed a little more pronounced than I would have liked. You have to neutralize the acid with water and rinse off as much of the black residue as you can with the water. After I removed as much residue as I could, I used 600 grit wet and dry sandpaper with WD40 to finish cleaning the blade. I was using this blade for a decorative knife, so I skipped the part about heat-treating and tempering the blade, because of the possibility of it warping in the process. The process of heat-treating isn't that complicated, but I didn't want to add to the stress I had of making this thing in the first place. Because this is not stainless steel, use gun oil or a bees wax coating to keep it from rusting.
Good luck if you want to try it. It's fun when it works out! |
