Daniel Cauble

I'll be making more in time. I can probably make a few paring knives and sell them exclusively here in the future.

This is the saya for the project.

Unfortunately i cannot use it until i finish up this long project ive been working on which is finally nearing completion. I think a sakimaru is in order for this new steel though. I like to make japanese style kitchen knives and frequently take steels to 64+ range with hand ground geometry. Very thin edges on most. The single bevel knives like yanagiba or the aforementioned sakimaru have even thinner meat behind the edges. Very delicate knives. I've only made a few like this but not a sakimaru, which i have a desire to do.

Yea, I've got a stick of it sitting here now. I'm most interested in the topend hardness and toughness in relation. At 67-68rc, I can knock back my geometry and sharpening angle a few degrees - hopefully.

Other side

Yes it is indeed. The dendritic structure was broken down and spheroidized and then coaxed into bands through specific forging :]

This is a small "herb chopper" I made recently from one of my recent ingots. 1.6% C with a lamellar water pattern. Bog oak and titanium pants.

The steel is really hard to ignore

Coffee pagination.

Final polishing and etch. This is pre-coffee etch. I hope you enjoy the silky nature as much as i do.

Thanks guys!!

One day I hope this thread and 10 years of smelting will get me a flaming beard :0

It's almost as if it allows the adjacent steel to reach eutectic and then stops.

Yes as I see your explanation of the process better here than on FB, I see thay Alan is right. They are doing a direct reduction process. Not really sure why they use borax in this when all you really need is silica. The method of adhering the cast to the iron is neat. Never heard of it as a process as Alan points out though until now. It's similar to how I combine cast iron made in the hearth to actual oroshi steels. Piling them on and welding at lower end heats before the cast crumbles and after a few heats of this, it diffuses enough into the steel to behave with the rest of it. I fully believe that in the beginning, the welded steel to the cast actually allows it to forge. Much like the ductility imparted to steel when you forgeweld iron to it in sanmai. When crossing into really high carbon ranges and cooling slowly, you create widmenstatten cementite. I create these structures in my 1.5-3% steels and cast irons in oroshigane. The only issue with these structures present in the steel is that it is seemingly difficult to break down and diffuse the cementite into adjacent welded steels or irons without high heat. Even then, I've had it still leach out carbon much slower than cementite in grain boundaries. To me, this is why his mix of that material and something like wrought shows a distinct difference of light and dark. The excess cementite hasn't diffused into the lower carbon irons enough to break apart and this etches bright. I took a micrograph of the cross section of one of my oroshogane blades that used material like this and behaved as I described and it really look like this. It may also explain why I was having weird spectro analysis on some of my oroshigane. Areas after folding a bar 4-5 times had concentrations of ~.5% C, and others much, much higher. This steel in micro below was 2 different billets thst were independently folded 6 times and then alternated stacked on eachother in a 4 layer stack and folded 6 more times. Notice that carbon even after 6 folds did not diffuses readily into adjacent material. Edit: Orrrrr it's something Phosphorous related. ???

To me, shear steels are not nearly as good looking as folded hearth steels. I second what Emiliano expresses about clean starting materials. Some of my work and info in my hearth thread were made from remelted bloom/wrought, but a greater majority was the melting of 1018. Low enough S&P, and while it has high levels of Managanese, the hearth process removes it. I have found in foundry journals that the addition of silica to a low temperature melt has an effect on lowering P levels. It so happens, I cast sand Into the fire during melts. I haven't done before and after analysis, but the effect seems to be specific to lower melting temps and doesn't seem to work the modern day steel foundry temps (5,000F~). I have melted a lot of 1018 with sand addition and without. Both product seem to consolidate well for me and act more like a modern steel (with no managanese)manganese. The only issues with oroshigane and the lack of slags are issues that happen during the folding process. It's is much more difficult to fix delams or bubbles in a billet vs doing it with tamahagane. This was told to me by one of these swordsmiths on social media, and I find it to be true with my own struggles.

Anndddd I was able draw all of the teeny, tiny spheroidized cementite into the bands and harden. Through hardened flawlessly, no warps. 64+RC.

Knife in pre-HT grind window etch. Made from bar 2 posts up.

Another puck of similar composition as the last bar made and set to the side to keep the momentum rolling. Perfect melt. Super undercooling. Due to extremely slow cooling, the structure solidified with the cementite moving from primary dendrites to GBC. The center, last to solidify probably did so in more of a jolt in comparison to the rest with the presence of dendrites. Should be a super, easy forging with the health of the ingot and composition. No graphite formation. Carbon looks to be around 1.6-1.7%.

Using different alloys to obtain different patterns..

You may have something there!

Have you checked my thread a ways down? The likely reason why you are experiencing low carbon at the bottom and really high at the top, is because you really need the lower chamber to be hotter initially. Perhaps a longer pre-heat before the first injection of material. When the furnace isn't hot enough, the iron doesn't stay molten for long and could freeze up before it reaches the maximum bottom, which also leaves decreases carbon uptake since most of it is from the atmosphere when it is molten. This eventually builds up and the last of the material to be melted is very close to the hottest zone (tuyure blast) thus stays molten or very close to much longer with a lot of CO. I also feel like there may be too much scale on your plates for tsumiwakashi. Try to steam blast scale away prior to, or even vinegar soak to remove scale. The inclusions are already present in your initial consolidation and will probably follow you through the folding process. This materials doesn't quite behave like bloomery or tamahagane in which those materials still have enough slag in the beginning to allow easier mending of cracks and delays like that. I have followed many Japanese swordsmiths and this is one of the lessons I have seen shared. Plus, I've had it happen to me. I personally only use a small air matress blower for this. If you are using a standard 12"^3 furnace, it's all you need. Too much and you increase your chances of making a puddle of cast iron.

The 260mm long Gyuto right before I take it to my disc sander to true up surfaces and grind in the convexity. First time hitting it with a nital rub to see what's actually going on. Will deff. Do a nital dip instead. It's just a dirty polish on the grinder as I go back to 60 grit on the disc. The little bit of decarb towards tbe edge is tenacious and may not grind out, ah well.