J.Arthur Loose

Love it.

Nice, dave- I've thought about trying something like that. My trick is to drill smaller than the widest part of tang by a bit and leave sharp burs on the tang. Wrap the unsharpened blade in some leather, insert, and twist. It will carve out the taper perfectly. When the tang is close to depth, I use a Scandi knife maker back cutting tang saw, which makes very neat work of the final fit, and makes a square mortise fit to prevent twisting when finally assembled. But your way is much faster.

Yeah the uneven color as a billet cools often tells me if there's any issues. I don't get unwelds like that very often at all, but I do sometimes get blisters from my initial weld, typically 10-12 thin layers. Yep, Alan, that's what I do too, more or less. I cycle the billet hot to cool to raise the blister, and pop it with a punch. I enjoy the pretty blue flame that usually shoots out and then lightly flux it, reheat and go in with a broad faced ball pein and lightly spiral from the edges to the center of the hole, then flux and flatten a bit. I've never seen a resulting flaw in a finished piece. Never tried the sugar trick.

Welcome aboard. Nice work.

Awesome.

Living well is the best revenge. I feel about the same way over a good long motorbike ride as you do about rock climbing, Joshua. Clears the head.

I like making stuff. If I didn't have to pay bills, I'd still make stuff. I'd do a lot more other &%#-ing things too. So the motivation is to pay the bills and be relatively happy, and to find time to make things that maybe don't pay the bills. Also, the fear of going back to do some jack-arse bureaucratic petty tyrant's constant bidding while having to get up before the sun does, and look longingly out a window on a beautiful day. Contrast that with the ability to have a simple afternoon beer on the job. Ha ha! eff you Mr. HS principal! I'm making more money than you ever screwed me for and I'm having a beer at work! Neener neener! thpthppthp! Yeah. That REALLY motivates me. But I'm with Owen. Fire and hammers and stuff keep me pretty happy in general. So that's what I try to stick to.

Love it.

It wasn't about definition defined by contrast. The boundaries between the steels were, for lack of a better description, muddy. Shrug. Aldo's great. I just prefer the consistency of the steels I've gotten used to over the past 20 years. I encourage new blade smiths to order from Aldo.

Tim McCreight has a nice book on casting, with a lot of options for going with alternatives to the common huge vacuum casting set up. I still use it as a studio reference for specific gravities & melting points etc. http://www.brynmorgen.com/PC.html

It was many, many years ago, but Admiral's 1095 was true to form, and best quenched in heated brine over oil. Very shallow hardening. I do prefer Admiral's 1070 / 15N20 for my damascus blades though. For whatever reason, I seem to get better pattern definition over Aldo's 1084 /15N20.

By the way, belated happy birthday to this thread! 10 years and STILL running. Because B=Fe²

Nice, Jim! Also, I LOVE those little salamanders. They're so cool!

I've been using these for twenty years or so. Egads. Anyway, the welder's shade #3 is fine except that it's too dark for me in my shop to simply wear all the time. I wanted glasses I could put on and forget about, so they stay on. This company makes a special lens that filters more specifically UV & IR and allows more ambient light in. I never feel the need to take them off or look over them. They just stay on. I have the 2.5 AUR-99. For unrelated reasons, I have exciting eyeballs, and they are regularly checked for exciting issues. No effects from all these years of forge work, and looking into the forge very regularly, so they have clearly done a very good job. http://www.auralens.net/en/aur-99-filter

Looks great, Matthew!