Dave Edgerton

Eric how did you make the eye? was it punched or folded and then forge welded. Beautiful work.

He said it snapped the standard boron bit so had to switch to a carbide one. Wonder if it could be made into rings?

No problem guys! This is why we post so that we learn from experiments and failures as well as success. The blade shown was quenched and HT.

Not really damascus but son needed a solid 1" bar for a project he is doing in shop class. We forge welded 1.25" cable into 4 Billets and then forge welded them into a larger block billet 1.25 x6". H then turned the finished piece on the lathe. Each initial billet was only about 5/8" square which is why we had to stack 4 together.

Just a small santoku style knife about 4" blade length. Will post again when handled. The cultivator sweeps are 1080 or 1085 pretty much a guarantee. The sickle knives probably have a bit of chrome and manganese as they have to be high wear and they stay sharp after the million cuts they make in a combine mowerbar.

Better with the pic

Made a small damascus blade using sickle sections from a combine and some steel from cultivator sweeps. Tons of this stuff on the prairies and all free. Both really good grades of 1080 steel.

To Sam: it was a dumb mistake To al Massey: will take a pic and upload

As for a bend that has to be corrected after quenching should I anneal the blade and correct? Sorry this topic should not be in show and tell forum

So I have discovered that cultivator sweeps are fantastic steel for blades. Very tough and they can be tempered and sharpened to a razor edge. The older ones pre 1970 seem to be better as well. Which leads me to my question of order of operations. Forged a blade then ground it out a bit for shape while annealed but I did not thin the cutting edge a lot. Next I brought it up to a nice light red and quenched in oil. It is at this point I don't know if I should temper the blade before final grind or if I should have ground it closer to final thickness in annealed state. The blade has a slight bend in it which I tried to tap out after quenching which resulted in the break. My bad.

I reply don't know what people were doing with an anvil to make so much damage on it. Almost plain abuse.

ok here are some pics

So I am watching this youtube video and noticed the smith is forge welding a hard white steel piece to a softer carbon steel. However I do not see him putting anothe layer of softer steel to surround the core. Am I not understanding something as I thought these knives were tri-lam.

How did you prep the billet for forge welding? I know it's hard to get the stainless to bond with anything. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Can you tell us your welding procedure for the billet? I am having trouble getting ours to stick.