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This was donated by a co-worker. It came out of a steel fabrication shop and wonder if it's worth going through the hassle. Got a blank cut out just curious if it's worth my time going further. 7" blank cut out. It's a big ol thing for free! And a pic of my charcoal forge for fun

Help! Newbie possibly in over his head A good co-worker of mine passed on to me a handful of steel rods. I "spark" tested them and was content with the results. I lack welding equipment so I improvised by using rebar tie wire and wrapping it in twisted knots. It's more to hold in place than anything. Tossed newly wrapped wad of 1/4" steel rods in my home made charcoal forge and heated that bad boy up. I tried to simply forge weld the ends but to no avail. Boraxed it to hell and back and re heated. Now to the over my head part.....I through the wad into the vise and started twisting them into a cable looking...thing. I've heated till it started to spark and continued to slap it with my 4lb hammer to no avail. So bear in mind: newb! Minimal equipment, lots of ambition, and willing to listen and try. Thanks for any input.

Ok, so I wanted to make something a little special... I decided to combine modern #20 steel for the edge, and some - I presumed iron - I'd dug out of the ground on my property which I bought last year. (The oldest part of my house is dated to around 1820) So.. I found this round iron wedge under my old storehouse, along with some chains and farm equipment for digging in the earth and whatnot... So I decided to use the wedge for the san-mai lamination. I drew it out into two flat bars, cleaned them up, and added the modern steel. While working on the forge weld, I noticed the mystery-metal was extremely soft, and it felt as if it would not "take" very well... And by "take", I mean stick to the steel. I found it to be somewhat difficult to get it laminated. The "iron" would simply be squeezed around the carbon steel in the middle - as a result of their quite different levels of hardness obviously. Anyhow, I could see the blade starting to de-laminate even at normalization, so I dropped the differential hardening and just went for a straight quench instead. I got two normalization cycles in before quencing. I let the blade air-cool all the way down to +23C before re-heating. Anyhow, here are some pics: BEFORE QUENCH: AFTER QUENCH: Notice the extreme difference in color between the edge and the jacket? AFTER #120 SANDPAPER: I have no previous experience with iron - so I am asking... Is this how iron looks in contrast to steel in a lamination like this? I thought it looked so special, I could not bring myself to discart the blade. I feel the historical significance of the iron or whatever it is - is too valuable to me to simply discart this otherwise fine blade. The mystery-metal does not even seem to have taken the quench... Hardness is like - less than 40HRC. But the edge on the other hand is as expected 63HRC - which is as high as this particular steel goes. It current rests in my oven at 200C... Oh, and that delamination near the handle area? - I cheated and welded that bastard shut with my arch welder! I'll hapilly take any input and thoughts on that "iron" or whatnot though... I havent seen coloration like that before... Sincerely, Alveprins.