52100 welding question?

[danpiotte 1]

To all you 52100 gurus out there,

 

I want to weld a 52100 edge to a preform of 1050 and band saw blade.

I am useing a coal forge and have some forge welding experience with mild steels.I have very little experience forge welding tool steels. The 52100 comes from leftover stock from a machine shop that roughs out bearing races for Timken and others. Any help or advice would be welcome.

 

Thanks

Daniel Piotte

[Greg Thomas Obach 6]

notta guru but i can tell you that for patternwelding, you might wanna pick steels that kinda move/flow at the same rate... eg 1084/15n20 is about the best i can think of for welding and contrast

 

52100 is stiff...and 1050 would be mushy (have to watch for welding shears)... so not so great ...aswell as the Cr in the 52 can also make it a pain to weld

 

it may even pop apart in the quench

 

but..it'll make a dandy knife on its own... just needs abit of a soak time to get the most out of it..... if you have a heat treat oven, its awesome

 

 

but don't take my word for it... go and try your experiment ... i love being wrong about stuff.. thats how i learn...

 

and i'm alway learning... haha

 

 

hey.. what about using an old nicholson file for the edge...thats close to a 1095 or such and should weld up better that the 52

 

good luck

Greg

 

 

 

 

To all you 52100 gurus out there,

 

I want to weld a 52100 edge to a preform of 1050 and band saw blade.

I am useing a coal forge and have some forge welding experience with mild steels.I have very little experience forge welding tool steels. The 52100 comes from leftover stock from a machine shop that roughs out bearing races for Timken and others. Any help or advice would be welcome.

 

Thanks

Daniel Piotte

[Howard Clark 6]

All good advice, Greg.

[reefera4m 0]

To all you 52100 gurus out there,

 

I want to weld a 52100 edge to a preform of 1050 and band saw blade.

I am useing a coal forge and have some forge welding experience with mild steels.I have very little experience forge welding tool steels. The 52100 comes from leftover stock from a machine shop that roughs out bearing races for Timken and others. Any help or advice would be welcome.

 

Thanks

Daniel Piotte

 

 

GTO nailed it. Even if you were able to get both metals to their respecitve proper forging heat at the same time (tricky when they are so dissimilar), the differential hardness would make it very difficult to hammer them together. GTO used the word 'mushy' for the 1050 and that's about as good as a term as there is to describe what you'd be dealing with in trying to forge the two together. I once tried mild steel with 5160 and just managed to make a mess .

 

You can, however, weld mild steel to 5160 or 52100 using a torch or MIG welder. I don't know if it would hold up to subsquent forgings like if your folded it. The only reason I know this was I wanted to change the shape of the tang on a blade of 5160. I'd already finished the blade except for heat treating so I just MIG welded a piece of mild steel to the end of the tang. After final shaping of the tang, I heat treated the the entire blade as though it was 100% 5160 and the end result was great. The tang showed no signs of cracks or fractures and when I clamped the end of the tang in my vice and test the flex of the blade it didn't deform or break. I believe that the little extra thickness of the tang compared to the blade helped.

[Bill Burke 0]

52100 is my favorite steel and I use it for most of my knives. What you want to do is possible but it is not real easy. The best/easiest way to get a 52100 edge on a billet of damascus is to do a san mai type contruction. you can either wrap the damascus around the 52100 or just make a sandwich with the damascus on the outside of the 52100. be sure to thermal cycle and Thoroughly normalize. I have not experianced any problem welding, forging or heat treating using 52100 combined with 410,416 and 316 stainless, wrought iron, my own tamahagane and quite a few conbinations of damascus.

Edited July 25, 2010 by Bill Burke

[dragoncutlery 93]

if it works/welds like any of the 5160 i have worked with it may tend to pop the weld a few times before it wants to stay tho might have gotten to cool before reheating on my part