Cable/Blade Only

[Wade Hougham]

I had this blade forged from 1 1/4" cable and heat treated for a few months and today I etched it. If I had known that it was going to look like this I would have done it a long time ago.

Any and all comments are always welcome.

Edited September 3, 2011 by Wade Hougham

[bronzetools]

Very nice.

I love the look of cable.

Some people do not care for it and that is why I think it is not more popular.

I make Cable Damascus just for the fun of doing it.

It gives me a chuckle knowing that I can weld up what was once a greasy multi stranded piece of wire rope.

If you have a press,try making a set of six sided dies for consolidation of the billet.

This set up is really like an octagon former with the open sides making the last 2 surfaces.

A quarter turn after each press compresses the open sides and a 1/8 turn is also possible

It really closes up the billet nicely and prepares it for flattening.

The pics are of a Sam Mai billet

Good luck

Steve

Edited September 3, 2011 by bronzetools

[Troy Christianson]

Wade, very slick! What type of steel is cable composed of? I like the random pattern you have there.

[Kevin Colwell]

troy - Extra Improved Plow Steel, they type of cable I suggest using, is basically a simple steel with relatively low manganese and about 80 points of carbon. Using standard notation, it is like 1080, only with less manganese. That is why I like to use it for hamons. You can fold and weld a cable billet several times, and it looks a lot like tamahagane (forgive me if you knew that).

 

Wade - that one really etched nicely! Its magic, isn't it.

kc

[Wade Hougham]

bronzetools, Thank you for the tip and pictures.

Troy, What Kevin said.

Kevin, Magic it is.

Wade

[Sean McGrath]

Cool looking pattern. That's what mine generally look like with a single fold, but I've only bothered to fold a couple of them. Did you fold that one?

Edited September 4, 2011 by Sean McGrath

[neil gagnon]

Very cool Wade. I too am a cable lover, especially when it is etching time. Some of my sharpest blades where made of cable.

[Sean McGrath]

Very cool Wade. I too am a cable lover, especially when it is etching time. Some of my sharpest blades where made of cable.

 

Opinions about cable blades must vary considerably across the US. As I've said before, the people on the receiving end in my area absolutely love cable damascus. I think it has more to do with the astonishment that a functional, and beautiful blade can be made from a piece of cable. Plus, many remark upon the "fish scale" pattern that I generally end up with. (I haven't yet been successful in manipulating the patterns as well as Jesus and the other guys here that are really good at cable).

 

As Neil mentioned, some of my sharpest, as well as easiest to maintain, blades have been cable. I have had a few turn out too hard for my taste, but in those few cases I always offer to resharpen the knife free of charge to the owner.

 

With the X-improved Plowshare, I've got it pretty well down pat as far as HT is concerned. They are hard enough to hold a good edge, but still easy for the owners to maintain, kind of like Case vs. Buck knives. I have always preferred Case XX knives as users, because Buck's are too hard to sharpen.

 

I think the overly hard ones that I produced may have been XX-improved; they all came from a 3' section of fresh Crane cable that someone had given me. If it was XX, that would explain the hardness issue, because from my understanding, XX is similar to 1095, while the X-improved that I prefer is closer to 1084.