is it possible?

[kyle o'donnell 0]

to weld a piece of mild steel onto a piece of high carbon so that the only part that is high carbon is the edge? im not talking about san mai, kinda half and half.

[Dave Stephens 414]

Sure. Shouldn't be hard. You're talking a two layer blade? Chisel grind. Just weld them together and angle the edge bevel toward the high carbon half.

[kyle o'donnell 0]

more like the spine half of the blade being the low carb and the edge being the high carbon.

only no sandwitch. kinda like how you guys do with the multi bar seax's and whatnot.

im only concerned that the spine of the blade would shrink too much and cause the whole thing to break into pieces.

[Luke Shearer 15]

No that would work just fine. I do variations of it all the time. Petr's KITH knife is a butt weld just like you described excpet with wrought and high carbon instead of mild and high carbon. Good luck.

[Mike Blue 1]

It's a long time tradition to do so. Just look to Japanese plane irons and chisels, or anywhere for that matter. Blacksmiths are a practical bunch. Why waste a big piece of high carbon steel on one tool when you can weld a high carbon tooth on to lesser irons and have a limited supply of the good stuff go farther. The industrial revolution allowed us to produce huge quantities of good steel so except for limited places where handcrafting was kept alive, the practice was abandoned in favor of modern manufacturing processes.

Edited October 27, 2011 by Mike Blue

[kyle o'donnell 0]

awesome, im going to use some spring steel and 1018