[Picture Hvy] Some of my Orishigane for Japanese Blades.

[Daniel Cauble 81]

**NOTE: My memory of some things is a little foggy. This project was ongoing and posted on my IG with some details not here I imagine @caublestonecutlery

This is about 30% of the steel I made this year. Some of it didnt make the cut as I was experimenting and testing different parameters of the furnace and run.

Average spark of this seasons orishigane

The puck that the spark belonged to

Cut puck in half. Rather porous to be expected, but still very dense

Polished and etched to show dendritic structure

Edited December 16, 2017 by Daniel Cauble

[Daniel Cauble 81]

Spark test showing extremely high levels of carbon

Very neat puck. This one showed a gradient of cast to steel.

Break on the edge indicated cast

Spark test of steel portion

Another steel portion

As we move into the cast region the spark starts to turn red and shorten

Another very short reddish spark

Cast

Steel

Here is a sample piece from same puck showing gradient

Not really sure why i posted two of identical pic.

Fuzzy pic of same piece etched

Better pic of etched surface

Time to cold break with 12# sledge

Fractured like glass

Polished and etched a sample

More dendritic structure

Beautiful colors

Edited December 16, 2017 by Daniel Cauble

[Daniel Cauble 81]

One half of the first puck made into a plate, hardened and broken

Beautiful break and grain

Sparkin high

This is half of the very colorful puck.

With the higher carbon and mix of cast, wroughting was a chore but worked

Very intense spark. 1.5%C+ by estimation. Probably in the 1.7-1.9

This came from a different puck, it was from an experiment with Al

Hard to see, but fully dendritic

Edited December 16, 2017 by Daniel Cauble

[Daniel Cauble 81]

Very high spark. Length of sparks shortening quite a bit

Some of this went in the bar, some of the rest went into a crucible

Parts of it was clearly at or above 2%C

1.8-1.9%C

This truly is beautiful steel

Odd how the colors remain even after forging

Edited December 16, 2017 by Daniel Cauble

[Daniel Cauble 81]

This puck was a good study

The blue, clean surface. The blue color is indicative of hearth steel

It cast a beautiful spark. 1.5% range by estimation

This guy was a 5# monster

Very big

1.7'ish

Cast

Edge of cast

A great shot of my fingerprint

Edited December 16, 2017 by Daniel Cauble

[Daniel Cauble 81]

Squishing some of this into plates

Showing that even at this high %, it is carefully forgeable for plates.

The grain on this, which is the massive puck is so close to cast

It was a feint gray in color. 1.8-1.9%C by estimation

Sparks also indicates this 1.8-1.9%C

Very short, not far from turning red.

Another broken plate from a different puck

It was an eventful day. I was sore, but very zen.

Not bad. Not all of my material of course.

Just a random pic of a random plate

Bottom right chunk is Grade 1/b Tamahagane. The rest is mine.

The big bar is 6 fold orishigane made by me. It is waiting to combine with this next bar.

The small bar to the left is 12 fold bloom iron for the eventual core.

Edited December 16, 2017 by Daniel Cauble

[Daniel Cauble 81]

I found out a Lowes 20 miles away had 3k firebrick.

So I decided to make a traditional japanese side blown

Needed a table made for this.

You got that right. I had a little guidance by from a friend of a Japanese Swordsmith for the construction.

The EPK clay I washed it down with was cured

I wanted to leave as much ash as possible

This i gently packed down

More pure ash added

Wetted and packed in further

Rod for tekogane plate

Even some japanese sword smiths use Borax for this step.

A mix of some borax and rice straw ash, along with Japanese rice paper to wrap.

It wraps well. No wonder they use this.

Coated in more rice straw ash

Clay slurry I created a year ago when these endeavors began

Literally first forging in this new forge was this project. Feel confident.

The confidence was somewhat warrented, and also not. I lost about 1.5# of material into the forge, as the rod was made of orishigane, and that was my mistake. Not shown in the pics is the creation of the rod, made of material like the rest of the sword material. So it melted. Not to panic, I had the rod from the previous half and it was made of wrought iron with a much higher melting point. At this point there was no fuss, and I wire welded it to my bar that was now 1.5# lighter. It consolidated well however.

As you can see

I went on to fold this bar, alternating my cut and fold width wise, and length.

This is a lengthwise fold

Clean bar. 5 folds (Ran out of charcoal for a 6th). I will fold this 1 more time, and then stretch and cut in half, and doing the same with the bar from last year, combine them all to fold together another 6+ times.

Even after 5 folds, the carbon level is very intense.

Yep

Edited December 16, 2017 by Daniel Cauble

[Daniel Cauble 81]

That's it for now. Other projects have pulled my attention.

[Alan Longmire 2,714]

That is a heck of a lot of work, man, but it looks like you're well on the way!  Love those blue pockets in the tamahagane.  Nicely done.

[Daniel Cauble 81]

Thanks. Its a ton of fun. A lot of work and practice has lead to this 

The blues were actually in my orishigane. The grade 1/b tamahagane is just meant for my own study.

[Daniel Cauble 81]

This is video of my work on this last year.

 

 

[Daniel Cauble 81]

Again, last year making the first half of this blade. 

 

 

[Joshua States 1,717]

Fascinating Captain. It looks like you had quite a number of smelts + remelts in this endeavor over what, a year or more? I admire the tenacity.

Edited December 24, 2017 by Joshua States

[Caleb Harris 51]

This is impressive! Are you drawing it out at welding heat each time at this stage?

[Dan Waddell 11]

I like all the pics of stacked plates.  I'm sure it's even more satisfying for you to look at!  Is your feed stock all wrought / bloom iron?

[Daniel Cauble 81]

Each heat is basically a fold, so yea welding heat. It may get a quick low heat at the actual folding the bar over part as it is a bear to bend and work such a high carbon steel. Once tbe temps cool down cool enough as the bar is being drawn out, it feels like a thick bar of W2 or mildly the same resistance something like crucible will give the hammer.

 

The first half i worked last year was a tremendous amount of work. I was developing my methodology while also figuring out how to get the steel the cleanest. The first half was made from melted wrought and some had bloomery bits in it. Except after reading aristotles accounts of steel in his version of a furnace, i learned that if i took the material i melted once already and melted it again, i would have a cleaner steel that had a higher homogenity in carbon. Which it did. The only drawback was the return in steel quantity was greatly diminished.

 

I think the first bar had probably 12 melts worth of steel in it. Which incudes the remelts of the melts.

 

Between that bar and this bar i made a fair amount for testing and even made some for trades with other smiths. Then i took a break ajd started working on other projects. Charcoal is expensive, and i get bored of making charcoal in the retort.

 

I revived this project after spending the day at Jesvs's old house on top of the mountain. He had a lot of spare crane cable, and implored me to use it in remelts.

 

So this past spring i decided to do probably another 20 melts or so testing out one parameter of the furnace to another. I even ran into some problems that required me to have a neureaka moment while reading Art of the Japanese Sword.

This last bar is made from remelted crane cable for the most part and my hope is that the differing feed materials may lend to a contrasting hada on the blade in the end.

Ive found that the feed material isnt all that important. I still have tk send pieces for analysis, but my suspicion is that the remelt process at least strips the steel of Mn in the melt. My testing with the remelts over time have indicated this. Ive melted 1018 that had .8Mn per spec sheet, and the resulting 5 fold steel example was as shallow as you would expect from Mn devoid steels. The modern steel remelt also did not require a 2nd or 3rd remelting to achieve the cleanest steel possible either.

 

It all folds and sticks to itself like a dream.

[Daniel Cauble 81]

I think you have seen a lot of this live on my IG Caleb.

[Daniel Cauble 81]

Have been working on the ability to push carbon into high carbon steels to make them higher carbon steels using higher carbon orishigane and carbon migration principles laid out by Verhoeven.

 

This orishigane was pulled from the furnace and knowing how well I can make ultra high carbon steel from one end of the puck to the other, used the entire mini-bloom of orishigane. Folding was conducted using my own formulation of mud and rice straw ash.

From there it was folded 9 times and laid to rest until I was ready to use it.

The spark yielded a rather high carbon spark. Much higher than W2, so I set out to sanmai weld W2 with orishigane at mid to high temp welding heats with soak in hopes of pushing carbon into the W2. Then drawn out into a billet to be used as core material.

From there I constructed a sanmai with this material and my usual 1018 mild jacket. This time using a lower temp forgeweld to mitigate migration into the mild.

Drawn out and a gyuto was made. Hardened using japanese Ht techniques and just got done machine grinding it. On to hand sanding.

Unfortunately I dont have time to make this a kasumi style kitchen knife and stone polish it like I really wanted to as this is going to Bladeshow and I dontnhave time. So sandpaper, loose abrassives and etchants it is.

 

 

 

Edited April 23, 2019 by Daniel Cauble

[Alan Longmire 2,714]

Looks good!  

[Joshua States 1,717]

2 hours ago, Daniel Cauble said:

Unfortunately I dont have time to make this a kasumi style kitchen knife and stone polish it like I really wanted to as this is going to Bladeshow and I dontnhave time. So sandpaper, loose abrassives and etchants it is.

What? No house elves?

Looks great Daniel.

[SteveShimanek 112]

Lots of good work there.

[Daniel Cauble 81]

I said screw it and started polishing it for kasumi anyway (japanese natural stone polish). Long way to go :0

[Daniel Cauble 81]

Some micrographs of the core steel. The core steel is again W2 sandwiched between orishigane. A few show the clean weld of the two disimilar metals. I need to obtain a few more etchants to show grain boundaries.

[Joshua States 1,717]

Nice! Someday, I will make some steel

[Daniel Cauble 81]

It's an obsession I've fine tuned for over 6 years now.

I've started micrographing my steel from the raw hearth steel. My results compliment findings in historically produced steels found by archaeologists which is neat. I am currently poised to be assisting in creating a large database of structures for other researchers to use.

Lately I have pushed my furnace to cross the 2% C threshold and making larger quantities of white cast to be mixed and blended into my steel. Once carbon starts to cross 2%, ledeburite starts to form and the material starts to become a ceramic.