1st & 2nd San Mai

[DBain 15]

First San Mai is dry welded hand forged 15n20 core and 1084 jacket. OAL is approximately 8.5” with a stag and quarter mokume handle. It has a threaded butt cap nut and GFlex epoxy.

 

Second San Mai is dry welded and hand forged 1084 core with 15n20 jacket. OAL is approximately 14”.  The handle is stacked Ebony and leather with a wrought guard and pommel. The pommel was tapped for threaded and GFlex epoxy construction.

 

[Clifford Brewer 343]

Nice          

[Alan Longmire 2,306]

Pretty darned cool!  Was that a coffee etch?

[DBain 15]

Yes I did ferric the followed with coffee and a lite hand buff with Turtle wax chrome polish.

[Jim Pierce 53]

Very interesting. 

[Brian Dougherty 898]

Nice job keeping the cores centered up.

[DBain 15]

I tried to be cautious and would etch from time to time to keep track of where my core was.

[Martin Brandt 3]

Did you forge to shape, or forge just to a bar then stock removal?  When I tried to forge to shape I found I had trouble keeping the core centered.  This process really exposes how much my strikes are different from one side to the other.  I  had to just forge to flat bar/spatula shape then stock removal, checking for core centering as I went.

Your choice of materials sure created a stark contrast.  Great experiment, and good job.

 

[DBain 15]

After talking to and taking the advice of a an experienced smith, whom I’ve taken a couple of classes with, I did minimal forging to shape and more stock removal on these. I’d say forged to about 60%, just a general profile and tang with slight bevels.