basher Posted April 20, 2012 Author Share Posted April 20, 2012 email Eh... what you say? whats wrong with shoutin ......loud!!! ahem. advice for forging bloom. you have to get it hot, hot enough for the slag to become liquid and eject its self out of the bloom . I found that I was not getting good enough consolidation in a gas forge and started working the stuff in coke with much better results. my gas forge is much hotter now so no problems now. flux is not really needed to start with as the slag will do the job but if needed then I use silver sand and or borax. they both have different working temps and a combo of the two will give an intimidate flux. so that said , get it hot and squish it, cut and fold , same again untill you are happy with homogenity and slag stringers etc. check the spark trail to judge carbon content . most of that bloom was low and there was probably some high near the edges. you can adjust carbon content in a few ways. if it is too high just cut and re stack a few times as oxidisation will reduce the C content. if too low then I would do one of a few things , either combine with higher carbon bloomery material. I have a lot of hyper-eutectic bloomery steel and mix and match from my stock samples. the other way is to carburise the steel . easiest way is to pack it in thin strips in a box with leather and charcoal dust and seal the end with clay. then heat in your gas forge for a while..... or you could forge weld a known high carbon steel in with it to up the C . When I first started working this stuff it was all so bloody precious that I chased every scrap of it round the workshop and would never put a bit of modern steel with bloomery product. I am a little more realistic now . whatever you have will be of a very low hardenability so its to very fast oil or water for the quench..... It can be a great material, the bit you have is from one of our best 3 smelts and with a bit of luck would forge out into a decorative piece immediately. It could also be a real bastard, I have found bloomery material really frustrating in the past, but that is the whole challenge......... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
basher Posted April 20, 2012 Author Share Posted April 20, 2012 you can get some nice patterning from just using bloomery material. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iron woodrow Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 im quite sure that ground twist in the centre isnt just straight from the bloom.... :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
basher Posted April 20, 2012 Author Share Posted April 20, 2012 nope, its a combo of bloomery phosphoric iron (provided by lee sauder USA) and low carbon bloom combined. the edge and spine are made from tamahaganezukuwootzu! and bloomery iron combined . Tamahanahezukuwootzu is my name for:- in the first instance bloomery cast iron made in a tatara furnace( the japanese would call this Zuku) this is far too high carbon for making blades so I combined it in a crucible with lower carbon bloom fragments and made a wootz cake (or at least an ultra high carbon steel cast cake) this was a little too high in carbon to forge easily so I flattened it and broke it up treating it as tamahagane (which it is ...kind of) and then added low carbon bloomery material to bring it into line (at a guessed eutectoid C mix). looking at this pickie I wish I had processed the edge a little more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greenbeast Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 Thanks Owen! I will wait till my coke forge is up and running. Maybe i could use it in as the wrap around in a san mai blade? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
basher Posted April 20, 2012 Author Share Posted April 20, 2012 possibly? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Green Posted April 21, 2012 Share Posted April 21, 2012 Hi Gang, There is quite a bit of blooming info in my Picasa pages. https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
basher Posted April 23, 2012 Author Share Posted April 23, 2012 how do picasa pages/ work what are they? as i get a blank page asking me to log in? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Green Posted April 23, 2012 Share Posted April 23, 2012 I'm sorry, try this one;https://picasaweb.google.com/106800196895572422821 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ric Furrer Posted April 25, 2012 Share Posted April 25, 2012 Well done Owen and Mick and Eli..... Owen, I think a set of tools from the bloom would be a very good proper project. I plan on doing that with Michael Pikula later this year with ore we will gather from the shores of Lake Superior in Northern Wisconsin. Ric Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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