cliffrat

I just read this thread and was wondering how the copper/nickle silver billet came out. I have made a lot of that combination and the nickle/silver is a bear to work with. It starts to crumble every chance it gets. The only way I have found to stop that and make it stay together is to work it orange hot, stop when the color dissapears, and then anneal. Annealing between each working heat seems to keep it together. I have also found that the nickle/silver develops a light blue coloration.

This furniture is made from one billet of copper and nickle-silver. The brown material is the copper after applying Baldwin's patina. The starting billet was 25 layers (13 Cu, 12 NiSi). The pieces are 18 Ga. and 2"x3". Everything is made from a simple twisted bar. My apologies about the commercial link. I kinda forgot about that..... I am having trouble uploading a pic of the frame. It keeps telling me "upload failed" I'll try to do it again later

I saw this thread and thought I might post a pic of a bowie I made with mokume guard, spacers and frame. I have been making the stuff for a couple of years and the wife takes the finished material and makes jewelry from it. More photos of the knife can be seen here: commercial link removed as per TOS It's down towards the bottom of the photo group. Check out the Jewelry tab on the website for more images of the mokume we make. If anyone wants some tips or pointers, just ask. Post photos here if you wish them to be seen, do not send members off site.

Well I need to forge it down to some pretty thin stock for jewelry, so I need to take it down to between 1/16 & 1/8 thickness. Hence the ladder pattern. I was planning on working it hot.

Ok so it looks like I have had some sort of success here with the 3 color/metal combination of brass/copper/nickel-silver. Thanks to all you guys for the words of wisdom & advice. Here's the process I used: 1. cut stips of .064 material into strips about 1 inch wide and 6 inches long. 2. Clean them up to 220 grit, acetone bath and stack. 3. Wrap them in SS foli with some plain old paper. 4. Press the whole mess together between 2 3/8 inch steel plates with bolts through the corners in my 2 ton bottle jack press and tighten the bolts. 5. Into the Paragon oven at 1500 F for 2 hours. 6. Let cool until safe to handle. I just took this apart and cut the ends off. It's about 11/16 inches thick. Tomorrow I will try to forge it into a poor-man's ladder pattern. Any Ideas on how hot to go with that? Check the pics.

I'll be honest, I think that the contrast in the photos above is pretty good considering the # of layers and the content. I usually do not do a serious etch before I heat treat. I usually do a very light swab so that I can see the pattern and lay out the blade. Once I start grinding, the blade never see acid again until after heat treating and finish grind. If you did a serious etch (15 mins or more in FeCL or hasher acid) after rough grind & before heat treat, that may have more to do with it than anything. As for adding color or better contrast after all is said and done: I have seen some master bladesmiths use hot bluing or a Birchwood Casey product called Plum Brown to add color/contrast to damascus.

After heat treat did you do a final grind and acid etch?

When I tried the "put it in a hot forge" method, everything sort of melted away and made a mess. So I am using my Paragon oven now.

I am not combining all of those materials in one billet, although those are the materials I am using. I use the foil wrap to limit the oxidation between materials (I wrap the billet in combustables like paper before I wrap in the stainless sheet)I tried firing at 750F because that was what I was told was the temp that the brass needed to fuse. The brass fuses fine to the copper, but it wont fuse to the Ni-Si. What process do you use?

I am trying to make Mokume using semi-precious metals and I am having trouble finding out what temps to fire the stack at. I am working with brass, Ni-Silver, copper, and iron. I sand the faces down to 320, acetone bath, stack in stainless foil wrap between two 3/8 inch pressure plates, press it, bolt it tight and fire at 750 degress for 3 hours. The Nickle-silver isn't bonding. Does anyone have any tips or tricks to make it work? Am I not firing at high enough heat?

I own those JPH books and that was where I started over 5 years ago. (I've been forging steel for about 8 years, knives for 5)I did what others have instructed you to do. I started with knives. Small ones at first, and by the stock removal method to understand the grinding process before I started forging the knives. After reading JPH's books, I tried doing some knife forging and I was making slow progress. Don't get me wrong, his books are great and I still refer back to them, but my knifemaking really took of when I found a master bladesmith to teach me how to do it. I would suggest that you find a blacksmith's group where you live, join it and start going to the meetings, demos and hammer-ins. You will learn so much faster with a good teacher. Then all of that stuff in JPH's books will start to make sense. Try finding a blacksmith assoc. at ABANA.org