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I Forge Iron

matt trout

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  1. All horse shoes are mild steel and not suitable for a quality knife blade. The hard spots are slag inclusions or bits of "carbide" that got included in the steel. No quench or temper will ever harden them to blade steel requirements (Rc 54 plus). Great novelty items but not performance blades.
  2. Thanks, I have working on those little horizontal carry drop point designs for several years. Sort of an alternative to a pocket knife. Photo on this one looks a bit asymmetrical, it is just my lack of photography skills.
  3. Have not posted anything in a while, thought I would throw these two out there. Custom order for a friend in N.C. Matched pair of clip point and small horizontal carry drop point. Blades are 99 layer voodoo (left –then right twist) 1095-15N20 damascus, roughly forged to shape, ground, oil quenched tempered twice. 304 stainless bolsters-pins-guards, All peened . Brass inserts in guard that do not show up in photo – once again phone photo challenged. I tried a bit of file work on the backs, need to practise that some more. Used black epoxy to fill around scales and tang. Scales are lacewood that I stabilized with epoxy under vacuum. Sheaths are 9-10 oz cowhide. I used a tri-weave stamp for tooling and swiped black dye over the high spots in one direction before dying the entire sheath. Gives a different look. As always comments/suggestions welcome. Matt
  4. Jim, Awesome work on your website, thanks for sharing. Matt
  5. James, Yes I agree, trial and error lead me to using all copper based alloys as being easiest and most economical. I do turn off the forced air on the forge so it is naturally aspirated and barely burning when making mokume. Getting heat to the core with out melting the surface is crucial. Making up some mokume and damascus belt buckles for christmas. Will post if happy with result. Thanks Matt
  6. Thanks for the reminder on doomed for failure, I do occassionaly have catastrophic failures in mokume and damascus. They almost always occur when having one of those lapses in judgement ie. not doing what I know works or not paying carefull enough attention. I recycle materials on some things but never my damascus. To much work involved to risk it on unkown steel. I usually sandblast the copper and flatten the entire billet in the press cold before heating it. After 60 tons per suare inch it really doesn't matter what the initial shape of the material. Yes I need to build a digital controlled kiln for my annealing, heat treating and mokume work. I built several for heat treating stone for flint knapping but never got around to making one for my knife making. Some of the stone heat treatments have multi-day build up and soak times. It would make the process more predictable. Once you get the feel of it though you can tell when the billit will bond. Nice looking mokume piece in your photo. After thinking about it, I guess you could forge out a sheet and then just work it on the swage block just like making ladels or dippers. Maybe I'll give it a shot one day. Heat issue I found with grinding occurs when I use steel in the mokume. All Non-ferous billit does not heat up near as bad. Matt
  7. No the two materials, sometimes three, almost always have different thicknesses. Most of my billets end up about 2.5 inches wide, 12 -15 inches long and 0.25 thick. Before drawing them out to thickness they are usually 2X2 square and variable length. Yes the light color is nickle silver. I have used copper, brass, bronze, nickle silver, and tool steel all in different combinations. I do not use steel in my mokume anymore - gives a very interesting effect but heats up in milliseconds when grinding. The copper transfers that heat very quickly right into your fingers. I get best results from combinations of alloys that are mostly copper (similar melting points). I believe the nickle silver is approaching 80% copper as a base metal in the alloy. The silver colored dots are where the nickle silver began to melt and squished or moved around while compressing the billet. Since I am doing this in a propane forge I do not have exact heat control - just eye balling it and scratching the surface with a punch to test the level of "sweating". Very difficult to describe how you know when billet is fully heated but not overheated. If you overheat the nickle silver will splatter/spew out from between the layers of copper. An exact temperature electric oven would probably stop most of this. If I were going to try and turn the billet I would probably change the overall shape and keep it square. Size is only limited by your equipment. For vessels I would think you would roll out the billet into thin sheet, heat and form, then solder/sweat the seam but I do not know. Glad to share any of my limited knowledge. Good luck, Matt
  8. I have restored four anvils very successfully using the exact method described by Gunther and Schuler. Preheat, Nickle underlay, Stoody 2110 underlay, stoody 1105 top. Lots of work but all came out spectacular with super rebound. Before and after example photos attached. I have had no issues with the restorations as far as chipping or sway backing. Matt
  9. I have been making mokume for my damascus blades for several years. Thought I would post a photo of one of my typical billets (48 layer copper/nickle silver). This billet was made from copper pipe salvaged from a plumbing repair job and nickle silver sheets. I am using a propane forge and borax flux. After getting the billet welded up solid I draw it out the same as my damascus billets. Usually leave over a quarter inch thick so I can expose more layers by grinding. The drop point shows how it comes out as bolsters. I posted similar photos on another website previously but thought this forum might be more appropriate. Let me know what you think. Matt Comments and discussions welcome.
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