J Anderson R

Ive never had a cable air harden on me. Im wondering if he tried to cut it too cold and the welds came apart

Very nice! I think epoxy would be a good idea if you intend to use it due to fluids getting inside and causing rust, but I have a rust phobia. I have seen mammoth bone and mammoth tooth for sale on the internet and I have been wondering: Is it REAL bone from a REAL mammoth that is eons old, reclaimed from the earth? This seems counterintuitive. How much usable bone could be recovered from a single mammoth? and how ordinary is it to run across a mammoth skeleton? it seems easier and cheaper to obtain mammoth bone than ivory, and elephants still walk the earth!

Looks awesome Sam, Ive found theres no such thing as a simple sheath, they all take work! Great Job

Theres alot of great info in bladesmithing books by Wayne Godderd, Ed Fowler, and many other true masters of the craft. They are usualy fairly priced on Amazon.com and its well worth it to educate yourself on the basics. I think I read both of Waynes books befor I even fired the forge the fist time and it saved me alot of time and steel

thanks fellas, kind of a bad angle on the camera to see the blade detail but it was too cold outside to take anymor pics. Thanks for the comments

Um, not sure what your sayin, but no, its not a good thing. Can you explain further

good start, the tang seems a bit short but I like the blade shape

Great first blade, now go and cut something!

I always seem to have different lighting conditions so I dont go by color, I always use a magnet to judge hardening temp. I would highly reccomend taking the whole blade to a 220 grit grind befor you harden it, Im sure those 60 grit scratches were a factor in the break.. and yes, all deep scratches and pits should be goneor they become stress risers and prime places for cracks to develope

First thing, when your drawing out the temper in the spine, you dont bring it up to red color. bring the spine to a blue color with a fine tip on your torch, then let it cool down in the air and repeat two more times. Next, if your blade split during the tempering it was caused by a fracture that developed during the hardening quench, most likely from a scratch or pit missed during the grinding, plus it looked like you overheated the blade befor you dipped it in the oil which would make for a weak, coarse grain structure and could have contributed to the break as well. If your unsure about hardening temp I would recomend getting yourself a magnet. When the steel loses its magnatism let it raise another 50 degrees or so and quench. I could only watch half the video and without sound cuz my speakers broke so if I missed something Im sorry. Keep trying, your design looks great

Heres a hunter I just finished up today. The cable and brass came from the junkyard, the elk antler came from my father-in-laws outhouse ( its over 20 years old ). The spacer is mammoth tooth I had left over from a set of handle scales. In case you couldnt tell, I wanted to use recycled materials as much as possible for this blade. This is my first narrow tang knife and I realy liked doing it. I havent epoxied it together and I might not. Its held tight by the threaded butcapp. Its solid and incredible sturdy without the glue so for now Im gonna leave it be. I also was debating dying the antler but now Im not sure, the natural colors are quite nice. What do you all think?

What did you use for flux?

that is cool, how hard is it to forge weld cable? I was given some crane cable that i wanted to try to make a knife out of. and looking at your knife i want to try to make something similar if you don't mind.

Thanks guys, I had to clip about an inch off the tip when grinding revealed a nasty flaw, but I still like the way it turned out. Blade is convex ground all the way to the edge and razor sharp, and the hamon from edge quenching was a nice bonus. The handle/ guard detail didnt show up on the picture very well but it has a real fine pattern from all the wires getting stretched out so far. Hope you enjoy

If your looking to add some good qualities to the steel I would recomend, since your using 5160, is to try a triple edge quench following each hardening cycle with a 24 hour freeze cycle between hardenings ( your home freezer will work for this ). Then, after the 3rd freeze, temper as usual. I was amazed by the added strength and grain refinement on my first triple hardened 5160 blade, its worth trying. Check out Ed Fowlers dvds, great info on high performance bladesmithing.

Pattern welded steel has been around since the first smiths started running out of steel and had to weld their scaps together to get a bar long enough for whatever project they were doing. You can believe there were probrably alot of "damascus" blades used during the Civil War, but chances are they werent etched and any pattern that came out was the result of time and use. I agree with the others that any pattern was unintentional and was just the result the smith salvaging what little steel he had to make the blade. Remember, people have made cable damascus blades and tools since cable was invented, but I dont think anyone purposely etched one till the 70s. It all depends on your definition of damascus. Just my .02, Im sure someone has a different opinion

Heres a blade I forged out of my cable damascus, then stretched the tang way out and made an integral guard. I got the idea for the integral guard and handle from J. Arthur Loose's "Serphent In the Steel" knives. This is fresh from the forge, Il finish it up this week. Comments appreciated

Nice Knife! That cherry burl is beautiful.

Great looking blade. and that sheath work is top notch, Great Job!!

Awesome, that chain damascus should hold an edge realy well too, great work

Check out this link, its a basic guide to ferrous meatlurgy.
http://www.tempil.com/PDF/Basic_Guide.pdf

It should help with the temp questions, the more carbon the steel has, the lower the burning range

What do you mean by "ingot". Did you already forge weld it, or did you twist up many sections of cable into 1 big cable? When I forge weld cable, I soak it inmineral spirits for 3 days to a week prior to welding, then use anhydrous borax to flux,. When you weld and press the cable solid youll force all the flux out of the billet, then you grind it off the surface and its gone

Just out of curiosity, did you single or triple quench? Looks superb

I dont know much about welding nickel, but I do know it wont weld to itself so make sure when folding your billet that theres alway a peice of high carbon between the nickel layers. Also remember, nickel absorbs impurites like a sponge and when using coal sulfer contamination is always a concern, so Id use gas if possible, good luck

looks great, I need to build one. Thanks for the picture walk through, it realy answered the smaller detail questions I had.