highfade

Thank you all for the responses, I appreciate the info. Definitely makes sense and it's a process I've never seen or heard about that's why I was curious. Read up on diffusion welding more too, it's part of where the original question came from. I had seen that fusion between metals can occur at room temperature if given enough time and pressure so I had the thought, obviously wrong, that by leaving the heated billet under pressure would be an ok thing to try. Thanks again!

Hello all, I'm very new to this but have been interested in metal work and forging/blacksmithing for a very long time. I've been researching like crazy and pouring over forum posts here and around the web, youtube has been a great help and I just finished building a foundry. I've got parts on the way to build a ribbon burner forge like ones I've seen online, tools and materials to make a forge press are on the way too. I have a random question that I can't seem to find anything on that I thought I'd throw up to the online gurus. Here's the scenario - Using a press, perhaps with dies that fit whatever billet length you need, you want to make a small pattern welded/Damascus billet but are worried about getting the layers to stick, has anyone tried getting their layered stacks up to temp and then simply placing that in the press under full compression until the billet cools? Basically ensuring that the entire billet is under equal load through a complete thermal cycle? Like I said, I'm a noob but this has been bouncing around in my head for a while and I figured I'd risk looking like an idiot. Thanks in advance. Great Forum BTW.