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This was my first attempt at making a damascus steel ring. Its pretty simple but its the smallest thing i have ever made which made it a bit more difficult. Maybe if i had a coal fore it would have been easier to grab with some simple pliers but my gas forge was making picking this thing up a bit tricky. Going to use clear coat enamel to protect from rust so it can be worn. Any thoughts?

Ok so I have been working on making this chefs knife for my cousin. I fored it to shape and was pretty satisfied with the blade profile. I held it up to one of my store bought ones and its pretty close to the same dimensions. I went with a flat grind for the blade and that was fine. One side is much cleaner than the other but im not completely unhappy with it. One of my final steps was to etch the blade. Now in the past i have used boiled vinegar to etch this same material and was happy with the results but was unhappy with the way it completely stunk the house up. So i decided to try some ferric chloride. First thin i can tell you is this pro tip. DO NOT PUT FERRIC CHLORIDE INTO A TIN FOIL BAKING TRAY!!! Yea turns out that that causes a chemical reaction. Extreme heat, smoke, boiling chemical. Lucky i had some gloves so i could pick it up and dump the whole thing into a plastic bucket which stopped the reaction. So yea after that i got a plastic container and poured the ferric into that and submerged the blade for 20 minutes to get the etch. I used one of those green dish sponge things to rub the etchant once i took the blade out and cleaned it all up. So the etch took and the pattern came out fine. But here is the thing. The etchant left this weird rusty looking residue on the blade which i think some of this pictures show. Now i thought it was actually rust so i put the blade into hot water and scrubbed the heck out of it with an SOS pad but it didnt do anything so now i need to re sand the whole thing and etch the sucker again. What did i do wrong?

Hi guys, so I've been blacksmithing/blade smithing for 5-6 months now and have made a few knives. Surprising myself that I am very good at bladesmithing. I can make great knives already in the forge and I'm wanting a newer challenge. I want to learn to create Damascus steel. I know it's something that very advanced for a beginner smith to try. But I'd really like to try it. So what do I need to do to make Damascus I've found a steel supplier with 15n20 and I was thinking going with 15n20 and 1075 spring steel I read that in a blacksmithing book I have. Now I have a gas forge and I know how to do simple forge weld. My forge wasn't really designed to forge Damascus I don't think. You can find my forge at majesticforge.com and it's the artist deluxe 2 burner I believe that's what it's called for those of you who want to look. But Im getting a new welder in September so I want to know if there's anything else I need to get before I attemp to do this? I figure I need to get my forge around 2300? But I've never done this before so any suggestions on what temperature I should be going for and what setting I should be running? I usually run my forge from 8-25 psi it doesn't have blowers I just use the pressure of the gas.

Hi, I got from a freind some small pieces (2'x2'x4mm) of Damascus steel. I would appreciate to get information what is the treatment required prior to forging and post forging. Thanks a lot, Cheers, Fellini