Damascus Blades

[Hammbone]

now that I have a working power hammer, I have played with several layers of knife blades. I have some with as many as 2304 layers. I started with a stack of 9 layers of spring steel (leaf Spring) and a general mild steel. With each folding you double the layers.Very Time consuming. My question is; Is there a limit that the eye can see when the finished blade is etched? Or is it better to limit the layers? I have powerful forges to do the welding with and just yesterday did do a 2304 layer blade. I just wanted to hear from all of you as to what is the norm.

Edited September 3, 2009 by Hammbone
spelling

[nonjic]

Whatever you want to make really. Different layercounts suit different styles of smith and blade.

I rarely go above 250 - 300 ish for basic straight laminated billets. For twisted pieces I usually stay below 20 layers to keep some definition.

You can save a lot of time making damascus by welding your first stack, of say 10 strips. Then drawing right out, then cutting into 6 and restacking that way. repeat and cut into 5, reweld and your at 300.

I could make a decent size bar of 300 layer blade steel in an hour as described above (a bit longer with billet prep time)

Theres no right or wrong answer to your question. If I get a billet at 1000 layers, cut in half and weld it back together with a piece of 1/8 plate in the middle Ill have a billet of 2001 layers, which the eye can see at a glance as 3 layers , this is an extreme example but you can play around with this thick / thin bars of different layers techneque.

Mosaic patterns (like the 'w' patterns and variations of) have a whole different set of rules.

Show some pics of what youve done!!