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Any tips on forge welding high carbon to mild steel??


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I am thinking forge welding a chunk of mild steel to one of my damascus billets in order to act as the tang portion on some full tang knives. I have never welded mild steel, only high carbon. Any tips, tricks or things to watch for?


Thanks

John

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One thing I have been cautioned on and learned experimentally is to weld at the heat you would weld the high carbon; not at mild steel welding temps.

The high carbon normally welds at a lower temp, and pushing high carbon into the bright yellow / nearly white range will wreak havoc on your grain and quite possibly cause cracking and crumbling.

I learned this welding file-steel bits into tomahawks. Taking the mild up to a bright, nearly but not quite sparking heat caused the bit to be full of cracks.

If you have never welded mild steel, this shouldn't be a problem.

You might try some test runs on scrap before you risk a good blade.

Good luck,

Don

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The HC and the mild must both be at welding temp. Welding temp is lower for HC than for mild. Practice on scrap first.

(Easier to just make the whole knife out of the pattern-welded stuff. It's only steel, right? Nothing of any emotional or monetary value, right?)

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A good weld will take place at the LOWEST welding temp of the steel involved in the join.

Sam is correct in his advice. A weld that is angled across the direction of greatest stress will distribute the stress rather than concentrate it making for a MUCH stronger/longer lived join.

This is the same principle for making a radiused fuller. A radiused fuller distributes stress where a sharp corner concentrates forces often resulting in a cold shut or initiation point for a stress failure.

Good call Sam. Reminding us of the "well known" is often a good practice as they may not be well known to all.

Frosty the Lucky.

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I gotta agree with everyone else, higher carbon lower weld heat, But this is a good thing, with your mild steel you can cook it all xxxx day to get it up to welding and as its only the tang not hurt anything about the piece. Now as I type this I wonder if your forge welding or if you were just going to kick on the welder lol the latter being the easy way heheh. I do see a LOT of people tack welding a mild steel "handle" to forge a billet, I dont like the loss you get from this method but its done.

In the end I would avoid any weld in a blade, while it costs a little more in time and material a full one piece tang can almost always sell for more and is much stronger. just a thought~

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My full tang knives have the edge of the tang showing all the way around the handle material. For me I want that steel to be the same material as the blade. When I do a hidden tang it does not show at all and could be a different steel. But then if you think of the tang on a file,, that is not a lot of material and for those patteren welded blades I use the billet itself for the tang.

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Who would have historically done this? ever?


My guess would be the man who you replied to has done it a time or two at least.
Folks who are into re-enacting and collectors also want things that are made EXACTLY as they were during the time period they are interested in,many require time period correct materials too.One of the reasons things like real wrought iron and blister steel are still being made and used today.
It`s not so much about what is the absolute best material available in the here and now with these folks it`s about what is historically correct.
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As a renaissance faire blacksmith heh trust me I know what ya mean about "historically" accurate materials and methods that some people want and enjoy, thats why the comment confused me a bit, a blade wouldn't have be constructed in two pieces especially at the tang which serves as a huge fulcrum point you would not build it with a flaw. Also so much time and effort was put into historical blades I just dont see it happening, especially when you had to make your own steel and didnt have as I do 5 steel suppliers within a 10 mile radius. Im not trying to be touchy or start anything lol I'm just wondering, as far as a wall piece replica sure a weld on tang would be fine, just like 99% of budK or other low cost imports~

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And yet I have an antique bayonet blade that actually has threads at the blade to tang connection point and judging from the the crown touchmark it was probably made in the UK during one of the high points of European edged tool technology.
You can still see where the guard/grip assembly was closely fit and a threaded shaft was used to draw the blade onto the grip.Unless the machining was very close tolerance that HAS to be a weak point in a tool that a man would literally be betting his life on.
Maybe the Queen also goes with the lowest bidder,eh?

One thing that nobody mentions is to braze a tool steel bit into something.I see stone tools for use on things like granite and basalt,two VERY hard stones,that have their carbide cutting bits brazed into pockets and they stand up to tremendous abuse.
If someone is looking for a long wearing edge and a quick and fairly forgiving process of attachment to make a very durable tool then why not consider brazing a HSS or carbide edge into a tool?
It`s done all the time in industry.

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This is true bob I do it myself in the horseshoeing business we braze on calks with copper all the time, I think the difference is leverage, a half inch heel calk can withstand the massive forward force of a horse in gait but Im betting you changed the length even by a little and that leverage multiplier goes through the roof that poor braze wont hold.

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As I recall there is a nice shot of a sword blade with a wrought iron tang in Manfred Sachse's Damascus Steel. AIR it may have been one of the ones forged welded from alternating pieces of real wootz and pattern welded billets creating a chevron pattern. I'll check when I can.

It's not uncommon in early blades and as to being a flaw---every single bade was made of material that had been forge welded---from the roman piling to migration era twist construction to blades made from high carbon blooms where folding and welding was the *NORM* just to get your starter material, to shear steel.

Battleship drive shafts were welded up from separate pieces of real wrought iron during the early days!

"The Metallography of Early Ferrous Edge Tools and Edged Weapons", Tylecote and Gilmour, shows an early medieval sword made from 13 pieces of iron/steel forge welded together and 5 of them are pattern welded billets.

"Knives and Scabbards, Museum of London", with several hundred examples of medieval knives will show a large number of them where the steel was a thin strip forge welded to the edge of a wrought iron blade.

Forge welding is not a flaw!

Note that many folks at medieval and renaissance fairs have not researched early ferrous metalworking processes thoroughly and may repeat "urban legends" and "common knowledge" that have been superseded by more modern research---shoot even the ground breaking work of Anstee (see appendix 1 in "The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England" H.R.E. Davidson) has been built upon to show that the round rod theory of construction is not consistent with extent examples and as a smith much more difficult then welding rectilinear billets and then twisting that does produce items that match the extent pieces from the excavations.

I've researched this in museums all over Europe and places like Indonesia and I'll try to track down more examples however I will be out of town this weekend.

Perhaps Ric and JPH could weigh into this as well, I'd bet they would confirm that it did occur!

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I think ya got me wrong here Tom, Im not saying forge welding was a flaw, I was talking about a welded tang being weaker than a solid piece. As for the ren faire thing I follow more along the lines of Paul Champagne ( RIP ) than the omg ninja kewl samurai blade can kut threw'n engine block cause its been folded a billion times!

I love reading the research on ancient blades and there makeup, from the basics of wrought iron to the discovery of nanotubes in ancient Damascus swords. Though I hate the term "wrought iron" anymore as wrought means nothing more than shaped or worked, so its slapped on so many commercially mass produced items much less how much "damascus" is thrown about for anything pattern welded.

So please don't take my thoughts as an attack in any way on ancient craftsmanship, I know how these "conversations" can escalate, anyway this thread is getting a bit long in the tooth~

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Have you got a copy of "The Celtic Sword", Radomir Pleiner? Great read on the early ferrous blades (and of course the landmark "The Knight and the Blastfurnace", Alan Williams)

I've got way more money tied up in books than I do in anvils and triphammers and love to debate this kind of stuff. I try to get to the conferences too; IronMasters, ICMS, etc and am on the archeological metallurgy mailing list.

Re Wrought Iron: I explain it to people this way: "When you go into the linens department at a big store what is everything made of? Cotton or poly-cotton, probably not a piece of linen in the entire "linens" department; *BUT* they all used to be made from linen! And so the material used for them became the general term for the items even after they changed what they were made from.

The same thing for Wrought Iron; it was the material used by blacksmiths from the dawn of the iron age through the end of the 19th century and even a bit into the 20th. However with the invention of the Bessemer/Kelly Converter in the 1850's that produced mild steel cheaper and faster, gradually the items that once were made from the material Wrought Iron were made from the new mild steel; however just like for linens the name of the material carried over into the name of the items.

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Yesterday I made the weld. I welded two 1x1x3 inch bars to a 1x2x3 inch bar of w's damascus. I cut a slice off and started forging a blade and the welds failed. Back into the forge with the billet and I let it soak at high heat for awhile and did some more squeezing with the press. I cut a slice off today and forged a small EDC type blade. All appears well but I have not done the heat treat. I will try to post pics next week when I get back out to the shop to finish the blade. Thanks for the tips.


John

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I know the OP was talking about damascus, but when inserting a high carbon steel bit into a mild steel body for an axe, you forge your mild steel body, then forge in your cleft that the bit of HC steel will fit into, then bring it to a high red heat and brush the scale from the cleft and flux it then insert the bit cold. The temperature difference makes just enough of a difference that the mild steel is that bit of extra hot, but you don't burn the HC.

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