does damascus always do this??

[jake3330]

hey just wondering first of all if damascus steel always tempers differently like this and what u think of the start to my first folder thanks

[Robert Mayo]

How was it tempered? It looks to me like the point got a little to hot and if making a folder why did you not drill the hole for the pivot before heat treating it?
No damascus does not always do that mine comes out of the oven a nice straw colour!

Bob

[Rich Hale]

You did not mention wot steel you welded together but a guess is it is a combination of high carbon steel, Not sure how youi hardened it but that would depend on the steel used. If both of the steels are oil hardening and you heated to non magneetic and quenched in warm oil the blade should have been hard so that a file wold kind of slide off rather than bite into it. After tempering the same file should be able to cut into the steel lbut it should net be as easy to cut sa mild steel. With all of the high carbon steels I have used for blades I have never had one of them be hard enough to use as a blade if I tempered them hot enouigh to get a blue color. Depending on the steel and the size and use of the knife when finished I prefer a light straw color to a darker straw color. Ot os really difficult to give prper answers on here when alot of the information is left out, including you experience and wot you have to work with in your shop..many ways to temper and some of them are basic some more advanced. Fill in some blanks if you wish.

[thingmaker3]

Hi, Jake.

The temper colors are caused by a very thin layer of oxide(s) on the steel. The color changes as the layer gets thicker. Thickness depends on three things: 1) how hot we get the steel, 2) how long we keep it hot, and 3) the composition of the steel.

[jake3330]

ok 1 its made of bandsaw blades and pallet strapping and 2 it doesnt have a hole in it because i was trying to sharpen it at the time and tried heating it up to make it easier because it was pretty hard. I thought i annealed it properly but apparently i didnt. anyway i heated it up and then it looked like that and i thought it was pretty cool because i thought only timascus did that. This is what it looks like now.

[fciron]

It only turned purple, so you were nowhere close to annealing temperature, that's why it didn't get softer. Here is a link to a tempering color chart that shows the different colors, seems to be in Centigrade, simply the first one I found. http://www.westyorkssteel.com/Heat_Treatment/tmpchart.htm You should be up in the glowing temperatures for annealing. Not much point to tempering unless you've hardened first.

In my experience, low temperature oxide colors do bring out the pattern because the different steels oxidize at different rates.

Were you sharpening or shaping? Usually sharpening is one of the final steps, since heat treatment and assembly tend to be processes that will mess up a sharp edge. Similarly, it's a heck of a lot easier to drill the hole before a blade is hardened and tempered. I think that's why people were asking where the hole was.

Looks like a nice blade, keep posting pics.