I helped my brother-in-law unload a truck last night and managed to hang onto all the steel strapping that was used to hold the packages onto the pallets.

Is this stuff useful for anything? Seems like I have read that it is, but for the life of me I can't figure anything out to do with it.

What do you guys think?

Cheers,
Pat Rock

I've heard it is good for making damascus, when combined with bandsaw blades.

If you think, it is supposed to hold a pallet of bricks together, so it's gotta be fairly high carbon...

I had some of that banding follow me home. You can click to find the link and several suggestions.

hello patrickrock, I knew a smith who used that material along with bandsaw blades to make damascus as Mr. Smith talked about. He would start with 6 layers of each material stacked alternately and mig weld the ends together. He would then forge weld, fold, weld, fold, etc... until he was satisfied. This gave him a useful blank to begin a knife with. One day I will try this but as of now I don't have a power hammer or the time to undertake that type of project with a hand hammer.

Sincerely, Travis M. Gabbard aka "Claypipe"

Yeah me neither. Also I'm not really interested in making knives.

Hmmm. Ok. Into the recycling bin it goes.

Ahhh who told you that pattern welded material is only useful for knives?

Makes great jewelry and ornamental items and Christmas *is* coming!

Shoot some of my hammers have pattern welded wedges in their handle heads.

I generally stack it up about 20 layers to start---or whatever will turn out square stock when it's welded up the first time.

I have to work on a pattern welded Pizza cutter for the next SWABA meeting...

Thomas

I just got a palletworth of strapping. If I weld it to itself, I won't get a pattern, right? Must I sand off the paint before welding, or can that just be burnt off?

My first damascus was strapping and bandsaw blade. I still use it to teach pattern welding to people. I usually start at about 25-30 layers, and it's not that bad doing it by hand. (Of course the rolling mill makes it easier....)

You can weld just layers of strapping to itself and get a pattern, though it's rather muted.

I've never cleaned off anything from strapping and never had problems forge welding the material due to it. Other problems sometimes, but not because of the gunk on it.

Jamie

I keep a handful of pallet strapping pieces cut to 8 inch lengths near the welding table. It makes great shim stock for leveling and spacing. It also makes good consumable putty knives for scraping old grease from equipment. I use the small stuff as a hardy spacer to get a better fit on loose bottom tools, just bend a short length to 90 degrees, and lay in the hardy hole.

Mixing it with BSB makes for great pattern definition and almost any machineshop or wood shop has free worn out BSB if you ask them nicely.

Thomas