Just cirous if anyone has made billets out of metal shavings, scale and black iron dust (harvested from streams and rivers) and if done before how so?

I've only dreamed about it.  Lots of people here have, search for blooms and smelting on here and as is often said get a drink and pack a lunch...  :)  might be a while

Ric Furrer has a video on the site of doing it.

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Made from essentially dirt. Iron Ore. As raw as it gets.

not a billet but a bloom; lots of folks are running bloomeries nowadays; lots of fun but you don't get stuff near as "nice" as modern steels can be.  However very useful if you want shallow hardening "traditional" steels for projects. I spent a decade on a bloomery crew that did pre-year 1000 short stack scandinavian bloomeries; the early years we would dig the clay from a creek, hand powered air all the time as we were camping out with no access to electricity.

I asked about a billet because i was cirious if anyone had melted the metals into a billet not a bloomery. Like canned Damascus.

Melted bars into billet? please explain

Canned damascus is NOT melted! It is a solid phase welding process.  If you melt metal you get an ingot not a billet.  Now wootz damascus is a crucible process where you melt metal---is that what you are referring to?

 

Interesting enough Dr Feuerbach mentions in her Doctoral Thesis "Crucible Steel in Central Asia" that blooms might have been used as starting material for melts.

Yes it is thomas, i couldn't for the life of me remember what it was called.

So has anyone made crucible metal out of the listed items in the first post?

Well generally you smelt it first removing the crud and then melt it.

Thomas, 

What would you use for a Wootz crucible. I have seen one very modern process that the crucible was reusable and another time (the secrets of the viking sword on Nova) where the crucible was disposable. do you have any suggestions on what to use if I wanted to set up a pot to have at the center of a very hot coal or charcoal fire that is set in a pile of hard fire brick and did not need it to be reused?

 

The main thing is I just want to see if I can get it to work at all. I am not looking for a any outcome other than the most basic of successes. 

 

thanks

I would suggest you *buy* a commercial crucible for safety's sake.  The amount of time involved will way trump the cost of a crucible and the cost of an ER run can make even that look miniscule.  If you want to experiment on making your own crucibles; you want to do that *AFTER* you have the basic process down pat and have more experience working with refractories.  Just like you would hope your heart surgeon had a sound training on operations before he opens your chest!

I just got an older cruicible and have a bunch of stainless shavings from the shop I plan on dropping into it with some high carbon scraps from previous knives and see what I come up with...

What are you planning to use for the flux?  Green beer bottles?

I've done a crucible steel melt with a friend of mine. He used a blown propane burner and a heavily insulated furnace. For a 2 lb puck of crucible steel we went through about half a 100lb propane tank and a #6 clay-graphite crucible. Don't plan on using the crucible again. Not the cheapest way to make steel.

He did use beer bottle glass for the cover slag. Pretty neat process, it's as close to real "Damascus" as you can get, the steel grows the striations as it cools and you have to be very careful when forging it, it tends to be hot short, has a limited working range and the pattern will be destroyed if you overheat it. You also have to take the orientation of the dendrites into account when you forge it out so they will show up when etched. It's also vital as to the ratios and types of raw material you put into the crucible. And no, I don't have the recepie, he took a class with Ric Furrer to learn the process.

I have some pics of it somewhere, I'll try to remember to dig them up.

Thomas if you were talking to me ofc I plan on adding plenty of flux as well as some charcoal powder then covering the thing in refractory crment and letting it cook.

Just was pinging where you were at on the learning curve.  When Al Pendray demo'd at Quad-State, I made sure to volunteer as his "helper" just to get a chance to ask him a bunch of questions about wootz making...

lol, im still an ijit eeither way :D My other thread is me trying to figure out why my burner isnt working right now....if someone had KiK I would film the problem and send it to them to get it posted here and see what answers i'd get

Thomas,. 

 

I am planning to buy the crucible since it will be one less thing to mess with. I have seen beer and single malt scotch bottles used as flux.