Road to Damascus

[Tzelik Hammar]

I try to plan way ahead, because I gather materials when I can afford them and eventually knock out a project. That being said, I have a fair stock of 5160 laying around and my plan had extended into Damascus or pattern welded steels. I have Harley chains im saving for the purpose because that pattern is pretty and I've had to replace my chain a couple times, but I'm wondering what a good "intro" contrast material would be, to get the technique down without shelling tons of cash into specialty steps.

 

If I missed a sticky, let me know but I think I'm good.

 

[TheoRockNazz]

Those chains will be great practice! I encourage you to attempt that several times to get used to forge welding. You can also then add a fun extra element by san mai-ing that with the 5160 you have as the core.

[Johnnyreb338]

Good afternoon Randell

Good luck to you, hope you have better luck than I have had. I spent about 6 hours this morning beating my brains out, hand shaping and grinding only to have it delaminate from a cold shut down the middle of the blade. It swelled up like a balloon. I had a bunch of cutoffs of 8670, 52100 and 15n20 so I decided to try a 14 layer san mai style  ( 7 plates then cut length ways and reweld) . I'm having a hard time coming to terms with this whole damascus thing. I have no press so it's all heat and beat, too much work only to have it fail in the end. I put it in the vice and broke it in 2 places,it appeared that the initial billit welded up great but the restack failed even tho I ground both pieces prior to reweld. I know everyone tells me that with 5160 you need a fairly aggressive flux to weld it. Mabey  you'll have better luck than I. 

[Will W.]

To be totally honest, Randall, I would practice forge welding on small projects first. Make some chain, for instance, with the two ends welded together. That will get you started. After a few feet of chain, once you have a good idea of the process (color indication, amount of flux needed, how hard to strike with each successive weld amount of air needed, etc.) stack up some mild steel into a billet and try to weld it together. Fold it a few times, just to get the hang of it. Do a billet or two of those, and then maybe work on a San Mai with some mild and a plain high carbon steel. 

Forge welding is not incredibly difficult, but there are a few things that need to be done rather precisely to get it to work properly. I recommend mild steel because if you screw up (and if you're case is anything like mine, you will) it's not such a big deal versus screwing up on good blade materials. 

Believe me, I wanted to make Damascus long before i had the ability to, and I mangled a lot of perfectly good blade steel trying to do so, and I became SO frustrated that I couldn't do it. I was trying to make a huge leap instead of taking steps. Its difficult to progress that way. 

[Tzelik Hammar]

Oh, no. This is an eventually thing. I plan on as much practice beforehand as I can to get clean forge welds consistently before I start. The question is more what kind of things should I pick up for such projects.

I work in a mechanic's shop and I kinda pack-rat materials way ahead of actual projects because they will sell them to me at scrap price or sometimes just give it to me. I'm looking for materials that will provide a good contrast so I know what to look for around the yard as far as materials for the time in the future when I start Damascus. Should I be collecting bearings, for instance? Will they contrast with the coil spring steel well enough to see after proper etching?

If it's simply "buy xxxx steel or don't bother" I'd like to know to save my salvage time and money. I'm still working my way through the rather large number of posts on this website but have not come across a post discussing which steels provide solid contrasts yet.

[the iron dwarf]

for damascus you should be using wootz

for pattern welded use various steels and WI

bearings are often good as they will be a hardenable steel for an edge

avoid anything that is plated

spring steel is good so springs, sway bars, torsion bars ( spring will often not weld to spring, you need something else in between

steel is cheap so getting known stuff is better, I buy up to half a ton a month of mild and maybe 200 pounds of specialist steels

 

[ThomasPowers]

Damascus has been used as a term applying to both wootz and pattern welded materials for well over 100 years---see "damascus gun barrels" for example.As such it's not a specific term and trying to apply to just one subtype is probably fruitless at this point.  (it's used in the 1897 Sears Roebuck catalog referring to gun barrels for instance)  Since pattern welded steel was known in Western Europe centuries before wootz steel was used there, I'm wondering why the one term superseded the other?  I remember smiths telling people at demos that pattern welding was developed after Europeans were exposed to wootz weapons during the crusades and were trying to duplicate them---great urban myth as the heyday of pattern welding in Western Europe was centuries before the first crusade...Blacksmiths are good but seeing 500+ years into the future???? It is interesting to note that every culture I have investigated that used the bloomery process to make wrought iron seems to have come up with pattern welding as well. Perhaps the forging out, cutting and stacking and forge welding that is done to refine blooms into usable wrought iron had something to do with it...

Me, rather than saying Wootz Damascus or Pattern Welded Damascus; I prefer to just go with Wootz or Pattern Welded.

[Johnnyreb338]

Afternoon  everyone. 

Just food for thought. May not be worth anything but I'm just trying to be an active member of the board.

iron was bloomed/smelted in India and formed into steel by them in the form of crucible billitsteel. Then trade routes ended up in damascus where the blade smith/ armor's took the bill it's and made the swords. The swords ended up on the battlefield where supplies were limited ,but the blacksmiths found a way to combine broken swords and such to keep troops armed. Much in the same sense that German soligen steel gets its name, from soligen Germany.    I watched a show on natgeo where they were talking about India being the largest maker of bloomed, and crucible steel back in the day and used the billits for trade.     Sounds good anyway.    

[ThomasPowers]

Well wootz would be ingot not billet steel; If you are interested in this sort of thing may I commend to your attention "Crucible Steel in Central Asia" a PhD thesis by Dr Ann Feuerbach and the published thesis I just found: "Early Iron and Steel in Sri Lanka" G. Juleff.

I was the helper assigned to Al Pendray at the Quad State he was welding chevrons of wootz and pattern welded material together for a blade----there is a historic one done that way in Damaszener Stahl, Sachse, IIRC

I don't know if wootz blades were forged welded together after breaking at that period and location---do you have a cite I can follow up on?   Wootz is weird in it's temperature requirements for working if you want to keep the carbides from going into solution.

[Frosty]

Johnny, might I recommend you do different research? For example San Mai is Japanese for Three Layers and refers to a blade technique where high carbon steel for edge quality is sandwiched between low carbon for flexibility. The old saw about broken blades being picked up off battle fields and forged into swords is another really OLD tale. I'm sure it was done but it wasn't the basis of new technology.

Last but NOT least, The City of "Damascus means" " City Of the Mark"  and is a cross roads in trade routes and has been since the stone age. Materials, food, olive oil, etc. everything worth trading found it's way through Damascus. The old blacksmith's tale is "The Mark" is the pattern in "water" steel later to be known as Damascus steel. That tale has secretive blacksmiths in Damascus forging blades of The Mark and it took Europeans hundreds of years to learn to duplicate the steel. Due to the sword's unsurpassed qualities the city got renamed Damascus. That's the story I heard sounds good yes?

Unfortunately The Mark was put on everything passing legally through Damascus as having paid the tax. The steel old timey Damascus was made of had a good % of vanadium in the ore and ingots got traded all over EurAsia. The Viking blades carried by the Varangian guard were made from high vanadium steel indistinguishable from old time Damascus blades. There were other admixtures but a lot of that can be attributed to what was in the forge when it was being heated. 

These are fun stories but for the most part they're just stories. Including what I can remember about the city and steel.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Johnnyreb338]

Afternoon Mr. Thomas 

No website for info.    Mostly I was speculating with what little information I have. 

Afternoon  Frosty 

I'll buy that answer. The documentary I watched was just showing the process of blooming iron and touched a little on how they converted it into ingots and basically said that most of the crucible steel was supplied by India. The rest was just me grabing at straws. 

[Will W.]

 

If it's simply "buy xxxx steel or don't bother" I'd like to know to save my salvage time and money. I'm still working my way through the rather large number of posts on this website but have not come across a post discussing which steels provide solid contrasts yet.

Definitely salvage springs, torsion bars, bearings, etc. They are very useful for a number of different projects. 

For damascus, I strongly recommend buying known steel. Not only do you know exactly what it is, but you know exactly what temperatures it welds at and exactly what temp to quench at. You can also choose steels that have similar properties in these two categories, but contrast each other well (the reason why 1080/1095 and 15N20 are so commonly used.) 

[Johnnyreb338]

Randall.     A good place to get useable scrap is to find a diesel repair shop and get in good with someone. Mudflat hanger rods are 3/4 square by about 2' long and are very hardnenable , they usally have plenty of large bearing races, large leaf springs, old broken axles etc... everything you find at an auto shop but much bigger. More bang for your buck. 

[ThomasPowers]

It works even better if you have a power hammer; bigger is not always better if you have to spend an entire forge session just pounding down stuff to a size you can use *before* you can start forging an item.

[Johnnyreb338]

Well    Cut off a smaller piece

[Tzelik Hammar]

 

It works even better if you have a power hammer; bigger is not always better if you have to spend an entire forge session just pounding down stuff to a size you can use *before* you can start forging an item.

I'm working on acquiring a treadle hammer, if that would work. I am open to any suggestions for a home built power hammer but I haven't come across plans for that in my board crawl yet.

[ThomasPowers]

A treadle hammer sure is useful for a lot of things; but it's still working off *your* power and one human power is not equivalent to a couple of horse power especially over a length of time. The thing about most of the larger blacksmithing "toys" is that they don't take the place of each other. Instead they are solidly in the middle of what they do and may only be "OK" at other jobs.  So the treadle hammer, powerhammer, hydraulic press, screw press, rolling mill, board hammer; etc. All have their rightful place *iff* you do a wide enough bunch of things in your shop.  A good powerhammer probably has the widest range of things it can do; a poor one a very narrow range of things.

[Tzelik Hammar]

This may seem silly, but what separates a good power hammer from a bad? size? force? adjustability? If I end up with a power hammer I will most certainly have had to build it (I'm muddling through the ABANA treadle hammer plans currently), so it would be good to know criteria to judge plans by! On another note, fairly similar... would a wood splitter make a decent press? I have a hand one (two handles for pumping at different speeds), and could probably get my hands on a gasoline powered one from a local wood yard.

[ThomasPowers]

What separates a good powerhammer from a bad one *CONTROL*  followed at a distance by power.

Biggest thing for a press is speed as the dies remove heat from the workpiece quickly so you need to work fast to get it done while the metal is hot,  So hand operated---nope.

[Tzelik Hammar]

Excellent. Thank you on both counts.

[will52100]

First, I don't know your experience with forging high carbon steel, so disregard if it doesn't apply to you.  Forget forge welding mild steel or wrought iron for right now, you run high carbon to the temps needed for either and you'll burn it.  It is a good skill to have, but learn to forge weld high carbon first if damascus is your target.

The absolutely easiest way to weld a billet of damascus is to get a stack of 1084 and 15&20, sheared to length, 6"x 1 1/2", 1/8" thick on the 1084 and about .080 on the 15&20.  Reason for the thicker 1084 is that the high nickel of 15&20 means it will not draw out as much as the 1084 so by the time your at 3-400 layers the layers are about the same thickness.  Grind the mill scale off, last batch I got was clean so no need, and stack alternating layers with the 1084 on the outside.  Forge weld, and draw out, cut and re stack.  This has the benefit of making layers fast and is easy to replicate patterns.  1084 and 15&20 are also close enough that the same heat treat applies to either or both.  I've heard some people say you need a hydraulic press to weld, but I started with nothing but a cast iron anvil and a hammer, just made smaller billets and would take longer.  A hydraulic press is certainly well suited to damascus, but is not necessary.  On a side note, 1084 is sometimes hard to get, 1080 works just fine in it's place.

Probably the best way to learn to forge weld is what a friend of mine calls "frontier damascus".  Basically start with a chunk of a large file or other low alloy, high carbon steel.  Forge it flat and stack a slightly smaller chunk of different alloy high carbon steel on it and forge weld, and so on and so on until you have a nice sized chunk.  Flatten out and square up, draw it out and cut and stack with at least one side fold.  Makes for interesting patterns and is fun to do, but you need some idea of what alloys you are using.  Reason for calling it frontier damascus is that it sounds better than scrapmascus and back in the frontier days smiths would weld up any small pieces to make a larger one, steel didn't get discarded.

For forging damascus, probably the best tool is a hydraulic forging press.  Next would be an air hammer.  I've got a hydraulic press, a tire hammer and a treadle hammer, and they all are useful, but each has their strengths and weaknesses.  What one is good at the other not so much.  If I was primarily forging damascus and could only have one machine, it'd be the hydraulic press.

There have been many wood splitters converted to forging presses, but if you have welding experience you'd likely be better off building one from scratch unless you can get the splitter for free.  A wood splitter will need modification and reinforcement.

[Steve Sells]

I have to call Nonsense on the "nickel wont draw out" comment.   I have no clue where that came from. it is simply not true. I have made damascus  using pure 201 nickel as well as various nickel containing alloys and it draws just fine, Pure nickel may appear thicker due to nickel likes to alloy with the layers next to it, but I am not sure if any of that applies to 12N20.  Using the same thickness of 12N20 and 1080 is not going to be a problem,  use what makes you happy, but please dont present rumors as facts, it makes life harder than necessary for everyone.

[Will W.]

I have to agree with Steve. I've made damascus (definitely not as much as Mr. Sells has, mind you) out of 15N20 and 1080 before, and the layers always appear uniformly thick and relatively even. It draws out just fine.

 

Pure nickel may appear thicker due to nickel likes to alloy with the layers next to it

Ive actually been wondering something relating to this lately. During the forge welding process, will carbon diffuse into the nickel? Or through it, into another layer of steel? Or does it act as a sort of carbon diffusion barrier?

[will52100]

I have to call "nonsense" on the nickel alloy NOT stretching.  I didn't say it would not draw, I said it will not draw as much.  It will draw very nearly as much as the 1084/1080, but not quite.  I have made enough damascus to prove this on more than one occasion.  You start with the same thickness 15&20 and when you get to the higher layer counts it will be very slightly thicker than the 1080.  When you first weld up a billet you can see on the edges that the 1084 has stretched more.

I haven't messed with pure nickel much, but from what I've seen I doubt you will get carbon migration to it, at least in the 3-400 layer counts, or at least enough migration to make it hardenable, but maybe a metallurgist can add more insight.

[Jclonts82]

 

... act as a sort of carbon diffusion barrier?

As far as I know, really high/pure nickel is a diffusion barrier to arbor. I'm sure there is a carbon migration gradient with nickel content, inverse relation I expect. I will have to research sources to know, just for my own knowledge if nothing else.