What steels for a beginner's Damascus?

[Gavj75]

Hello people. 

I'm not to far off from attempting my first hand hammered Damascus and my question is this:-

From the steels which I have, which ones will work best together to forge a nice light/dark contrasting stripey Damascus? 

I have access to ''heavy-duty steel bandsaw blade'',''steel banding''(used for banding steel down on pallets),various different ''leaf springs''(5160 I think) and some ''circular saw blades''.

I would appreciate any advice from anyone that may be able to help me with this. 

Thank's, Gav

[ThomasPowers]

Place a drop of your etching solution on a cleaned spot of each and see what it will look a lot like in use. Note if your circular saw blades contain chromium they will be difficult to weld.

I've had a lot of luck with bandsaw blade and pallet strapping---for blades use the pallet strapping that will break easily in a quench and break test.

I'm assuming this is for blades. Damascus doesn't have to be made into a blade...but the location seems to indicate it's for a blade.

[Jclonts82]

I second TPs suggestions. I made a 1/4 decent dagger from BSB/PS. Tried it after reading his suggestions in MANY posts on the forums.  The steels are usually cheap-free and that makes good practice.

 

 

If buying new, 1080 and 15n20 have very similar properties (forging hardness, temperature range, hardening/tempering temperatures)

 

Be sure to spend the time getting the layers as clean and straight/even as possible!

[Gavj75]

Sorry it's taken me a little while to reply. Thanks for your advice guys as it'll help me out quite a bit. I wouldn't of thought about etching the different steels individually. 

I'll be over the moon if I can achieve something close to the results on your dagger. It looks really cool.

Thanks again, Gav

One last thing, is that a ladder pattern? 

[Steve Sells]

twist

 

[Jclonts82]

If I recall correctly, it was 11 full 360 degree twists. If/when you twist it, depending on how much you grind off, you get different patterns to show up. The left edge of the picture shows what some call a 'star' or 'starbursts' I believe the more you grind off, the more of that shows up. I would have loved to do so on this one, but my personal inexperience and lack of planning had me not use enough steel/forge a blade too long to have enough meat left on it to grind into to reveal the layers better.