Brain storming a billet

[Sly]

Well i got pnumonia so its gonna be a while before i should swing a hammer... Maybe another month so im doing planning in the meanwhile and i would apreciate your thoughts on this steel, avoiding beginner questions please im looking for input.

So this is a roughly .7-1.4 carbon chunk with maybe 1-2% nickle supposedly made from manganese nails and deer bone. Dust to dust... Bones to steel.

So i am thinking i will wrap it in a very low carbon steel wire(technically its iron because its under .02% but w.e its a really high manganese alloy so its steel) that will meld into steel with flux and an orange heat, just with a few hammer taps. The wire might help hold it together while i gently work it into a patty.

Maybe like this but more extreme and covering the whole chunk? Pretty much over wrapping it heating the chunknand then pouring as much borax as will stick to it.

Now pretend the paydough is my steel if you can tolerate the sillyness.

Im thinking i would start at the edges and fold it very carefully a bit at a time into a rectangle of sorts.

Only when i do the small folds i add some 1075 shim stock cut into strips into the creases. Its only maybe a grain and a half thick and it can be cut with tin snips.

Metal gets reheated and soaked, shim just gets forged right into the mess which is going to have be consolidated anyways.

Now the fun part of the theory im thinking i might hot cut and fold the patty one inch at a time. Adding shim stock into the creases as i go.

basically turning it over cut cutting and folding it up like an acordian.

Annnd then i might rewrap in wire and consolidate it down to a bar and begin the forge welding process of folding it 5-12 times.

Figuring this chunk is going to get welded onto another two parts of different steel and refolded however many times till i have a million at least.

Thoughts? I also have used all of these techniques before so they work its just a matter of how i want to play with it.

 

 

[Donal Harris]

Deer bone?

[jeremy k]

Please take pictures of the process when you do this and let us all see your progress.

[ThomasPowers]

Will the phosphorus from the bone cause it to be cold short?

1 million layers will probably make into a nice homogeneous mild steel.   (Which you then could use in san mai....)

[Donal Harris]

So the deer bone has a purpose?  I thought perhaps it had just fallen in the bloomery.

[SFC Snuffy]

High manganese alloys work-harden, right? Will your overwraps of wire be contributing enough mass for the overall manganese content to get that high?

[ThomasPowers]

Radomir Pleiner's "The Celtic Sword" mentions the use of phosphorus as a hardening element for edges---carbon is not the only one you know.

 

[Sly]

Did i mention no power hammer? Its all going to be my arm or a strikers.

Early on in the consolidation process you have to beat the metal almost cold to harden it to get it to consolidate down otherwise you could never erase the voids.

Well refining steel in this method is a bit curious... Its not exactly all the same material, theres even bits of charcoal and flux still stuck inside the tubes and the carbon content is a little uneven. It was slagged with alot of glass and borax as well as the bone so i doubt there was enough content to really make a difference in the overal content. Any high spots are going to get thinned. The micro structure isnt going to have any issues spread throughout the steel like you would have an issue with a bad bar of 01.

Awkwardly the wire doesnt harden and retains its soft structure so its also going to give me a little work thoughness As for the phosphurpus issue theres alot of parts that is just carborized nails, same thing with the nickle content.

Its only going to 10 main body max folds so its not really going to exceed 3000 of what i would concider layers. I wont count the consolidation folds on the edges to get it to the recrangle or the wire or the 1075. Im always going to try and count 30% less because the layers will not be strait but at an angle.

Heres the thing to think about its not one billet brought to a million layers its three stacks of different 3000ish stack ontop of each other brought to a million, that means each of these smaller billets is going to retain alot of its indevidual properties and it will be like folding a three stack only maybe i do the math from there to count a million

Ile guess at 7500 since the layers are going to wobble fold one for 15000, fold twice for 30000, fold three for 60000 ect.

Im debating at some point adding strips of w2 or 15n20 somewhere like i am going to add the 1075, just in small amount probally early on.

Im also thinking of doing a short pack carborization a few times early on to help add back to the wire so its not leeching too much carbon.

[ThomasPowers]

We always consolidated blooms at welding heat---even if they were so soupy we had to use a wooden hammer to nudge the metal together into a muck bar (Taconite pellets were premixed with flux for blast furnace use, we crushed them fine and tried them in the bloomery but they made a very soupy bloom indeed compared to plain limonite or magnetite  used as ore.)

I remember Al Pendray telling us about having to decarb the surface of very high C content wootz pucks to get them to hold together while gently forging them out.  (For some reason I volunteered to be his assistant for his demo at Quad-State one year. I didn't float a fake eyeball in the quench tank like I did for Ric Furrer when I was his assistant...)

[Sly]

Iv made two preformed blanks this way none of which i got to keep, i learned for labor,

I might keep the same method which is to heat it to orange and give it soak time and then gently tap it out with the sledge, maybe a half foot drop and the sledge doesnt leave the steel after it hits till its a patty. I can weld at orange temps after its soaked for an hour, its not the best weld and will have lines but that might be till i get it into a bar, maybe a two hour pack carborization which will basically weld it like the bloomery process did and balance out the carbon, then do normal forge welding at 2200-2400f.

So that is the new part for me, im doing partial consolidations with the folds instead of selectively stscking or trying to just fold a massive block till its all consolidated, i dont know much different the material loss will be but wel see when i get over my xxxxxx lung inflamation.

[ThomasPowers]

Take it slow; I've had pneumonia several times and know it's still a killer even with medical help.  I missed a month of work one summer with it.  I remember telling my wife to stop the car when we were on the way back from my twice weekly Dr visit as I had seen a sledge hammer on the side of the road.  She finally stopped and patiently waited while it walked back to it and drug it to the car---one step stop and breathe, another step stop and breathe---you would have thought I was climbing Mount Everest and not along a highway on the flat. (She kicked me out of the bedroom too as she said the constant coughing was keeping her awake and she needed to be able to take care of our kids...)

[Frosty]

Pneumonia is nothing to take chances with, I've had it twice. I found sleeping sitting up worked well to keep the phlem going the right direction and hold coughing down.

Take it easy, pushing it too much will most likely prolong the badness. Get well soonest instead Eh?

Frosty The Lucky.

[Sly]

This will be my fifth time, starts with a sinus infection and it creeps into the lungs while sleeping. I dont get burning fevers anymore after surviving a 5 over temp fever being in negative 10 degree weather for 6 hours (oh the life of infantry)so it takes forever to fight something like this off. Doctors got me on amoxicillin. Pretty much a bed rat right now so its reaserch and think time to draw plans i guess. Cant even whetstone a tanto right now without a fit it sucks

[JHCC]

Funny story: the first time I had pneumonia (and more precisely, when I finally listened to Lisa and got medical assistance), the doctor prescribed a steroid to help clear up my lungs, with the warning that I should take it first thing in the morning, as it might keep me awake. (He also said that I should call him if I started feeling psychotic.) That first day (which was a couple of days before Thanksgiving), I had to take the first pill at about 3 pm, and it kept me awake until after 8 am the next morning. In my steroid-fueled mania, I made about a dozen batches of piecrust. Double crust.

[Steve Sells]

Pneumonia has its good side,   nearly 5 years ago I had it for over a week, by then I was finally able to quit smoking

[ThomasPowers]

For my main bout I was in an HMO and it was summer; so I never saw the same Dr twice and all of them had a different theory about what was causing it---but they didn't  send me to the hospital to have a biopsy done and test for what it was and what killed it.  They just kept changing meds and dosages till it finally gave up...The company I worked for did test the entire 1.5+ million sq foot  factory for Legionella after one of the Docs thought it might be that. I had a copy of the report that said the factory was clean---but the rest of that summer various water fountains, bathrooms, air handlers, etc were taken off line for clean-up after the testing...Reminded me of the time when I had to get a minor work injury ok'd by medical and told them I was going to see my Doctor about this pain in my abdomen...The Med department Dr told me I was OK and to take some antacid and aspirin and get back to work.  Had  a gangrenous appendix removed later that day.

Now I reflect on it my life has been a fairly constant story of medical system trying to off me----hot fires, heavy or sharp objects and large machinery is refreshing in that it's dangerous in non-subtle ways!

[Sly]

First three times i had it i was in the service and you cant have pnuemonia in the army so they classified it as bronchitis, nasty bit of a lie there being you cant get the medication you need or the proper work restrictions. And i worked through it by pretty much being misserable. Being useless the people around you will.make you feel worse then being sick.

I did get it the second time from a sandstorm so yeah you can get pnuemonia from particulate inhalation, hidden danger there.

Iv been drinking at least three quarts of water this past week and im passing none of it.

Fevers will make you manic too on their own you get these bouts of perfect energy and you crash twice as hard and youl bruise your lungs if you use it. worst trap there is.

[Frosty]

50 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Dr told me I was OK and to take some antacid and aspirin and get back to work.  Had  a gangrenous appendix removed later that day.

Should've taken the antacid like the doc said. 

Infantrymen don't stop just because they're dieing, think what that'd do to our rep? 

You guys are really selfish you know.

Not bad Steve but I have you beat. I'd tried giving up smoking for probably 3 years steady but catching a falling birch tree with my head did the trick, bonk, non-smoker like flipping a switch.  10 days or so in a coma might've detoxed me a might but stopping cold for longer never did it before.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

Frosty---the man who got bonked on the noggin by a VEGETABLE and used that as an excuse to take a 10 day nap telling us to suck it up and get back to work?  It's all in how you phrase it.  (I remember a MASH episode where a medal had been awarded for "shell fragments in an eye" Unjustly as thy were eggshell fragments and did no real damage...)

[Sly]

Tree powers activate!

[ThomasPowers]

Tree Powers?  Cousin of mine and not active at all. All he does is stand around in the yard and vegetate!

[Sly]

I almost wanted to make a following joke asking about your cousin austen powers and phase conversion to martensite.

Gotta keep it pg though.

[Steve Sells]

Actuality you need to keep it G rated

[ThomasPowers]

Thanks for the PG tips said Thomas the tea drinker... 

[Sly]

Oooh i have oolong i can make.

Awkward question though, iv been using a cellphone to take pictures and the occasional video, what kind of camera and specs does it need to capture the heat when forging, my cellphone doesnt do that at all.