I've heard that layering nickle and steel while forging can make damascus steel, but i've wondered for a while what the outcome would be if you changed the prosces from layering nickle and steel to layering copper and steel. Has anyone tried or at least knows what happens, or if it can even be done?

oh and if i am wrong about the damascus please let me know. thanks

i would think copper is too soft to do this...could be wrong though...there must be some good reason nobody's tried...and google comes up with zip on copper damascus...

Using copper would braze the steel together, rather than weld.

The copper melts before steel is at welding temp if I recall correctly.

What you would get is mokume gane, I have done some research on the subject, You would have to form every thing before bonding or you would splash molten copper all over the place,

Check out Jim Binnion's site. Unique Mokume Wedding Rings, Wedding Bands, Engagement Rings by James Binnion

He's probably one of the best practitioners of Mokume Gane in the USA today. He's not only made iron/copper pieces he's made iron/gold and more exotic.

Recently he's been doing various combos with titanium.

Deb and I wear wedding rings by Jim.

Frosty

Note that the layering doesn't make pattern welding it's the forge welding that does. Regular forging won't do zip.

Also note that while it is commonly called damascus, forge welded differential steels are not true damascus. Current thought is that the closest we can get to true damascus is wootz steel - or not, depending on which side of the fence you're on!
To differentiate, we call the product you've heard of pattern welded steel, as per Thomas's post.

Well pattern welded steel has been called Damascus Steel for longer than the USA has been around so I think it has some customary rights to the term.

I just consider the term "damascus" to be ambiguous as it (rightly) refers to two very different things and so try to use the more narrowly defined term to avoid confusion.

And if you use the sub-terms you avoid quibbling like this! (Of course you could pay a couple of big burly bruise boys to pay a visit to my camp at Quad-State to try to stop such nitpicking; but they may not be successful as we run a very nice and open camp and have derailed many a prior attempt through hospitality...)

LOL! Didn't mean to sound like I was quibbling Thomas! I figured we may as well get our new member used to 'our' terms in the hope to avoid confusing the heck out of him!
I agree on the confusion thing.
Trouble is, for so many things in life there are different names for the same thing, and the same names for different things. ;)

Especially with history! We tend to want to have specific names for things that the actual users would just call a "sword" and sometimes we want to lump everything together in a single term when the original people had specific names for all the fiddly bits.

And then there is jargon---words used in very specific ways by people that "know" the field that may not be how they are used by "outsiders". Learning the jargon of a field shows that you know enough to be considered an insider and so are worth the time to talk to...

Jargon also allows you to communicate accurately when it counts. It shares some traits with exclusionist slang and is often used by "pros" the same way but it's real purpose is precise communications.

Frosty

Frosty, that should already be known to the folks that matter....<>

Sure, I just like letting the ones who think using a little jargon makes a difference know it doesn't.

Futile I know but hope springs eternal.

Frosty