Few questions I have while I'm away from home for the week

[Thunter124]

I'm out of town up here in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the week. I've brought all my reading resources, drafting gear and whatnot, for when I have nothing to do. But I got a couple of things on my mind: one is the fact that I have found an abundant source of thick oil rig cable(theoretical miles of the stuff) and I need to figure out how I can work with it, as well as what I'm going to need to work it and techniques to make my life easier trying to get it into something workable.

1. If anyone knows about the general usefulness of the oil rig cable: is it generally a metal capable of hardening and holding a reasonable edge?

2. As far as cleaning the cable is concerned, what methods can you use to remove the oil, I know there is always just burning it out, but is it possible to use a cleaning agent in a vat to soak the oil off of the cable. It would make it easier to clean large lengths of the stuff. If so does anyone know of a good chemical?

3. would it be a fast, slow or intermediate quench in general? I know I would have to do my own testing seeing as its all somewhat different, but how does it usually play out for people using cable damascus? I've read through that section in my $50 knife shop 10 times now, but multiple sources are never a bad thing.

4. As for forging it down, by hand, I bought an 8lb sledge before I left home(I need to dress the faces on it) when I started hammering on an old leaf spring and my 2-3 ish pound brazeal hammer just wouldn't move enough metal. For getting the wire welded together will it be better to use the lighter hammer in rapid blows, or the heavier sledge and heavier more deliberate blows?(either way I am going to weld up the ends before welding, as opposed to the loose wire) I will be moving to hydraulic press at some point in the future, but that is at least $600 away right now(air compressor died, so nothing to power the air/hydraulic if I had one)

5. On finishing, how will a waterstone finishing effect the look of a finish blade? Will it bring out the different colors on the different hardened areas like an etching would, one thing I have read on japanese blades, is that the stone finishing brings out the hamon because the softer portions and the harder portions are scratched differently. If it does work this way, is it a very subtle difference, or can it bring out good definition?

6. On a differential hardening, will it be able two show two defined regions or will it blend in with the different regions within the damascus itself. or is it a situation where you get shade in the damascus of(on a scale hypothetical 1-10 with one being a white and 10 black) 5 and 7 normally, but after a differential the blade portion would come out a 3 and 5, the spine 5 and 7.

When I started typing this we were in a mall looking around to pass some time, and I stopped in a radio shack on the off chance they had some etchant, lo and behold 700 miles from home, I was able to pick up 2 bottles of feric . So now I got another piece of the knife shop puzzle to look forward to on the return trip!

Any help on any questions would be appreciated, just trying to confirm/deny/expand my body of knowledge.

-Hunter

 

[Doug Lester]

1. If the cable doesn't have any non steel core parts and is not coated with anything for corrosion resistance, like plating, it will probably be useful for making damascus blades. Exactly what carbon content is you can't tell. Maybe someone at the company you're getting this stuff from knows. Won't hurt to ask.

2. If you find a good way let the rest of us know. It's a dirty, messy job and, from what I've read no solvent works better than burning it out which is what ends up having to be done to finish the job anyway.

3. I would start out with a relatively fast oil, maybe something like a vegatable oil and go from there.

4. I strongly recommend that you do not use an 8lb hammer single handed. You will tire yourself quickly and loose control and you will pay for it in the end and be saying "I wish I had listened when they told me not to do it". If you can get someone to hold for you you can use it with both arms. I wouldn't recommend anything heavier than 3lbs single handed until you can work with that weight and maintane control. Anyway, you don't use brute force for welding. Keep the surfaces free is foreign material and oxygen with flux and push the steel close enough together for atomic bonds to form across the individual strands. The 8lb hammer could be used as above to draw out the bar after welding.

5. The softer portions and the harder portions will sand at different rates with sandpaper. If you want to work with waterstones, that's fine. I just don't buy all the hype about them.

6. Cable damascus may well show a hamon if differentially hardened. It depends on the steel that it is made from. The only question is whether or not you want to desplay the watering from the cable and the hamon line. They might detract from each other.

7. Cable is one of the hardest products to weld into pattern welded steel bars. The gunk that you don't get out will cause inclusions and the individual strands can break free and not hold heat long enough to forge weld down and will have to be ground away. This individual strands will also give hundreds of opportunities for cold shuts. I'll give you the advice that was given to me after my failures with cable damascus. Learn to forge weld bars of steel before you go onto cable damascus. It's really an advaced process.

Doug

 

[Thunter124]

1. It’s my friend’s granddad who works on oil rigs that’s getting me the used cable, easy enough to just ask, if I’d asked a couple of months ago I would have been able to get a few miles of the stuff.

2. Looking around at different possibilities right now, we are good friends with Michal Waltrip Racing and I picked up some bearings from their souvenir shop that had been cleaned of all the oil and gunk after they had been raced, so I’ll ask them what they did. Dad is thinking a large vibratory cleaner might work, will see. Edit: found a possibility in the cleaning agent EC-1800, going to shoot an email to them and see about a couple of properties of it.

3. Alright will work with that, got a couple gallons of peanut oil ready to go in an ammo can.

4. No go on the 8lb single handed, have thought of making a hold down tool that could hold a length of cable steady, something like a deep U shape with a weighted swing arm to keep it from moving around on the anvil. Something that I could bring stock up to heat, drop it in, flip the swing arm over the steel and then have both hands free to swing, and keep the capability to spin the stock inside of the rig.

5. Eh, it’s a question worth looking at for me, I already have 800 and 4000 grit, and I enjoy sitting down and sliding a blade back and forth over a wetstone. I would ask more, but I will take that topic to another part of the forum more appropriate.

6. This will probably be one of the things I have to look at in my own experiments to see whether or not it is actually of any use aesthetically or mechanically in the first place.

7. Was expecting this answer to come, and I’ve thought about it in length, but I’m just twenty and I have plenty of time on my hands right now to work on technique. To be honest I’m not one to take things quick, expect it to be easy, and expect the best results right off the bat. I’m more interested in it for the craft and learning about specific aspects that interest me, and one specific thing that interests me is the patterns and look of a piece of wire Damascus. If I ever want to figure out how to weld up a bundle of wire, it will take a couple of tries and it will come with its own specific challenges different from that of flat bar welding and other kinds of welds. I would prefer to not waste the time working on another type of material that I have no interest in, in the guise of a prerequisite to what I want to do. But I would rather take the time to try and work with the cable, and put my all into figuring out something I have more interest in.

8. New question: I have acquired some bearings, that have been raced, from michael waltrip racing that I had the idea of making into something. I would assume given the fact that they are used on a nationwide car that they are of sufficient quality to harden, I may be able to ask what kind of steel it actually is, but it may just be one of those things that they are unwilling to say, but has anyone made something out of something like this before(can post picks of the different bearings later)

-To fail and to learn, is better than to have not failed and never learned.

 

[ironstein]

For what it's worth, you would be spinning your wheels trying to clean cable. They get so much crud in them, its gonna be burned out anyway. A method i use that works great is to use a box of borax 20 mule team in 5 gallons of water, heat your cable to a dull red, and quench it in the borax water, do this a few times to knock the gunk out. This helps to bring some flux deep into the wire rope for the future weld, as well as clean out the crud. Then bring her up to a dull red, flux with 20 mule team (in powder form), bring to welding heat, hit lightly as you set the weld, try to hit the cable so as to tighten the wire rope. You can also put it in your vise and twist it tight before hammering. The key to forge welding is to start out real easy with light taps until you start to feel the metal solidify and become one. Most forge welding mistakes are caused by hitting too hard and the weld just slips and slops around. With cable you need to keep the blow centered and keep tightening as you hammer to force everything together.
hope this helps, just my .02!
Brian