More Damascus trial and error.

K

Kev

Well-Known Member
Mostly error but I think I pulled it off to some degree.

A few things I learned and/or relearned throughout this project.
1- Never leave your knife in ferric chloride for 2 days! I got lucky and it wasn’t a total loss, but dang!
2- It is better to make you bar a touch long and possibly loose a little than to make it too short and goof up your cuts. I made my bar nearly the perfect length mathematically, but the clamp on my saw disagreed and made it very difficult to get even cuts.
3- When one is attempting mosaic Damascus, label everything once, twice, and maybe even three times. It’s super easy to get the orientation of your cuts messed up and ruin the desired affect.
4- There are probably a hundred more things I screwed up, but at least I am aware that there are things I don’t know and for now that will be my guide.

IMG_9074.jpegIMG_9075.jpeg
 
Do you have a press or hammer or did you do that by hand. The pattern is awesome.
 
opaul said:
Do you have a press or hammer or did you do that by hand. The pattern is awesome.
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I made a press with a 20 ton air over hydraulic Jack from harbor freight. I started out trying to make crushed W’s and it kinda all went to hell from there.
When it was clear I wasn’t going to get what I wanted I figured I try some stuff, so I did a 4 way weld (pic below). I drew that out and then sawed the block up to do a tile weld. More issues ensued, and this the final product.

IMG_9064.jpeg
 
Kev, I'm more than impressed with your Damascus - While I'm not the photo tweaker I was years ago, but all your photo needed was a tad of lightening.
 
KenH said:
Kev, I'm more than impressed with your Damascus - While I'm not the photo tweaker I was years ago, but all your photo needed was a tad of lightening.
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Good deal. It probably would have helped had I not taken the photo in top of a dirty shop towel. LOL
 
soundmind said:
Does it have a deep etch? I wonder how it would look buffed clean. Looks good like that too though.
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Probably as deep of an etch that’s is possible. I accidentally left it in the ferric for 2 days. The ricasso area where it is thickest was originally .187ish. Now it’s roughly .090.
I’ll never sell this particular knife because I honestly don’t know what all is going on in there. But im
Putting a handle on it, trying some new techniques along the way to learn a little bit. If it makes it out of the hot shop as a genuine knife, I will most likely give it to one of the boys to pack around until they loose it or whatever.
 
Kev said:
Probably as deep of an etch that’s is possible. I accidentally left it in the ferric for 2 days. The ricasso area where it is thickest was originally .187ish. Now it’s roughly .090.
I’ll never sell this particular knife because I honestly don’t know what all is going on in there. But im
Putting a handle on it, trying some new techniques along the way to learn a little bit. If it makes it out of the hot shop as a genuine knife, I will most likely give it to one of the boys to pack around until they loose it or whatever.
Click to expand...

Looks good to me too and looks like you took to forge welding right away.

I know for me I'm going to try for smaller billets/san mai(?) next time.
 
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