Thread: Clouds of damascus

Waste not want not. Some time ago I had a piece of san mai left, with O2/L6 Damascus for the sides, and O2 for the core. It was the end of the bar I'd made some time earlier. Now I could have carefully drawn it out and made another san mai razor. But, well ... meh. Not much fun in that.

I'd also gotten a piece of very pure crucible steel with 1.1% carbon from my friend Evrahim who also makes the wootz for me. It as just about the size for a pocketknife. I'd put it aside quite a while ago.

So in order to do something useful with those scraps, I first drew out the san mai, then twisted it several times, and hammered it flat. Then I cut it in 2, and used those twisted san mai bits and the crucible steel to make a new san mai. After cleaning up the billet I forged it into a razor.

Now, I didn't know exactly what would happen, but it turns out that this construction results in clouds of Damascus along the blade. I admit it didn't go entirely as planned though. To start with, the initial twist bar was borderline too small so I didn't forge it out as well as I should have, resulting in uneven sides on the new san mai. This revealed itself during the etching process, because the back side didn't come out nearly as nice.

Still, the concept seems to be pretty and I think that if I start out with a bit more san mai Damascus, both sides can be forged to have equalt thickness and equal twist pattern, and then the result would be a more or less symmetrical cloud progression on each side.