Thread: Work in Progress: Pete's razor

Originally Posted by outback

Awesome, Bruno.
Pete's a special guy, but I believe this might be more special, than he. [emoji56]

Can't wait....!!!!!

Oh... come on Mike. I just like really cool stuff!
When it comes to razors though...nothing but the coolest!!!

Pete <:-}

The weather here has been absolutely crap for outdoors forging: rain and lots of wind.
However tomorrow it is expected to be warm and sunny and not too windy, so if the weather cooperates, I can perform the next step of the forge welding progression, which is to welde the pieces of the body together.

The weather played nice. I managed to forge weld those 4 pieces together and draw them out into the body of the blade with a tapered tang.
It is still too thick. The reason is I have to grind away some to clean it up and to remove the tag welds. And I need thickness to forgeweld the wootz to. Welding 2 thin pieces together edgewise is not feasible.

Anyway, things are starting to come together. One more round of forgewelding to go and then the rough part is done.

With a bit of luck, the final forgewelding can be done on Wednesday. And then I can start grinding.
The really scary part will be the heat treatment. I have spent quite some time thinking about it because there is a risk it'll fly apart.
My theory is that the O2 in the spine will throughharden quickly and not contract too much.
The 1095 and 15N20 between the wootz and Damascus will hopefullycreate a boundary that is in-between in terms of hardening speed.
And the wootz is normally shallowhardening but in the edge section should harden fully enough.

In theory.

I conferred with Howard on this but as he rightly pointed out: it's not a common combination of materials, and surely as hell not something you'd normally do with wootz. Our conclusion was that it may work as expected, but the proof of the pudding will be in eating it.

Originally Posted by Bruno

With a bit of luck, the final forgewelding can be done on Wednesday. And then I can start grinding.
The really scary part will be the heat treatment. I have spent quite some time thinking about it because there is a risk it'll fly apart.
My theory is that the O2 in the spine will throughharden quickly and not contract too much.
The 1095 and 15N20 between the wootz and Damascus will hopefullycreate a boundary that is in-between in terms of hardening speed.
And the wootz is normally shallowhardening but in the edge section should harden fully enough.

In theory.

I conferred with Howard on this but as he rightly pointed out: it's not a common combination of materials, and surely as hell not something you'd normally do with wootz. Our conclusion was that it may work as expected, but the proof of the pudding will be in eating it.

Got faith in ya Bruno.[emoji6]

Looking forward to the results amd wishing you a smooth quench..

Reminds me of the tale of the ancient samurai blade smith that was visiting his colleague in another village. As he was leaving he dipped his finger in the other smiths quenching bath.
The smith, outraged, chopped off the mans hand.
The man merely smiled, because he remembered the temperature of the water..

Good luck sir..

Originally Posted by outback

Got faith in ya Bruno.[emoji6]

Me too!

Pete <:-}

Today I forge welded the wootz to the Damascus body. It went well. The connection seems solid all along the welding boundary. It is still a bit oversize. That was intentional, because you can never rely completely on the ends of the welding boundary. There are some pits left in the blade, but that's no issue. It is still much too thick so I need to grind it down some before I can even begin to start shaping it.

The blank is now in the oven, annealing.
It is the result of 4 different welding sessions.

make a 7 layer billet, annealed and cleaned.
cut, restack and weld to make 21 layers
clean up, draw out, and twist into a bar
clean up, cut, restack with some ladder Damascus and weld again. Draw out some more
clean up the Damascus and clean up a piece of wootz I forged into shape, and forge weld the wootz to the Damascus
clean up.

Hopefully, tomorrow I can start grinding.

Sweeeet.!!!
Glad everything is going well, and the wootz stuck.

I'm so glad to hear that all the forge welding went well and the blade passes muster.
The next steps are going to be really fun to watch!

Pete <:-}