Thread: Fossil damascus...

very nice !!! great look to it !!! congrats

Thanks for bringing it over to our side. I really like it. I think what trips my trigger is the way all the elements work together. You may find that the edge angle is a tad small - the target, according to the experts, is 15-16, but that can be corrected with your grinder, if necessary.

I like the styling and proportions of your razor, it is handsome.

Welcome to the forum.

Charlie

Thanks Charlie, that means a lot.

I hope this razor behaves like a razor as the elders seem to have some legitimate questions about....but for sure this piece re-defines custom for me, it is a fascinating piece.

Very beautiful. For the price of letting me shave with it, I would be happy to hone that sweet thing and see if we cant bring it to its full potential!

I am really curious to see if any nickle areas cause soft spots

The nickel is "in the mix" it would be like sugar in a cake, it's in there, it adds to the whole, but it doesn't stay in one place, where it is all sugar. Some stainless steels for example have a way higher nickel percentage, with no isolated soft spots.

The nickel in this piece is mixed with 1095, then "cooked" at welding temperature. As in a cake, if its all mixed well, the whole is good, with no "too sweet" spots.

That is by far some of the coolest and most original damascus I have seen in a while. Bravo.

Originally Posted by PierreR

The nickel is "in the mix" it would be like sugar in a cake, it's in there, it adds to the whole, but it doesn't stay in one place, where it is all sugar. Some stainless steels for example have a way higher nickel percentage, with no isolated soft spots.

The nickel in this piece is mixed with 1095, then "cooked" at welding temperature. As in a cake, if its all mixed well, the whole is good, with no "too sweet" spots.

If we go with the cake analogy, damascus would be a layer of dark chocolate and a layer of angel cake, and the nickle would be a sploosh of buttercream filling. Keeping them separated is what makes it visually stunning. But like a well mixed cake, if it were all "homogeneous" and would meld the layers so to speak, you would lose the sharp distinctions between layers, no?

Yes and no. Nickel when added as an alloying agent, its intent is to afford the larger volume of steel and amount of stain resistance. If the alloying is high enough, the steel becomes stainless. In an acid etch like ferric chloride, the nickel helps the steel resist the effects of the acid more than the base metal (1084, and 1095) with the nickel in the 1095 mix, it behaves more like 15N20 ( the N is nickel). This allows you to control the "colors" in the grey scale somewhat, and have 3 shades in the blade.

Using the cake analogy, buttercream filling would show like banding as another very bright layer. A more accurate way to look at it would be calling damascus a marble cake. In this case, the nickel would be the cacao added to turn an otherwise white cake, chocolate. Its in there, you can see its effect, its changed the properties of the cake, but its still cake, same density, and texture, just a different taste. With damascus, same idea. The nickel has changed the properties, still hardenable, just looks different. You could no more pick the nickel out of the steel, then you could pick the cacao out of chocolate cake.

In the image below, is a blade I made. The dark core is O1, no nickel, very dark, the damascus cladding is 1084 and 15N20. in the pattern, 15N20 is the brighter lines. BUT separating them is a band of pure nickel, the bright shiny line close to the core. it is used to prevent carbon migration from the O1 core, to the surrounding metal. It is soft, and cannot be hardened. If the edge is worn away over time, the blade would need to be thinned to push the nickel back, and expose more core.