Thread: Damascus question

No doubt, welding heat is required. Dies can be helpful.

Pardon the poor camera, and I was in a hurry surface grinding these, but you can see results.

That is slick!!! Simple looking, but when I stare at them, they start to look like a 3D drawing of a cube. So what are you going to do with them next? Did you do those with hexagon dies?

Originally Posted by Mike Blue

No doubt, welding heat is required. Dies can be helpful.

Pardon the poor camera, and I was in a hurry surface grinding these, but you can see results.

These are proof of concept tiles. Next is to make bars of the same/similar and forge weld them together, then repeat. Same as other mosaic. A good friend of mine and I schemed for a while and settled on open dies. The original idea came from two very good friends, Daryl Meier and Bill Fiorini. That attempt was done in a box with powder. It's truly gorgeous stuff to look at. These are strictly old school methods. It's difficult for me to rate the degree of difficulty since it was a success.

These are two flips that i did a couple of years back. Sorry for the lousy pics. The small blade was lightly twisted W's cut at 45 degrees. The pattern ended up almost looking like waves rising up form the edge. IIRC, the longer blade was just straight W's done the same way and forged to shape a little bit. I had just discovered the miracle of kerosene "flux" for initial welds and welded the flip with the bar wrapped in low temperature HT foil. I was able to avoid the little white waled seams for the most part. By the second press, the foil just fell right off of the bar. It was a bit scary at first, but then funny to watch the little jet of flame find its way out of the envelope when the kerosene ignited.

So how will you keep a pattern like that from washing out in a deep hollow grind?

It goes all the way through. That is actually the end pattern repeated down the length of the blade and distorted from drawing it out.. You can see where I forged the points out, but the blades were pretty thick when I ground into them. The concern I have about that type of pattern in a hard use blade is the tile welds. Not sure that will be an issue with a razor, but I am a Nervous Nelly. The little knife started off as a billet intended to be "firestorm" twist which would get more interesting as you ground into it, but my bad elbow gave out before I could twist it up tight enough to where I thought it wold really look good. It was supposed to be a bigger knife, but I forgot to use two of the tiles when I was welding up the billet. I found them later on the bench and used them for a guard and buttcap on another knife. I have a billet now that will be 45 layers when I turn it 90 degrees and do the W's. I will stack another time or two more than on these and see if I can get a finer patter because with razor sized bar stock, i will be drawing it out a fair bit more. These were like 1 1/2 inches wide before i ground off the flux core welder wire mess on the edges.

Originally Posted by Mike Blue

So how will you keep a pattern like that from washing out in a deep hollow grind?

I just saw a pic of a Joe Chandler razor using your twist steel. It had three big "stars" running down the middle of the blade. Pretty stuff!!!

Originally Posted by JDM61

It goes all the way through. ... I just saw a pic of a Joe Chandler razor using your twist steel.

That's one way to solve the problem of pattern washout, but you correctly identify the creation of a whole new risk of those welds coming apart. Fix one problem only to create another. Razors are small items and in the quench hardening happens at the speed of sound and there is a lot of dynamic movement that can blow a complex pattern into pieces. It's a risky business.

It is my great pleasure to be associated with Joe's amazing work.

I had the pleasure of learning from (well just watching in awe really) Hank and Ed about powder damascus once. Most of it was lost on me but I hope some day to try making a razor from it. Your work looks very lovely indeed Mike.

Originally Posted by mikew

I had the pleasure of learning from (well just watching in awe really) Hank and Ed about powder damascus once. Most of it was lost on me but I hope some day to try making a razor from it. Your work looks very lovely indeed Mike.

Well Mike let me know when you are ready and maybe I can be the first owner of the first Michael Waterhouse custom Damascus 8/8 Smiler for Barbers now that's a razor I would love own.

Thanks for your kind words Mike. Your work speaks volumes.