Thread: Cable damascus?

Found this video about the wire cable forging. Comments ??
https://youtu.be/WOR_-glrz7U

I use different heat and tools but the main piece of great advice comes when he says "twist" it tighter. That alone can bring the gaps between the wires to near minimal and I've had cable weld during the twist. The billet will come out with a lot less flaws. It squeezes the crud out from the center rather than trapping stuff inside the bar.

It has been a while and can't remember the details but they recabled some elevators at work. I mentioned this to one of the workers. He said that there was something added to the center of the cables for lubrication if I remember right and he thought it might add some weird impurities. I never looked into it beyond that.

Originally Posted by Mike Blue

The billet will come out with a lot less flaws. It squeezes the crud out from the center rather than trapping stuff inside the bar.

Mike, Will you explain what he may have been using for what he was calling "flux"? and what it does? I guess this ? shows how ignorant I am in this field.

I love the internets.....would like to see that piece of cable damascus made into a razor in a video......thanks for the link.

Originally Posted by paco

Found this video about the wire cable forging. Comments ??
https://youtu.be/WOR_-glrz7U

Originally Posted by paco

Mike, Will you explain what he may have been using for what he was calling "flux"? and what it does? I guess this ? shows how ignorant I am in this field.

Usually, borax is used for fluxing metal.
It is something that is cheap and easily available, white powdery substance.
You apply it with a spoon or sprinkle it on top, and it melts onto and in between the metal parts.
It prevents oxidation because it leaves a film, and it also dissolves scale and other crud.
If you then hammer (or twist or whatever), the flux is squeezed out along with the impurities.
This way, chances of successfully forge welding different parts together with a clean weld is a lot higher.

When you use flux, you also learn very quickly not to hammer hard until the welds have taken hold. The initial hammer blows I do (by hand) are quarter strength. This reduces the chances of displacing the different pieces, and increases the odds of making a nice clean and flat weld. And also important: if there is still flux in between the separate parts, it will be extremely hot (welding temperature) and still liquid. If you hammer real hard from the get go, that stuff comes squirting out in God knows which direction. Es no Bueno.

I would have said borax. I use anhydrous borax, but the washing soap will work. The video specifically states boric acid. The demonstrator implies that the acid "cleans" the steel, implying that it's a chemical process. A great friend of mine, a master smith, swore by boric acid as a portion of his flux, but his recipe was maybe at the largest portion only 25%.

Boric acid is a salt of borax and at the temperatures we are discussing, it probably breaks down pretty quickly into the borax component that does what Bruno describes. It's a oxidation preventer, and lowers the melting point of scale allowing the liquidus layer to form that is needed for welding. Intimate close contact between parts (hence the twisting - close the gaps) and confidence are the remaining needed components of the process.

The flux may carry away some slags as well as potentially good material. It makes a beautiful dangerous spray and while the smith might not think much of it, a watching crowd can get real excited. Interested types are likely to be leaning into the spray, everyone else has fled or gets burned on the backside.

Thank you both Bruno and Mike, Now I have a "little knowledge." I hear this can be dangerous, LITTLE KNOWLEDGE that is.

I love those videos. Reminds me of kamisori being made of anchor chains.

Regular 20 Mule Team Borax will work, but you use a bit more. You can dry it out. For regular damascus made from flat pieces of steel, you can actually use kerosene or some other similar liquid on a COLD stack of clean steel as "flux" for your initial wells. I would be hesitant to use it on cabe as you need to do a lot of "cleaning" of the typical cable when you are forge welding it in addition to getting rid of the scale. +1 about what Mr. Blue said about twisting. Also remember that the pattern in cable damascus does not come from dissimilar metals like nickel bearing steels like 15N20 or L6 and the dark etching higher manganese steels like 1084 or O2 that we would typically use in our pattern welded steel. It comes from decarburizing the outer skin of the individual wires within the bundle.