Thread: stock thickness

An hour of trying is worth more in terms of learning experience than multiple hours of talking about it.
It's steel, after all. Heat it and beat it.

Bruno, in my case it is heat it and beat it again. I kinda discouraged myself a while back when it came to that stainless clad san mai. Have to get some more thicker 410 or 416.

Originally Posted by Bruno

An hour of trying is worth more in terms of learning experience than multiple hours of talking about it.
It's steel, after all. Heat it and beat it.

In my experience, thicker layers are a lot easier.
I also crown the bars a bit, so that when I start hitting, everything (scale, flux etc) is driven out, starting from the middle.
That, and liberal amounts of borax between each heat until the piece is solid.

With stainless, you have to have an oxygen free environment on the surfaces you are welding. I tried MIG welding the seams, but my crappy little flux core wire welder was not up to the task. Next time, i will be using either a canister or a couple of layers of the high temp heat treat foil to seal up the stack. I use kerosene and borax on my carbon damascus and I have used the foil for "tile welding" mosaic so I didn't get the little white lines between the pieces.

Originally Posted by Bruno

In my experience, thicker layers are a lot easier.
I also crown the bars a bit, so that when I start hitting, everything (scale, flux etc) is driven out, starting from the middle.
That, and liberal amounts of borax between each heat until the piece is solid.