Thread: Some time with Gudy Van Poppel

In the razor world he is not that well known, but in the knife world he is. Gudy is a bladesmith and Damascus expert who lives fairly close to me. We met at the Gembloux show, where he invited me to come over for a visit. Today I visited him. We spent several hours just talking about steel and bladesmithing, and then some more in his shop showing techniques and tools.

I knew he had a rolling press as well, so I brought along a san mai billet I'd made with a core of O2 and sides of O2L6 Howard Clark Damascus. It was still almost an inch thick at that point, after initial welding. I decided to bring it with me and not draw it out myself. I would have had to use a sledgehammer, at least a dozen heats, and would have ended with a san mai that was pretty wobbly inside and pretty burnt and crunchy on the outside.

Gudy heated it and did a first roll. It cooled down evenly but showed a dime sized dark spot near the handling bar, indicating a bad weld. So he gave it a quick once over with the power hammer at welding heat to close the gap, and then rolled it to 8 mm. The layers are perfectly straight, it is flat, and during the cooling down we didn't see any dark spots. It was wrapped in refractory wool for the ride home, and it will be annealed before I start making razors from it.

Proper tools sure make quick work of things. A half days work in minutes!