Thread: Wootz and damascus knives work in progress

Someone asked about it, so here goes. This is the work in progress thread for the Damascus santoku I am making (steel made by 32t during a previous meet at Mike Blue's shop) and a wootz meat slicer.

This is after forging



This is after rough grinding to clean it up



This is after heat treatment. The santoku was dead straight after the quench. The slicer warped a bit during the first normalization but rather than straightening it hot, I decided to leave it, normalize it a couple of times, and straighten it in tempering.

I have broken several trying to straighten, good show on straightening without breaking

Experience helps of course, but there are a couple of things you can do to increase the odds of it working out:

1) when you are forging, work both sides equally. I've found that this helps keeping it straight(er)
2) straighten it during forging before putting it back in the fire every time.
3) when you are straightening it more precisely at the finishing stages of forging, do this at high enough temperatures that you don't create stresses that will act out when you are hardening.
4) quench the blade so that both sides have the same contact with the quench.
5) normalize a couple of times before quench.

That way the warp should be manageable if you have it.
And when you try to straighten it, first do a normal tempering cycle so that you don't snap the blade in half

I've found that by doing these things, I can usually prevent warps, or at least keep them small enough that it is relatively easy to fix.

Nice looking blades Do you make friction folders?

No, not really. I've not made a pocket knife yet. Thought about it, but not a whole lot of forging is involved in making them. At the moment I am mainly making razors and kitchen knives.

I've finished handsanding both blades. In the pic you see the blade with its handle parts. The scales are camel bone, the middle layer is double neon green resin, and the bolster will be black horn. The parts are still oversize atm of course.

The blade is still dirty and greasy. In this stage I leave it that way. Greasy is better than clean because it protects the blade until the handle is almost done and I am ready for etching.



Incidentally, This will be one of the 2 only knives I will ever do with camel bone. My youngest girl's favorite animal is a camel, on account of this little guy and his 4 identical brothers.



When I told her I was making the knife with camel bone, she became upset. When I saw her a minute or 2 later she was crying her eyes out because camels are just so special to her (along with hippos). So I had to calm her down, and eventually promise that I would not use camel bone anymore out of respect for her toy camels. I was allowed to use the 2 sets I already had, as long as I never bought it again. Or hippo bones. But Hippo teeth was ok, as well as giraffe bone or other. And mammoth was best because they were already dead.

I know it sounds silly, I could probably tell her to not be so sensitive but sometimes sacrifices need to be made in order to make her feel that I respect her opinion. And this is one of those cases.

Not silly at all!!!!

Fatherhood is a great responsibility. There is no book/manual that can bring up an example of things like this. We do our best.

It appears that your daughter is in good hands.

Tim

No i haven't, thanks for the tip. I will look into that.

Both knives are on their way to their future owner.
As for the camel saga: here is the legion.

Those are gorgeous Bruno! And kudos for the kid respect.

Out of curiosity - what did you use to etch the steel? The layers really pop!