Originally Posted by
Mike Blue
I know that you're not trying to hurt anything. It's easy to watch a show and the first time you observe a process and think one thing might be going on, when in fact, something else is happening. These subjects have been worked over fairly well on this site. I've watched all those shows. While NatGeo has a good reputation, and I enjoy watching my friends demonstrate on TV, the producers often err about things that make those who know about the process cringe.
It's no different than the source of many legends about steels. They are magical stories because at the time (pretty much any time before the early history of real chemistry) that's the best way to understand what the smith was doing. Knowledge about what's going on inside that bar of steel is considerably better now.
30,000 Layers, or more depending on the starting layer count, is very possible in 15 folds. The death of the idea that 30,000 Folds happens is the simple fact that scale formation would burn away all the steel you started with long before any useful object resulted from the work.
Okay, I ran out to the shop and Spazola and I just measured a piece of scale from the floor by the big hammer. I specifically use methods to reduce scale formation so we're already discussing a variable that may not hold true for other shops. This also means that in my shop this is a conservative estimate of scale loss. The pieces of scale measured in the caliper average 0.005 inch thick.
Now, scale loss is a four sided effect on a billet. To be even more conservative, we only calculated the scale loss from two sides of the billet, the sides that will be exposed to the atmosphere, not the side between slabs being welded and not the sides that are not (which would double the amount of scale). 2 x 0.005 inch = 0.010 inch x 30,000 = 300 inches of material loss by the time you get to 30000 folds. All of us here today think the math is correct, but if it's not I'll agree to a change in the answer. And that's only two sides. It will go faster adding the remaining two sides in, or adding in less controlled forge operations/processes.
A 300 inch thick piece of steel is much more than I could lift, and I don't have a forge big enough to hold it. A 1.18 diameter bar 12 inches long weighs 4.8 pounds. Multiplied by 300 that's 1200 pounds roughly.
In the end, much better information produces less myth and magic. It also takes time to accumulate.