Un bel essai de forge

[Moonlight]

Pour revenir à notre passion et aussi pour changer des pas à pas en stock removal, voici, décrit en anglais, la réalisation d'une lame en damas par l'allemand Mat Maresh. Ce qui est con c'est que la trempe a visiblement pas tenu...

Pic 1: The place where all this freaking knifemaking is gonna happen.
Pic 2: The holy furnace
Pic 3: The even more holy anvil ( of Crom)
Pic 4: The utmost holy powerhammer ( of Doom)
Pic 5: The winner of this years fixed-blade-competition







Pic 6: Time stamp - I just received the mail from Allen and went to get a newspaper. BTW, it´s you president, the pope and his wife underneath the billet
Pic 7: The billet in the coals, consisting of W2 ( black) and 15N20 ( silverish) - 9 layers to begin with.…
Pic 8: The billet heated and getting a serious amount of flux
Pic 9: The 9 layers forgewelded. I am very sorry I don´t have pics while forging, but my camera man had to attend to family business.
Pic 10: Billet forged more, cut in four parts and welded to the rod again ( You better get used to it )







Pic 11: Back to the HOT COAL
Pic 12: The billet ready to get its a** welded
Pic 13: Welded and drawn out, started to forge it to "diamond"
Pic 14: Drawn out in the "diamond way"
Pic 15: Weeell. Normally I don´t drink beer in the workshop, but this is supposed to be even more fun than the normal fun, isn´t it? So I said cheers to all of you.

[Moonlight]

Pic 16: Next step in theory
Pic 17: Cut the billet in four pieces and welded to the rod again
Pic 18: This is where I went nuts and decided to try another beer
Pic 19: The billet welded and drawn out, then forged round
Pic 20: The billet twisted ( I twisted even more with the next heat, but missed taking a pic)
Pic 21: The Forged, welded and twisted billet reforged to square








Last pic for today: The fittings-damascus-plan, for those who want to try it at home

[Fabian]

merci julien

[Moonlight]

1PM here in Germany. Time for a break and something to eat. AND the pics of this morning. I started welding the steel for the blade. The billet is made of a big old file and W2. It has 9 layers.

Pic 23: Time Stamp and the billet
Pic 24: Billet in the coals
Pic 25: Powerhammering
Pic 26: Billet welded, cut and bent
Pic 27: Welded and drawn out







Ok, this is gonna be kinda boring. But I want to show it is today´s work, so you will have to forgive the... repeating motives.

Pic 28: Cutting the billet
Pic 29: Don´t we all love this kind of blue?
Pic 30: Stacked and welded to the rod
Pic 31: Welded, drawn out and doubled
Pic 32: Welded and drawn out







Pic 33: Welded again and drawn out
Pic 34: Cut in five pieces and stacked
Pic 35: Welded, drawn out
Pic 36: The billet after welding ( four parts)
Pic 37: The billet drawn out with the list of welds and layers

Forgive the quality of the pics, some are quite shaky, but so are my hands
Now I´ll take a nap and then, well, weld weld weld.

[Moonlight]

vous la sentez la calamine hein? on s'y croirait

[Fabian]

alleeeeeeeeeez la suiiiiiiiite au lieu de dire des conneries!!!!!

[Moonlight]

There and back again.
It´s just past 9PM, I´m... tired. Very tired. I don´t think I ever have done so much work on one knife on one day

But now for some more pics:
Pic 38: Cut in four and back into the fire ( my favorite pic so far)
Pic 39: Welded and forged
Pic 40: Cut in four and back... well, you know what I mean I guess
Pic 41: Welded, stretched out, cut in five
Pic 42: Welded and streched out
Pic 43: Last time cut in three, ready for the last weld.









You will have realized by now I went for HIGH layer damascus. One may argue whether this makes any sense at all or not - I just wanted to do a damascus with 1 million layers for a long long time, and, well.… this was the opportunity.

So: Layer count is ONE MILLION

Pic 44: The welded 1million layer billet
Pic 45: Drawn out a bit
Pic 46: Starting to forge the tip and the contour of the blade
Pic 47: Setting off the tang
Pic 48: The forged blade
Pic 49: yes!!!!
Pic 50: This is where the other half of the billet has gone

I was very happy to see the billet seems to be tightly welded, as I didn´t encounter any troubles forging the blade. Hopefully this will stay this way








Ooops, I forgot one last pic of the forged blade:

Pic 51: Blade forged, normalized twice, scale is in cm
Pic 52: Ground the contours
Pic 53: Ground the sides flat
Pic 54: My "wheres-the-middle"-device
Pic 55: Ground blade. From here on I did some corrections with the file.

[Moonlight]

And the last action for today: Claying the whole thing up. I really really pray it won´t pop off too soon!

Pics 56-58: Clay layout, gotta dry overnight.

I had to get this far if I want to have a chance to finish this knife till Tuesday. Tomorrow will see the heat treatment, the grinding and the preliminary polish. Be so kind to press your thumbs for me ( German proverb - does it exist in English?!? Means: Wish me luck please).




And here we go.

Pic 59: My oven for heat treating, the blade was preheated to 200°C and then put in
Pic 60: The blade just after quenching - clay is where it is supposed to be, hurray!
Pic 61: Clay removed
Pic 62: Tested the hardness with a file and glass. I did fear decarbourization due to the many layers, but I am fine I guess. Err, the blade is fine, I mean
Pic 63: Each time I have to straighten a blade, my heart wants to stop.… All went fine, the rest of straightening will be done by grinding.

[Moonlight]

Then the blade was annealed for 45 minutes at 230°C. Time to get back to the grinder...

Pic 64: The blade ground at grit 180
Pic 65: The other side
Pic 66: Time to move in with the stones - right now the grit 220
Pic 67: Somehow my blades always do have two sides. So again - the stones ( now at grit 320)
Pic 68: After having cleaned everything up at grit 320, and having corrected the geometry, I return to grit 220 - but paper this time. I remove all the scratches from the stones.







It is the time for the truth now. I will polish her up to grit 400 and then have a look where the hamon is.

Pic 69: My landlord stopped by and took a photograph of me working at grit 400
Pic 70: Still at grit 400.…
Pic 71: The blade at grit 400, nearly all scratches are removed !!!
Pic 72: Given the blade a quick polish, and went into the acid, and polished a bit more
Pic 73: on peut traduire ce passage par " je suis très excédé et j'en veux à la terre entière" mais en des termes très grossiers
Pic 74: I! JUST! CAN´T! F*****G! BELIEVE! THIS!!!!








explications:
The tip - the first 25mm to be exact - are soft as cream. I don´t have the slightest idea why, I can not explain it, I just have to accept the fact.
The blade is about 4,5mm thin at the spine, ground to nearly sharp - I won´t be able to harden her again without nearly destroying her.
I was able to bend the tip with small effort, as you can see on the pic.


voilà c'était un bel essai

[oufti]

'tain, il ne forge même pas l'émouture... un paquet de damas à 1000000 de couches perdu...

Et bon, à mon avis la pointe elle a complètement décarburé.

[Moonlight]

aux dernières nouvelles, il va réussir à réparer le problème.

[oufti]

Suffit qu'il en fasse un wharcliff...

Pas de photo avec la révélation du damas ?

[Moonlight]

il s'est arreté là… il a modifié en effet la lame et l'a retrempée... pas de photo pour le moment car il dit préparer un salon en Allemagne. je mettrai à jour par la suite

[The Dwarf]

Impressionnant!
Je m'étais souvent demandé comment on faisait du damas..

[Crocuta]

Euh !
Tu es là depuis un an et demi et tu le savais pas ?
Ou alors le clin d'œil signifie une private joke ou une référence à une chose que j'ignore, auquel cas en guise de punition je laisserai Doud être hébergé par Freddy pour l'après SICAC, me privant ainsi d'une délicieuse soirée coquine