This is how it starts out. As 11 pieces of 1/4 inch 1084 steel and some .090 thousands thick 15N20 steel that measures about 5 1/2 inches long. Stacked up ready to put a handle on and begin forge welding.
\The plans is to make a upswept blade with the top bar being left hand twist, the middle bar being a right hand twist and the bottom bar being a higher count of wolf tooth pattern damascus. That is the plan anyway. If you have followed some of my progressive threads before then you know there is no telling where we are going to end up on this project.
#2
Here I have it in the forge and have begin to get it up to temperature to start the forge welding. This stack I will only bing up to 44 layers as I do not like to twist more layers than that. If you get over 100 layers and twist tight you can lose the beauty of the pattern in the steel. I want a bold pattern going on in the top.
#3
I have now got it welded up to 44 layers then I had to draw it out to where the damascus measured approx 1/2 inch square. It ended up at 42 inches long. Which is about right. I always make sure I have enough for one bar length over what I need. Why do you do that, Jerry, you ask? Well, a man has got to know his limitations. I know that when I do a left and right hand twist I am right handed, therefore everything goes to the right hand twist first. Uh huh. There are no telling how many times I ended up with all right hand twists or one to many right hand twist because my attention span is so short and a butterfly was to go by or something I would forget what I was doing. Therefore, for me I best make a spare bar length or we will be starting this all over again. I done before.
On the right hand anvil you will see where I have the smaller billet welded up at this point as well. I took it to 224 layers because I want a much finer pattern on the bottom piece. I will draw it out to where I have a 1/2 inch square bar of that to put on the bottom shortly.
#4
I tell myself over and over again, turn the left handed one first. I was able to do it this time. I put the bars in the forge, you can see where I squeeze the end in a vise, then turn them puppies pretty close to the same amount of twist.
#5
I then grind the ends that meet or butt up to each other clean and to where the flats will measure about 1/8 inch over what I want for a spine thickness, so if I want a 1/4 inch spine, in which we do here, then I need to make sure the flats are about 3/8 inch wide and clean of any flaws or marks. I ground the sides that are facing you in the photo clean so I can make sure I my sides will be clean and that I will not be forging the twisted part of the bar into the sides of my blade etc. As you can see at this point there is a whole lot of material loss with this pattern.
I have welded the ends together and welded on the handle, shown on the right hand side. I also put two little tack welds on the side in the middle. This is to keep the bars from bowing in the head and giving myself too much space and air where scale will develop and possible give myself a flaw. The tacks will be ground out later so no problem from them.
#6
This photo shows where I have forge welded the three bars together. On the left hand side you can see where I have my soap stone mark. I will have to cut off this end. See the photo in #5 again. Where I hold it in the vise is not twisted so you lose that. You cant have it going to straight lines, unless you preplan for that to happen and add to the piece. Here it would just take away from what we were wanting to do. So, chop off and lose another 2 inches of length.
#7
This step is critcal. As you see the photo, on the top is our top twisted bar. The wolf tooth will be on the bottom. Now, when you have a multi-bar piece of damascus, one of the ways to tell if the maker knows what he is doing is that the pattern on the cutting edge goes all the way to the tip. It does not run out in the sweep of the point etc. So, what you do is cut a 45 degree angle such as you see scribed on the bar. Saw that and forge the bottom up to the top so that now your bottom bar runs all the way to the edge. Look at the next photo or two and maybe you can get what I am trying to say. At this point I have confused myself.
#8
The pattern of the blade is now sweeping all the way to the tip with bringing the bottom layer up as shown here. You can tell really well in the next photo
#9
Here I knocked off the scale so you can see where the bottom pattern now runs the length. I also wanted you to note that the patterns are about the same width and basically pretty much the same. This will change down the road.
#10
Here I have cut the wolf tooth pattern into the bottom one third of the pattern being careful to stay out of the twist portion. I will not forge that down to shape. You will be able to tell where I have forged etc with the finished blade. After forging the pattern down I will then forge the blade to shape then do a rough grind on it so that I can begin to prep it up for the guard. Lordy mercy for goodness sakes one of y'all call me and remind me to not cold stamp this blade. Hope yall remember what kind of trouble I got into last year when I cold stamped.
#11
Here I have finished my rough grind at 120 grit and put it in acid so you can see what is going on with the blade. You can see where out bottom bar is running with the edge. You can see where the bars are approx equal on the ricasso but to where the bottom bar is now wider etc at the choil area where we had to forge or draw out the cutting edge. Ya gotta be real careful in forging something like this. Work it hot.
#12
This is just a close up of the pattern so you can get a better idea of what it looks like. Hard to see it well until I get it etched. You can see now that the top bar is not as wide looking as the middle bar. This is from forging or "pulling" down the metal to make the cutting edge. The middle layer is distorted more, our bottom layer is distorted even wider than the middle but the ricasso still shows where we started.
Next up will be the standard part such as prepping up the guard area then marking the blade, ug, and doing a standard heat treat and temper on the blade.
#13
The Guard
Ok., here I forged down a double bar twist to 44 layers to match the top of the blade. I only took a bad photo of the middle section to show you and try to explain what I am doing. There is enough steel here to make a 5 inch hunting knife if we stop right now. I have it forged as a left and right hand twist then welded those two together. That is what you are seeing now. I have forged it down to 1/4 inch thickness. I will saw these in half as you see it now. Then stack one upon the other, just as you see it now, except I will turn one piece around and then left and rights of the flats will also meet. Basically this is a quad weld of 4 left and right hand twist but not side to side like you might do on a dagger. This should make a quite unusal guard once it is ground. On the face you will see the two bars meeting in the center in left and right hand twists and on the sides you will see the edge grain twists meeting in a left and right hand twist. I plan on making another small billet of twist for the back bolster/pommel thing I have planned. I plan at this time on making it a left and right hand twist normal. There will be enough steel when I finish up and ready to attach to the frame to make a bird and trout knife. I know, the photo sucks but not as bad as my explanation of what I am trying to do.
#14
The frame
Here I have the damascus frame fit up and the fit of the guard. All is just slid together for this shot. I will do the rough work of the tapering and grinding of the guard so as to not generate anymore heat than I have to after the piece goes together. What I will have to do is superglue the "final" fit. Do the last bit of fit and finish while superglued. Then carefully break it apart, then do the etching of the guard, frame and the back bolster [see next photo]. The frame has 44 layes of straight damascus pattern.
#15
Back Bolster
Oh lordy, where do I start. I made up this 44 layer twist for the back bolster. The is the third run at this. So far I have lost 2 1/2 days on the frame and back bolster as of today. It all went south with a crack of the twist in the bolster so what you are seeing here is #3 attempt. I will have to do the back bolster different than what I wanted to. The way I orginially figured it will not work so I will catalog what I want to do and reattempt it next year but will start way early. It was something I have not done and rarely seen done. The way that I will be doing it now is also a different run at something simliar. I will be working on it tomorrow to see if I can progress with it. If not then we are in big trouble.
#16
You are here
Ok. This photo is to give you a general picture of the concept of what I am trying to do. The welding of the back bolster went ok. It is the single bar twist shown in the above photo. At this point I have did the rough work on the guard so as to not generate any more heat than I have to against the ivory, I have roughed up the outline of the handle. The ivory is a bit thicker than the finished thickness due to I need to bring it down to match the damascus frame and mountings just right. I will finish my swooping of the guard and ivory all at once. I will take it apart once I have it finished and polished, except for the pins of course, then I will etch. I will grind the blade and etch that soon as I pull off the handle. We are progressing right along at this stage. Before etching the handle set up, I will go in and lay a few lines of 24kt gold and polish that. I am guessing this will be outstanding with the 44 layers of bold twist and the fine lines of inlaid 24kt gold wire. I will try and shoot the finished blade and the polished handle before the breakup. Oooh, Breaking up is sooooo hard to doooo. Yeah, you gotta be really careful there. While breaking it apart for the etching if you chip the cornor of the piece of ivory, if you put too much pressure and put a dent into a cornor, arrrgg, we are a long ways from being safe on this rascal. Thats one of the reasons this type of handle set is more expensive from the makers is due to the put together-take apart numerous time to etch, finish etc.
#17
Finished handle still attached
Here the handle set up is finished sanded and polished. At this point, I will now take it off of the blade, grind and put the edge on the blade and then etch the finished blade. I will lay out the engraving and cut the lines and inlay the gold wire. When all of the other work is finished I will then etch the damascus mountings and try and see if I can get it all back together again in a reasonable manner. Personally I like this piece, it has movement.