CAN YOU MAKE COPPER & NICKEL DAMASCUS?!? MOKUME GANE!!!

ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the workshop it's fantastic to have you here as ever especially because today it's a little bit of an experimentation day today we are going to try and make Damascus out of copper and nickel now this isn't called Damascus this is called mikuma ghana I've never tried it before but we are going to be trying it today thank you for joining me let's get right in to stacking up some copper and nickel first I'm gonna like the Forge and now we can have a look at our materials we have nickel that's what nickel looks like it's very shiny and we have copper in science class they used to describe it as salmony pink I call them cut into two inch squares 50ml by 50 mil and hopefully they're nice and accurate cuz of course what we need to do is just like when we're making Damascus steel with two different alloys of steel we need to stack these pieces up to form our different colored layers now because they whoa do you see that now because this is foreign territory I'm gonna put a big emphasis on making sure that my parts are clean and for that to happen I'm gonna clean down this little surface and I'm also going to clean down my parts we'll do that with a quick lick of acetone but moreover more acetone and now we're gonna begin stacking them up I think that's enough for the first attempt because this stuff is rather expensive so first and foremost we're just gonna see if we can treat it much like normal Damascus steel so we'll see if we confusion TIG weld across the seams see if that holds up to then a heating out before we actually fuse the pieces together there we go needs to be hotter that was 50 amps and nothing happened let's try 70 slight bit of fusion we'll try a 90 mm oh that's a little better let's try hotter I'm gonna do a big jump hundred and twenty oh there we go that's much nicer so we got some good fusion together there are the 120 so I think we'll do that all four corners all four sides you keep it together while we heat it and I'd love to you're screaming right now but this is a 1 to 3 block that I dropped a few times so it's no good anymore [Music] [Applause] [Music] I don't know why we caught it on fire there we go so now we've got this billet stacked up we need to put it in the fire the trick is the forge is hotter than the melting temperature oh boy now as I've said I've never tried this before but the basic understanding I have of what it is that we're trying to do here it's get those pieces of copper and nickels so close to the melting temperature that when we hammer them or press them together they'll fuse just like with Damascus except I think that we're a lot more likely to melt these things than we are with Damascus pieces so what I think I'm gonna do is just like when we heat treat a big sword we're gonna make the heat of the fire a little less aggressive with this piece of tube so now that the tube is hot into it we go with our stack of copper and nickel hopefully we don't melt it I'm gonna leave this camera pointing right at it in case we do please not make a puddle in the Forge oh there's a green flame can you see that green flame you can't see the green flame okay but I think we might be coming up to temperature so it's starting to become a very dull red just slightly incandescent I think I'm waiting for the surfaces to become just a little glazy okay it's coming up to a little bit of a light orange which is soon gonna be approaching the temperature at which we melt that copper let's have a feel with this little stick here doesn't feel tacky at all and obviously I don't know what I'm doing but I guess I would feel it was a little tacky if it was ready for the fuse for the weld right I'm gonna change lenses and we're gonna give this a go it's a very glazed surface gently start giving it to the light touch it with the power hammer it's now started to turn to a dull orange and see what we can see from that difficult to tell just from looking at it whether it's fused I certainly know from my experience in Damascus this doesn't look you know this this doesn't look abnormal even if it was fused I'm just gonna take an agressive rasp stroke just on the sides here and see if it comes apart at all by doing that so I'm not nervous any signs of it coming apart from an aggressive stroke try and poke a chisel in it well it's certainly breaking apart the layers it's not coming apart quite as easily as I'd imagine it would if it hadn't taken to any degree I think it's solid enough to try and keep working and I think that that temperature was not necessarily too cold I have a sneaking suspicion that it would move a lot more if it weren't fused at all so I'm gonna rasp off this corner and we'll go straight back in the forge and I'm not even concerned about the tube this time it seemed like it was hot enough to not have to worry okay I think we're about ready moment of truth sideways wow that's amazing right let's drop it back in the fire and heat it up again how cool is that it can lights up in this weird way and I can't tell if it's the flame or the copper doing something weird but it's almost glistening and then it stopped right as I described it there we go look at that it looks like SH added some slag from the bottom of the forge got stuck to it while I was hammering and it made that big impression I think a cleaner forged law would be very handy for this operation so I put a block of steel on the floor and I missed it I'll heat it up on there see if that keeps it a little cleaner [Music] [Applause] [Music] so I took that piece of steel out of the fire it was actually making it pick up even more debris from it and instead since I don't have any stainless I just thrown a brick in there so at least it stays off the dusty floor heats up really fast now it's got some heat in it so a testament of how well it's held together is gonna be twisting it this falls apart when we twist it we know it's not very good and hasn't stuck together and we've got to change something up if it stays together then it could be a little bit more promising I'm gonna get on here with a wrench just start twisting all right let's take another heat it certainly stiffens up a lot as it cools no no it's not twisting in the middle now it's only twisting at the top where it's mushing over from the wrench all this materials just smushing and it won't hold its shape well enough to be able to twist it it certainly looks super crusty doesn't look like it's very strongly held together and edges they just they don't blend in the same way it blends in with steel when you Forge well the steel let's try some more twisting hook cover in the way no just mushes it again right oh boy that's ugly try it one last twist go oh no just rounded it oh wow that is rusty so that is attempt number one of makuu meghana and how do I feel it went yeah is the best way I can describe it very very crusty so I have no idea if we're gonna get anything from it it's possible that it's just the outside layers where they didn't fuse because of course once we twist it all those outside layers are surrounding periphery of the material and hopefully that means the once we grind this thing we can expose solid fused material in the center and that is the hope [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] that is pretty freakin awesome copper a nickel it's actually only gone and fused together it looks awesome in fact it's just so awesome that now that we have some validation on our process we're gonna heat the forge up and we are gonna make up one big Laureus expensive stack of copper and nickel let me tell you nickel is expensive holy granola that stuff is not cheap [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so we've now got the scale cleaned off we've got it forged out and so now that means that it is time to open it up and see how the pattern looks inside oh my goodness yeah yeah it's kind of cool huh kind of cool kind of cool yeah yeah I think that'll work [Music] [Applause] [Music] check it out I think it's used I was terrified I was concerned that it only fused because we had copper the first time but I really think it's done it I think it's together and look at how beautiful that pattern [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so I have this full bar and I am shocked and surprised that it wasn't cracked the whole way through but the pattern on this piece is just incredible as you've seen that this stage it's on biased w's which means stacking this up four ways into a square will make an explosion pattern we don't leave that for another day I'd love to hear what it is that you'd like me to make from this piece of mikuma Gani I've also got these cool off cuts look it's my hair and of course attempt number one that beautiful piece of flat stock of mikuma twists so drop me a comment let me know we want me to make from it and of course look at that this is the process T it just came in for me today it's got forged on the right-hand sleeve with my touch mark the process T is the hand tool knife and it has the process every step of the way every success every failure described in the text this is an awesome awesome shirt we've got it in 100% cotton work shirt like this we've also got premium tees which are a little softer I would be seriously thrilled if you would head on over to the website grab yourself some much of course hit subscribe if you're new because I can be seen tomorrow on the next episode bye bye

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Views: 2,945,634

Rating: 4.8562407 out of 5

Keywords: alec steele, alex steele, steel, alec, damascus, blacksmith, make, forge, anvil, mill, lathe, weld, tig, mig, engineering, blacksmithing, blade, bladesmithing, knife, knifemaking, sword, handmade, diy, craft, woodworking, forged in fire, axe, fabrication, art

Id: 8XgDHIx9LvQ

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 24 2018