Forging a Mosaic Damascus Bowie Knife - The Complete Video

hey folks welcome to the channel today we're  going to start the new mosaic damascus bowie build   let's get right to it okay let's talk  about the damascus pattern for this knife   so i'm going to go with something kind  of bold um so it's not going to be a   ton of layers i think total layers is 23 layers  but a couple of these are doubled up layers   which is going to give us our mosaic if you're  curious on how to do mosaic i'll put a link up   in the corner to a video i just released  a little while ago about intro to mosaic   damascus one key to mosaic damascus is that  there's different thicknesses of layers and   that's what gives you your pattern so i had to be  really careful in setting up the billet for this as usual i'm mig welding the corners  of the billet just to keep it together   i don't like to run a line of mig weld down the  side just because then i have to grind it off and   stay tuned you'll see that becomes a problem later i always have people ask me what this is  this is kerosene that i dip the billet in   just to make sure that it seeps into  all the seams and i get a good forge weld once i've got it up to forge welding temperature  i take the billet and the first press i just   gently press on it just to compress it just a  little bit to set the weld repeat this for two   more heats until i'm sure it's good and welded  before i get aggressive and start compressing it i like to grind off the mig weld just to  make sure i don't get any in the billet   because it's on the corners i probably  don't need to do this but i still do for this pattern i'll be forging  this down into a square bar   not a flat bar because i need to square  off the corners so i want it to be square this is what it's going to look like i'm going  to start the layers in this configuration   squish the corners then i'm actually  going to re-square right in this heat i'm using the squaring dies to square off  this billet and then i want to stretch it   out because i'm gonna have to cut this into  four so i need this billet to be pretty long you can do this without squaring dies and just  use flat dies but this sure makes it easier   as you can see i had a little bit of a problem  here this isn't good and this has to be ground off i started grinding on the 2x72 and realized i was   just wasting belts so moved  over to the angle grinder after a few minutes of the angle grinder i managed  to grind all of that off and it looks pretty good now back to the forge for one more heat  just to square it off before i cut it up so here it is after the first forging uh the only  thing i'm a little concerned about if you can see   that is that i'm not quite getting the pattern at  least on the end and you saw that i had a bunch of   um i don't know what it was i think it was i think  i actually burned the steel a little bit because   the end of the forge that this was in was a  little hotter quite a bit hotter so i think   i burned a bunch of the steel so i had to grind  that down so i'll cut the ends off it take a look   at the pattern um it just might not be quite as  pronounced as this but we'll see here's that new   wind metal cutting saw i just did an unboxing and  a review of this one so you can check that out so that's what the end looks like after being  etched pretty good let's look at the other end   yeah so pretty much what i wanted so let's cut it  up re-stack it into four get it back in the forge for these mosaic patterns you got to make sure  you get your bars in the right orientation   so i always like to draw on them and number  them so that i know exactly where they go   now it's time to clean the touching sides  so we can get our forge well nice and clean here's where i learned a new trick  by first doing it the hard way   i wanted to make sure i sealed this whole thing up  so i welded all of the seams including the sides   and that presented a problem and you'll see why the problem here is as soon as i put this in the  squaring dies it squished that weld into the seam   and pushed it in deeper than i wanted i had  to grind that out i didn't show it here but   it wasn't much fun a good thing that came  out of this is i learned a cool technique   that i'll show you in the next  forge welt that i do to combat this like in the last forging i want to forge this  out into a long square bar because i'm going   to slice this up and do the same thing that  i did already cut it into four and rotate it as you can imagine forge welding this by  hand with a hammer is virtually impossible   there's just so much you would need to  do you really need a forge press to do mosaics i want to make sure this is as straight  as possible with as sharp corners as   possible since i'm going to be forge  welding this back again into a square i'm pretty happy with the pattern here it  actually looks pretty close to my drawing   so it turned out like i expected now it's  time to clean up the touching edges again   egg weld them together and then get  them back in the forge for a forge well so here's the trick that i learned after i  did the mig weld i went to the grinder and   ground down the mig weld so really  there's just really thin layer over   top of the seams but that's enough to  keep the air out and that's all i need all the scale coming off while i was forging it  on the press i think took all that mig weld off   but if it didn't it certainly came  off when i grinded in the next step here it is after forging the mosaic  looks really good now i gotta   slice it up and tile it and then we'll get our  pattern so here it is after it's cooled down i've   ground opposite sides because i'm gonna cut it  on angles like this in the tiles and these angle   these faces rather are the ones that are going  to meet up so i'm going to actually do this in   the band saw we don't lose as much material  so let's cut it up into slices like this   so i've got all of my mosaic tiles all cut up i've  ground these edges here that are going to touch   so i got six tiles out of it  which is pretty good you can see   and they're pretty thick maybe three quarters of  an inch i'll show you what the pattern is i um i etched one tile if it'll focus come on there it is   so that's what it's going to look  like i think it turned out really well and this is what i'm going  to use as my end piece here okay i've got this 16th inch um mild  steel that i'm just going to weld them to   weld this on top weld all the seams so  i get a nice airtight welt let's do it this is a really important forge well so i want to  make sure i get this one done perfectly i want to   get this one really hot it doesn't look like it  in the camera but this one is really really hot after setting the welds i noticed my billet was  getting pretty long and i didn't really need that   so i started putting the fullering dies  sideways so that i can get some width out of it   now i'm pressing down any peaks and valleys caused  by the fullering dies and then a final flattening   just so that i have a nice solid billet to start  with the first thing i got to do is grind off all   the sacrificial steel that i used to hold the  mosaic together i would normally do this with   an angle grinder but my wife was on an important  phone call so i didn't want to make a lot of noise okay she's done time to  make this go a little faster after i got the majority of the mild  steel off with the angle grinder   i took it to the surface grinder just  to get it nice and flat on both sides so here's the billet all ground surface ground  it's just a hair under a quarter inch thick   but it's nice and flat now i've etched it i don't  know if you guys can see that but it's etched it   looks amazing now let's put the profile on it  so i'm just gonna put it about there and then   i annealed this so hopefully it's  pretty uh pretty easy to cut i'm gonna   do most of this on the bandsaw okay this was  pretty easy to cut with the band saw i also   saved a bunch of these pieces and you'll  see why later when i do the heat treat i'm just grinding the profile and getting it all  nice and shaped you'll notice this was mostly a   stock removal project after the billet was formed  that's because i don't want to distort the pattern   by trying to forge in bevels or anything like  that you never want to do that with a mosaic i know some of you may be sick of  hearing it but i love this grinder   upgrading to the broadback has been one  of the best decisions i've made in a while thought i could do this  radius with the small wheel   it ends up being a little too large for  this so i have to go to a file afterwards after looking at the knife i was thinking it  was just a little too thick i don't like a big   heavy thick knives um so i wanted to take this  back to the surface grinder and take a little   bit off it it ends up more around 3 16 which is  more what i think it should be for this knife   so i've got it resurface ground to  a better thickness it's probably   3 16 around there so that's kind of what  i wanted um i'm going to put some marking   lines on here i want to do the false  edge now and then yeah then do the bevel doing the false edge is kind of time  consuming probably took me over an hour   close to an hour and a half to do both  sides but this is what i find the most   accurate trying to do it on the grinder  it's just too easy to screw it up i also find it a lot better to do the  false edge before you do your bevel   because you want that top false  edge to taper perfectly to the tip   you can do that by controlling your bevel  when you get close to the tip of the knife this part the free grinding of the bevel  this is definitely the hardest part and   takes the most practice that's  what everyone wants to be able   to do guys that there's no excuse just  you gotta put in the time and practice this is just the initial bevel before heat  treat so this one i'll usually keep it   between a quarter and a half  inch from where i want it to be   i'll do the rest as part of the  final grind after the heat treat all right we got the initial grinding done  false edge is done uh it looks pretty good now time for some normalization  and then heat treat the blade's already gone through  three normalization cycles   at 1600 1450 and 1250 now for the quench like always i check for warps first you got  all the time in the world to check if it's hard   here i'm using a 65 hrc file  to test to see how hard it is now it's going in my steel plate set up so  it stays straight during the temperature what i'm going to do now is i've got a couple  of extra pieces in there from the same billet   just cut offs i'm going to i've done this whole  normalization cycle exactly the same as the blade   i'm going to quench those and do a snap test on  them just to see what the grain structure is like   well i forgot to turn the camera  on for the actual snap but   you can see the grain pattern is pretty fine  especially on these two here it's very powdery   and that's what you want i can see the grains  in the damascus here which is interesting   and to be expected but pretty good pretty good  grain structure there's another shot um the bottom   one looks a little gray because i uh touch it  with my finger and i got some grease on it but um   you can see there the inside looks like  flour not sugar which is really good here i'm just using the surface grinder  and a 120 grit belt just to do the flats so on this knife since the blade is kind  of thick i decided to mill down the tang   so that there's a shelf that the uh the guard is  gonna sit against so it will be nice and flush now it's time for final grinding and bringing  this thing down to a really tight edge i'm also   going to bring the bevel up towards the spine  probably within about a quarter inch of the spine here's everyone's favorite part the hand sanding  green beetle once did a video of one hour of hand   sanding which i actually thought was pretty  funny not that i watched the whole thing   my hand sanding regiment is to start at 220 400  800 1000. i also change direction by 45 degrees at   every grit one thing that i've been doing lately  is changing the angle between the flats and the   bevel and that actually brings out your line  quite a bit so i've been doing that one as well okay folks here it is after some hand sanding   this is down to 220 so i'll take it probably  to 800 um before i fit the guards um the guard but i like how it's turned out it's got  nice lines nice crisp lines on it so far   we're going to continue this  mosaic damascus bowie build   and here i'm flattening out this  piece of damascus to use for the guard i had a little bit of work at the anvil to get the   length i needed out of this  material to make the guard i've done a rough forging on the guard so  it'll be ready for grinding but in the meantime   let's work on the handle material what i've  selected is first off uh the main handle is going   to be this maple burl it's a brown maple burl  looks really nice got some great figuring in it   then this is from a previous project and the  camera is not going to do it justice right now   until it's polished and shine because it's only  got a like a 60 grit finish on here but this is   a really really nice burl really dark with some  orangey browns in it it'll go really nice against   this one and then i'm going to put white g10 in  between each one so it'll look something like that   and then that of course will be there let's  get it glued up and the one thing uh that   i always advise for something like this and  actually sometimes is the reason that i do it   uh because of the curved tang it's really hard to  to drill the slot for this so that's why i like   doing these in two separate pieces so i'll glue  all these together drill through these fit them   and then once i have it fit then i'll  mark the handle and i'll only have   to drill the tang slot on this just a little bit  and it'll be straight so good little trick there um okay here's the guard all flattened out  i've done a bit of grinding on it one   flat side just so i can put it in the mill  and then mill the other side parallel so   time for a bunch of milling  operations let's go do it after i milled the other side parallel i was able  to flip it over and do the slot for the guard here's the guard all slotted if we put it  on the knife you'll see it if you can see   that it almost fits okay it's just missing  a little a little bit so what we're gonna do   is put it in the vise inside of a piece of leather okay make sure it's not hitting  down here and i'm going to lock   just the blade in the vise really tight okay make sure this goes on the right way okay then i'm going to put some leather  just to protect the guard put a little   washer here in my fancy dancy tube and i'm just  going to give it a couple of wax with a hammer and sometimes you need to flip this  around because it'll pivot on you here's a better shot of the guard nice and fit up now it's time to shape the guard on  the grinder and get the profile we want i decided i wanted line-up pins so  here i'm drilling holes for those   okay do you see the problem here i'm  about to scream as soon as i find out [ __ ] yep i put the hole on the top  side of the guard instead of the bottom   here i'm using the acetylene torch  to bend the front the other way so there it is crisis averted i just  bent the tip down this will still get   ground up a little bit here so all's  well it was just a pain in the ass   time to heat treat the guard to make  sure it gets the same edge as the blade here i'm putting a taper on my lineup  pins with a drill against the grinder   just so they have a nice point to go into the wood i like to sand the blade down  to 800 put my maker's mark   and then do my final sanding to a thousand  after all my fit up is done for the guard now it's time to drill the  holes in the handle pieces   so i can start fitting them up against the guard so i've got the handle all glued up uh i've  just taken a wax marker and just drawn out   where i want the handle to be i've drawn  the tang here um i made a little mistake   when i drilled the hole so the the hole for  the tank goes up a little high so i had to   bring the handle up a bit higher than i  wanted but i think it'll work out well yeah so now i'm going to do some rough profiling  on the handle and and then start working on this   part of the guard here you can see how much  mess this makes even with a dust collection system okay time to do the hole for the  pin i'm going to use this mosaic pin   and it's only going to have a single pin right  here so the first trick here is you want to make   sure you have your handle all squared up because  if you don't and your handle's on an angle that   means your pin is going to go in on an angle when  you drill it so what i do is draw out the tang so now i know approximately where my pin is going  to be since the tang is at a bit of an angle   i think i'm going to put it a little bit  closer because i want it centered here   so i'm probably going to put it right there my pin material is 3 16 but i'm actually  drilling a quarter inch hole here just to have   a little play time to do the final shaping on the  handle i start by tapering it towards the guard   and then move on to putting  the contours on the edges just some final cleanup grinding on  the guard and i think we're ready to go it's time for the final etch be three cycles of  10 minutes there it is fresh out of the coffee   now into the oven to bake on the oxides  before we shine it up and show the pattern bye

Channel: Tyrell Knifeworks

Views: 1,032,944

Keywords: Mosaic Damascus Bowie - Complete Build, mosaic damascus, forging a bowie, forging a bowie knife, forging mosaic damascus, knife making, forging damascus, damascus patterns, how to make a bowie knife, tyrell knifeworks, tyrell, making a bowie knife, how to make a bowie, bowie knife making, bowie knife

Id: jJ2cB9dWZjg

Length: 36min 40sec (2200 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 06 2021