Forging Feather Damascus By Hand

what you doing are you making a canister buddy that's right I'm trying to forge feather Damascus by hand by myself there are ten layers each year of 1095 steel in 15 and 20 which I plan on Forge welding and canisters as much as possible more on that later they came flat ground but I've ground their surfaces clean and because they're being forged in a container I'm soaking them in acetone to get all the oils and any grime off them because I can't use flux in the container so then they'll be stacked and tack welded before fitting them nice and snug into the container with a layer of stainless steel foil around them to prevent sticking to the canister itself so while all this is happening I'm going to talk to you about my understanding of the feather pattern there are many variations on the feather pattern but I think most commonly people use crushed w's so first our alternating Steel's are stacked and forged welded together as you can see in the picture and the top left of the screen feel free to follow along there there appear to be two different ways to go from here to make the W's the simplest is just to rotate the stack 90 degrees and flatten it but many folks actually recommend rotating at 45 degrees onto its corners instead like this the corners are then hammered down or rounded on all sides which makes these curved lines and the layers on the outside of the steel while the middle layers sort of stay straight then the build is rotated another 45 degrees so 90 degrees in total now once horizontal lines are now vertical and sort of rounded the billet is in further flattened and the edges will be squared up so after being flattened and squared up it's drawn out and cut into sections which are stacked on top of each other like this you can see that towards the left and right side of our billet we have what may be considered some W's forming after this the billet is drawn out then cut and stacked as many times as you like so you create more layers at least this is the best I can figure out from reading forums everyone is so freaking cryptic about it and to you forum posted you got to draw some pictures man some of us are morons okay but then our stacks billet is gonna be hot cut with a dull chisel down the middle compressing and curving the layers closest to the chisel on the inside which creates this arched pattern our two resulting pieces are going to be four drilled and back together along the chisel cut yielding what is a feather pattern man so this is the simplest drawing that I could come up with I don't think it does the pattern justice but I think you get the idea too of how it's how it's made you have to sort of visualize it it's not very easy to do so at this point our billet has been forged welded but I'm going to crack open the canister just to make sure there are no problems then it will be put in another canister to square up hammer in the corners and flatten them to 90 degrees to the original plane to make our curved lines like this [Applause] yeah something like that so everything looks good it's going to do a second cannister now and we're going to carry on as the billet is being squared up I realized there could be a problem it's too hard to tell if I'm actually making it square or not so I'm gonna cut it open and take a look okay so this is out of the canister and it's like an hourglass since I'm set up here and why this narrow all the way down the middle and then it's up set down here again I couldn't see what I was doing inside the canister and I didn't really count on that being a problem but it is so I have two options I can do the forging outside the canister well I think where I can see it I'll just lose steel to scale or I can clean this up put in a canister without the steel foil Forge weld it to the canister and then the canister was to become a part of the bill up into form with it I'll see what I'm doing and I'll just have to remove it grind it away later with all that steel you know as well I don't know what to do alright as you can see I've decided to move ahead without the canister alright I think it's mostly squared up but there's another problem ok I thought about this and I have a couple choices this is gonna take me weeks to do by myself with the amount of time I have per week and so on and so forth there's just too much steel is too thick and so I can continue down that path and take a couple weeks to finish this and wear myself out where on my elbow and my wrist or I can get a striker in which case I haven't really done the snow by myself or I can start on a smaller billet alright it's time to start a smaller billet I've decided to use 16 layers total of point zero four nine inch 295 and 15 and 20 so not as many layers and definitely thinner our billet will come in at about a square inch to start which is much more manageable but I think the question now is whether or not I'll have enough steel at the end of this to make anything with because I'm gonna lose a lot of steel if you start with too much material your billet is just too large to hammer by hand which is what just happened but there's another issue with having an enough steel when all this is done let me explain you lose a lot of steel when you make Damascus first you lose steel to scale and that you know the iron oxide flaking off while it's hot that process is exaggerated with the high heat so long Forge times used to make Damascus especially by hand second steel is lost by having to grind out tack welds from stacking and tacking third every time you weld a handle on you have to grind out the handle weld remanence and if you're a lousy welder like me or the pattern calls for moving handle locations a lot then you can lose a lot more material by using extra handles fourth checking for forged wells requires grinding a small amount away and if you end up trying to work out some surface to laminations or cold shuts you're gonna lose more steel there and of course finally if you're grinding surfaces between forged welds then a lot of your material is going to end up on the shop floor instead of in your billet here I'm looking for about 2/3 to 3/4 loss of material which is one reason I was trying to use the canisters at the beginning to help mitigate that loss but you know like I said I couldn't really discern what was happening with the billet or check forged welds you know I could I could forego the steel foil and have the canister weld to the billet revealing its true shape while I'm forging but grinding away canister after every Forge weld on this project it's just really not practical at all and you know to come to think of it there's another wrinkle mix them with all that you have to have enough layers to make an interesting pattern so you have to start with the appropriate layer width [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] this is drawing out pretty nicely so far it'll be ground clean then edged for a quick peek at the pattern I forgot to shoot the pattern on end for some reason I'm sorry about that but there'll be some end shots of another billet soon we're going to work on for drilling our first four layers of the feather pattern now together after that well the solid will draw out this resulting billet and then we'll cut stack and repeat I want this to work more than anyone else but I have to ground out these welds and by the time I draw this out stack it I mean that's how much steel I have to make a knife with right now and I'm gonna lose half that continuing to Forge weld this so I have some decisions to make yep time for another billet we'll get a second one cranked out and forged weld it to our first we get that extra material we need to make something useful out of this I hope okay there it is on end you know it's nothing like it's supposed to be theoretically but if we stack it just right you saw that we could make some double use there so you know we're gonna roll with that [Music] all right one down we're gonna draw out the other billet to the same size so here they are side by side we're gonna get them cleaned up and then cut up and then we're gonna weld them I think I'm gonna separate them into stacks of three here to weld so we'll actually have two different billets that will weld together putting these all in one stack I think it's just you know I'm just not interested I think it's just too much material for me to hammer out so we'll do one stack at three at a time and then put them together yeah it's just too tall I don't want to mess with it now interestingly I'm going to bard a piece of scrap steel to each side of the three layers billets that then I'll Forge well the bills together opposite to the scrap side so it'll be two scrap pieces outside the forged welded billets and then I can draw that out and he scale and waste from the top and bottom will be scrap steel so maybe I can save some steel that way I don't know we'll see if it works I don't know if it'll work that still has to be ground out eventually so I don't know [Applause] I wasn't kidding when I told you we're gonna lose some material think about how much we started out with on those two billets and this is how much we have left it's 24 layers I still have to grind off a little you know barded layer up here down here and then I might be able to stack three of those so I can get you know 72 layers but even that's gonna be a tiny amount of Steel left to make a knife with and we have to draw it out it's you know might make like a 2 or 3 inch blade I don't know so I think we have to go back and Forge another billet to add to this one I know the billet I get to make another build a goodie I make all the bills see how many I want to make a all right here they are so this is the first one made out to different billets this is the second one sort of a single billet much more efficient with the Forge welding so there's more material here there's less material waste based on what I started with the question here's what these are gonna look like on end there's no chance they're gonna look the same and when I stack them you know I have to stack them like that is that going to be a very disruptive pattern is it going to be distracting is it going to look like a normal feather pattern it's just gonna be wonky a little worried here they are on end and I can't really tell much except that they are different and that I may not have got all the scrap steel off one side of that first billet the pattern is so tight I'm really worried that's garbage it just looks like mush and I'm not sure it's going to draw out too much so I decided to take the smaller billet which is the third billet basically try to make a small piece and feather Damascus out of that just to sort of test this final process here and prove that it works and you know interestingly our anvil chisel is made from the leftover car axle from the velocity knife project you know all right is it just me or is this time to look like the Stonehenge stage prop from spinal tap only smaller Wow here's the problem when I drilled on this napkin I put millimeters instead of inches well I rise above it I'm a professional [Music] no no no no what apocalyptic horror has just birthed in my garage all right here it is ground up by he treated it and we'll clean it up again here and then we'll put it in the etch for a peek at our pattern see if this is going to turn out well well there's a little bit of extra weld in there and maybe a cold shot but I think this is gonna work so I've decided to draw it out a little bit and even bevel one side to maybe push the center of the feather line towards or towards the Miller middle of the billet it sort of works it sort of doesn't I don't know but I did get it drawn out a bit [Applause] now it's on to our second billet I have a little more material here so I'm hoping I can make something a little bit longer maybe a slightly bigger knife I don't know we'll see hopefully I can forge well this is crazy [Music] I'm also going to mark and measure the center before cutting it this time so we can maybe keep our center line more down the middle of the bility there's a crack here so I just went ahead and grounded out that's gonna be a step off for the blade then all fortunate tang here [Applause] so excuse this finish it's only a two hundred grit belt finish followed by two rounds of ferric chloride so definitely not its final state but I'm running out of time I've got to get this video and they can so we're just gonna have to get a rough idea what this is going to look like you know I think I figured out how through this process to make a larger and larger billet I'll never make a bowi by hand like this but I think I can get a bigger knife out of it if I you know putting the time I started knife making in my garage about five years ago and I don't talk a lot about my progression through that journey but it feels like it's time to start my journey my knives [Music] [Music]

Channel: Green Beetle

Views: 2,906,719

Rating: 4.7965403 out of 5

Keywords: forged, diy, feather, damascus, hand, stonehenge, spinal tap, i rise above it its probably just college kids

Id: QgiMz-NZ2rw

Length: 22min 30sec (1350 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 24 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/fennesz]

Watched this last night. Fantastic video. But his poor arm :(

[u/yash731]

For some reason I found it funny every time he started making a new billet. But then again, a true artisan never gives up and he didn't either. Great video.

[u/BobbyJoe007]

This is really cool His poor arm

[u/BushWeedCornTrash]

This was awesome! I wonder if the cleave the billet from both top and bottom, will a butterfly pattern appear?