Home Forums Gear Knives and Blades Step by step in making a damascus chef knife

Here is basically a step by step of how I make a Damascus kitchen knife. I am posting the same work in progress thread on another forum but was not sure if it was cool to post links to other forums so I will put the info here as well. Hopefully someone can learn something from my pics and I can get some feedback, tips or tricks by showing how I do things to more experienced makers. I work alone in my garage so I don�t have any action shots but I will briefly describe each step as we go.

Here is the starting steel. The long bars are 1084 that is 1.25 inches wide and 1/8 thick. The other steel is 15n20 that is .065 thick and 1.25 wide from a well known Steel Baron.

Here is my KMG with a 4 inch wheel and blaze belt that I am going to remove the mill scall

Steel mostly cleaned up and ready to be cut to length.

Here is the steel cut to length

And alternating sticks of 1084 and 15n20 one of the middle bars is left longer in order to have more space to weld a handle to it. I have not tried this before but we will see how it works.

Shot of my wire feed welder at the ready

Here is the billet tack welded together at the ends and down the middle
[img]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e185/pike3e/7-1.jpg[/img]
A piece of angle iron used for the handle is welded on as well
[img]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e185/pike3e/8-1.jpg[/img]
I wet the billet with kerosene and coat with 20 Mule team borax. I will flux it again when it gets hotter but figure having it completely covered as it warms in the forge cant hurt.
[img]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e185/pike3e/9-1.jpg[/img]
Into the fire�
[img]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e185/pike3e/10.jpg[/img]