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

Here the bars are restacked, tack welded together and fluxed.


Next they are forge welded together


The bar is now drawn out until it is too long to all stay in the forge. I cut it in two and weld a handle to the other bar. This step saved a tremendous amount of time and propane.


Here are the two bars forged to the desired size. I did not make the cut right in the middle when splitting them so one was longer than the other. To make them the same width, I used a bar that had cooled to act as a press stop while forging the second bar.



Here is my setup for grinding off the scale. I prefer to do this outside because the angle grinder sends sparks everywhere. I use glasses, gloves, a breathing mask and ear protection during grinding. I used to have the guard of the grinder off but decided I would rather give up some ease of use for the additional safety. Oh and since I like to do this outside I have to drag the leg vice and stand into the driveway. The next step is cutting the billet up and re tack welding it. So, I have to drag it back into the garage to use during welding. Sure would be nice to have two vices.

Here is two pics of the seven stacks forged down

[img]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e185/pike3e/26.jpg[/img]

Here there are five bars cut to the same length and ready to be stacked.
[img]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e185/pike3e/27.jpg[/img]
Tacked and ready to flux and get hot. This will give 35 layers of w�s. Which will be the layer count of the final billet
[img]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e185/pike3e/28.jpg[/img]

The five bars forged together and drawn out. This will be billet that I will now forge into a knife.
[img]http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e185/pike3e/29.jpg[/img]