Sean,
Damascus steel, is bars of steel are forged together, much folding of the metal goes on during the process. You must flux with something that contains borax, or you can use the stuff at from store (20 Mule Team Brand, 100% Borax) Some Fluxes are designed for gas forges or coal forges.
You make a billet out of several layers of steels, when different steels are layered, you get a layered effect in the finish product. I sometime add a layer of nickle or copper. Damascus is prized because of the patterned product that is created.
It's a lot of heat in the forge, hammering, fluxing, folding and repeat the process many times. There are added steps to get different patterns.
To do it, isn't that difficult, it's just time consuming and right equipment does get a little pricey, but lesser equipment will do, just add more time because of the equipment.
Hope this gets you excited to do knives and start building your smithy.
Jerry
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At 12:41 AM 11/29/2002 +0000, you wrote:
wow sounds cool, damascus how exactly do you make that, is it just a
really high carbon steel? Somewher eI heard of watered steel or
something along those lines, not sure if it was real or no.
Supposedly really hard and holds an edge.
Sean
