Making Damascus Cheap & Easy

       So you want to make Damascus and do it cheap and easy. Dust off your scrounging skills and find yourself some high carbon bandsaw blades (not the bi-metal stuff) and some strapping iron, the stuff that they use for pallets. Cut them into equal lengths with a cutoff wheel I usually make them about 8 inches or so, the length of an old coffee can this makes for easy storage. Build a stack an alternating stack of about 25 to 30 layers alternating first the strap then the saw blade. I then use stainless steel wire to bind them together. The stainless wire won’t accidentally get welded into your stacks and will burn off at a much higher temperature than low carbon bailing wire. Welding one end of the stack works well too because you can always have a handle attached to your stack for easier manipulation. Heat your billet until it’s red brush the scale off with a wire brush then flux with 20 Mule Team Borax. It’s cheap and you can buy it in the laundry section of your grocery store. Put the billet back into the fire and until it is bright yellow and the borax looks like melted butter. At this stage you are ready to weld. Pull your billet out of the fire and start hammering it. You only have a second or two before you loose your heat. You do not have to hit it hard in order to get it to weld either. If you hit it too hard during a welding heat it is possible to break a good weld that you had already set. Keep brushing, heating, fluxing and forging until the full length of the bar is completely welded together. I will some times set my billet on it’s corner and strike it while at orange heat to see if there are any layers that didn’t weld up. If this has happened I will try brush and flux that spot and try and weld it together.

      One you have a solid bar draw it out. Make a cut in the center about ¾ of the way through the bar with either a hot cut or a cutoff wheel. Reheat the bar and fold it back on itself and weld it again as described above. I like to do at least one fold in order to make sure I don’t have any cold shuts in it. Remember the more folds you do the more layers you’ll have. So if you start at 25 layers one fold will get you 50 another with get you 100 then 200 so on and so forth.

       Once you have the number of layers to where you want them you can start forging your blade to shape. When that’s done clean it up with files or a grinder heat treat and etch. The etch will bring out the pattern of the steel created from the layering. I like to use ferric chloride because it is not as caustic as some other acids like muratic sulfuric etc. However any of them will work well. Other reasonably safe and somewhat slower etches that you can use are a salt & vinegar solution, lemon juice & Coca-Cola.

        I really can’t stress safety enough. Make sure you wear natural fiber clothing like wool or cotton polyester has a bad habit of melting and sticking to your skin. Safety glasses are a must to keep flux and metal dust out of your eyes. A leather apron is beneficial to keep your clothing mostly hole free and lastly hearing protection can be good too. You’ll keep your hearing a while longer and can pretend to not hear your S/O or neighbor when they come outside to yell at you about the noise.