I can't honestly recall ever seeing a stainless san-mai using 5160.

I personally use 1095 because what I have has a high enough manganese content to etch very black.

As a run of thumb, 5160 simply "doesn't play well with others", meaning that you'll likely experience a higher rate of failure welding then if you choose another alloy. Personally, I find 10XX steels to be the most successful when mating to a stainless.

I think you'll find it VERY challenging to create AEB-L and 440C into a damascus mix. Honestly, I have done it, but in my opinion the detriments far out weigh any advantages.

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As a run of thumb, 5160 simply "doesn't play well with others", meaning that you'll likely experience a higher rate of failure welding then if you choose another alloy. Personally, I find 10XX steels to be the most successful when mating to a stainless.

I think you'll find it VERY challenging to create AEB-L and 440C into a damascus mix. Honestly, I have done it, but in my opinion the detriments far out weigh any advantages.

Karl and Ed, Thank you for the replies, it is very much appreciated.

I'll go with 1095 then for my core.

The SS mix has been recommended to me by an experienced smith who teaches the class I'm taking. Just curious Ed, what mix do you use for Stainless Steel damascus do you generally use and why?

I don't do stainless damascus....at least not the layered variety. I can, and have done it, but the reason I choose not to is because as I mentioned, there are far more detriments to the finished product than there are advantages. In short, about the only advantage that SS layered damascus offers is the stainless part, everything else about it is pretty much sub-standard to what would be expected of of a carbon/alloy laminate blade. Beyond the "wow factor" of being able to say "it's all stainless damascus" I don't see any good reasons for making SS layered damascus.

What I do is laminate 410, 420, or 416 to carbon damascus, or carbon steel cores. Not really any compelling reasons to do that either, but at least with that type I can obtain/maintain the advantages that a carbon/alloy blade offers. You'll understand what I'm talking about once you get into doing the SS layered stuff. <img src=' http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ipboard/public/style_emoticons//smile.gi f' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

Ok i am just a lowly apprentice but i have done about 3 successful a few San Mai blades and quite enjoy forge welding. As I can come off as very blunt(unlike my blades =) ) I feel i should make clear that this post is for both learning purposes and as a friendly argument. To my knowledge San Mai is a three bar setup with no folding and is lamination and not Damascus. I am not sure I am phrasing this properly, Lamination gives a blade both strength of shock absorption that comes from iron with the edge holding qualities of high carbon steel. as such you want high carbon steel to be the core, this would be 440C (acording to my knife steel app) it has a carbon content of .95-1.20 well AEB-L only has a carbon content of about .67 well AEB-H has a carbon content of 1.0. also from my

however 52100 would be the best choice to forge weld with 440 as NJ steel baron does sell a san mai esk steel of 410ss with 52100. Considering the cheapest of this stuff is 88.74 I am not sure how good the stuff is. However i also enjoy forge welding enough to prefer doing it myself.