I downloaded it and tried it. It is pretty neat. I can see its utility when designing a knife pattern. I would think that you would have to get a feel for how your pattern develops in steel in relation to the patterns the software generates. It is cool to be able to predict the final design but I don't really know much about Damascus tho.

I would think that you would have to get a feel for how your pattern develops in steel in relation to the patterns the software generates.

I'm pretty surprised at how accurately this software predicts what the damascus pattern will look like in steel. As far as how the pattern will look after forging into a knife blade, that is a matter of material control during forging. Smiths who are experienced at forging damascus blades, will understand how to control stretching of the pattern during forging.

I'm curious; this thread has had nearly 200 views. Has anyone else downloaded Thor and tried it out? Anyone got questions about downloading or using Thor?

Does anyone know if it will it run on a Mac?

I downloaded but haven't done anything with it other than poke around. I'm a few years out from trying Damascus. was out of curiousity more than anything because its an app

Call me "technically challenged", but I cannot figure out how to use this......

Call me "technically challenged", but I cannot figure out how to use this......

Here's a few instructions to get you started. <img src=' http://www.americanbladesmith.com/ipboard/public/style_emoticons//smile.gi f' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

To view the patterns which are preloaded to Thor II, click “File” then “Example”.

To load your own patterns, you will need to have them on your computer. If you don’t have software to generate your patterns, it is possible to hand sketch them and either scan them to your computer, or load to your computer a photograph of your sketch. Crop the photo, or scan, to the edges of your sketch. Save it to a location where you can direct Thor to open it.

Click “File” then “Open”. A pop up menu will open for you to select your sketch and load it to Thor. The earlier version of Thor required that your pattern be converted to a bitmap before loading into Thor. Thor II will function with nearly all image file types.

You can also load your pattern by selecting “File” then “New”. This will open a blank screen in Thor. You can then do a copy and paste of your pattern. Although, your pattern dimensions must be sized to exactly fit the Thor screen. I haven’t played around with it enough to know what those dimensions are.

Under the “Edit” menu, you’ll find “Burn-off simulation”. This setting allows you to select a percentage factor to choose, which will remove some of the edges of the Thor illustration. The intention is to represent the effects of a degree of material loss to forge scale.

Also under the “Edit” menu is “Mosaic”. This allows you to set up a 2x2 or 3x3 stacking of the billet stacking arrangement that is loaded to Thor. There is a red box around one of the patterns in the Mosaic screen. You can click on the other patterns to select them individually. The selected pattern can be flipped and rotated to different positions. Clicking “OK’ will load the new mosaic arrangement to the Thor preview screen. Selecting “Mosaic” again, will allow you to do another mosaic arrangement, using the previous mosaic pattern.

At the bottom of the Thor screen are found “Grinding” and “Twisting”. The twisting setting changes the twist rate of the display. Changing the twist rate slider immediately changes the display. (At least it does on my computer)

The “Grinding” slider changes the depth of stock removal into the twisted bar illustration. After changing the position of the grinding slider, you have to go to the “Edit” menu and select “Refresh” to see the results.

The “Animation” menu has an interesting, though maybe not too useful function. Clicking “Play” will display an animation of the changes to the patterns as it is ground all the way through the twisted bar.

The “Settings” menu is where you can make selections to change the visibility of the scalloped edges of the twisted rod illustration.

Thanks Steve.

Believe it or not I had just about all of that figured out except the create a pattern drawing and load it part.

I was originally thinking that this was a "build a billet & see the pattern develop" software so it had me stymied. I kept trying to find where I specified # of bars, thickness, manipulation, etc.

So I suppose you just make a drawing of the end grain of your billet and see what happens when you twist & grind it.

The examples are pretty nice. A couple of patterns in there I have not tried. It was good to see them.

Thanks for the info.

You can use graph paper to do a sketch of your billet arrangement, take a photo of it, use your photo editing software to crop to the edges of your sketch and save it to your computer. Then, load the image of your sketch to Thor.

It is easiest if you can generate your sketches on your computer. There are many drawing applications that can do this. Even Microsoft Word can do simple block patterns. The image below, I created in just a few minutes this morning in Word. Go to the “Insert” menu and select “Shapes”. I created this pattern in Word and saved it as a PDF file. I opened the PDF in my photo editing software, cropped to the edges of the sketch and saved it as a JPEG. Then, loaded it to Thor.

I made a short video of how to create a new pattern for Thor II with microsoft powerpoint. You could also use Word or Excel or any other program that lets you make images.

Hope it is helpful to someone.

[media] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTncr9OIGU8&t=210s [/media]

I fear I’m late to the game on this one. The links here are dead. Anyone know where I can still download a copy of this program?

Posted by: @tdoyle200

I fear I’m late to the game on this one. The links here are dead. Anyone know where I can still download a copy of this program?

Try this one:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AVPwQoa3cm3cqGcao0Rfvr1dnk9A42eB/view?usp=sharing

Here are a couple of generated visuals that show how a twist changes the deeper you grind into it.

And this one