Hello folks not been on the forum for at least a year. Was not able to do much physically and it felt odd to me to simply discuss (just my thing). So that said I have upped my tooling quite a bit to work around my injury and here I am :-). So any way I posted on my FB last week a 160 layer billet I pressed out and I am working on trying to get my reveal like a Persian Kirk pattern. My 2nd and 3rd billets are going to get stacked and rewelded tomorrow, so here is my question. Has anyone done a ladder where rather than cut straight down into the stack they rotated the billet 90 deg and created an extreme crushed W, then drew out and cut in the ladder ?? If so what was that reveal like vs cutting straight down into the stack ?? Often results can vary between people and why I posted question. I have 315 layers in quite a large material pack now and am still considering another cut to double that and the other billet is a 58 later starting place. Odds are high I will give each method a shot here regardless but curious of your results.
Minimum Effort = Minimum Results every time
I have done, and do a significant amount of "W" pattern. It's arguably one of the most versatile pattern we can make in damascus. In general, I try to avoid "drawing out" any "W" pattern, unless there is a very specific reason/purpose in mind. Usually drawing on a "W" billet will flatten out the "W"s. How much they flatten out depends on how much they are drawn. Even 160 layers is way more then I ever use in a "W" pattern. For me, low double digit or sometimes even single digit layer counts are what I use.
Ed Caffrey, ABS MS
"The Montana Bladesmith"
www.CaffreyKnives.net
