Good evening all. I have a piece of of .005 201 nickel and 1/4" 1075 and i would like to try a san mai knife soon.My question is. Does the nickel sheet need to be the entire width of the billet, or should it be a little narrower than the rest of billet? The reason I ask is during my research I read that you don't want the nickel to extend to the cutting edge for performance reasons but nothing on actually how big a piece to use. I hope this makes sense.
Good morning Ronald,
So it's pure nickel not nickel silver as the heading suggests? I don't know nothing bout no nickel silver forge welding and can't speak to that, however as far as laying nickel down i would hazard to say that .005 is a might thin for your sides, as an intermediate layer as striking visual effect and carbon migration blocker it would be lovely, but i might suggest using your 1075 core sandwiched with your thin nickel and then sandwich yet Again with say a mild steel bar even. As far as how far down the edge to make it, you can go full width, with grinding as you get closer to center the soft nickel sides will be worn back away from the edge. How far you decide to forge the bevels will delineate how far up or down the nickel climbs towards the spine. Ie: the further you draw the bevels the closer to the edge the nickel will be in the finished blade. Hope this helps.
Thank you Jesse. My apologies for the improper heading. You definitely helped me out. I'm going to stack the billet as such. 1/4" 1075 core sandwiched between two pieces of nickel sheeting and then a piece of 1/8" mild steel on each side of that. Thank you for taking the time to help,I appreciate it.
Your very welcome, i hope it works out for ya. Take care.
