OK,

Using the great advice y'all gave me I forged my first bar of damascus today.

It went well and welded together and stuff like that until I got it to a bar shape.... then I ran into 2 problems.

1. I found out pretty soon that the I did not use enough chainsaw blades and so it was not thick enough.

2. When it got to a rough bar form it developed 2 cracks all the way down the length of the bar. When I tried to fix it it just got worse because it acted like a seesaw.... hit it on one side and the crack on the other side would open up more, hit it on the other side and the other crack would open even more.

I stopped there and shut the forge down because I did not want to waste all the work from the previous 2 hours.

Now I will post in steps what I did from beginning to end in hopes that y'all will see where I went wrong.

1. Since I did not have kerosene I decided to dip the blades in plain unleaded gas.

2. After the blades where pretty clean I lit the forge and prepared for forging.(IE I got all the hammers I needed, got my safety stuff exetera.)

2. Before I hit it withe the hammer I put it in the fire till the surface looked wet and it was slightly dripping.(almost like potters clay)

3. Then I took it out of the forge and while it was still SUPPER hot I caked it over with borax.(then I stuck it back in the forge)

4. I took it out when it looked wet again an started lightly hitting it with a 1/2 pound hammer.

5. After every hammering I would cover it with borax again and then put it back in the fire until it looked wet.

6. After it was firmly welded together it looked like a sponge in the shape on a 1/2" x 1/2" x 6" bar.

7. At this point I switched to a 3 pound hammer but I still didn't go full throttle.(if you know what I mean)

I just kept on forging in this manner until I noticed those crack and then I stopped to ask and see if y'all could help.

Hope y'all can help,

Jonathan.

Johnathan it sounds like you have an area that did not weld. Are the cracks in the same place on both sides? I generally do not cake the borax on. Just sprinkle from a metal shaker like Jim does. I also apply the borax when the billet is at a dark red heat. Then allow it to come up to welding heat. I also will use a wire brush to clean scale and things from the billet. It is possible that you got scale or something trapped in the billet when welding it up.

As far as correcting the cracks. Well you could try bringing the billet back up to heat, wire brush the billet especially in the crack areas. Then sprinkle more borax on and bring back up to welding heat. Go lightly and try to weld up small sections at a time.

Good luck.

Brion

I just think that it's really inspiring to see a 13 yr old going at it like this. Most 13 yr olds have other things, but knife making on their minds. Don't know anything about the topic. but Forge On!!!! Jonathan.

I second the last comment..Great that a young man is interested in knife making an actually experimenting with it..Rock on JS

Another method is soaking the billet overnight in kerosene and then welding as is. Be careful there will be a lot of flame in the beginning. I think the soot from the kerosene acts as a flux and it get everywhere there is an opening in the billet and does not leave inclusions. I did not trust this method until I tried it.