First Damascus, Hand Forged!

My first experience with damascus steel. Forged by hand from k720 (O2) and 15n20 tool steel.

This project started out very easily prepearing the billet, but as soon as I started hammering on it I realized it was going to be a real challenge. Tool steel is very hard to move! Specially when it’s as thick as the billet I made.
After setting the weld I decided to split the stock in half so I would have had a better chance to heat it all up properly and possibly weld it for good by hand.
Unfortunatly I had mixed result with making it forge weld, not really sure about the reason why, maybe low heat, cold forging (even though I tried to never forged under orange) or the fact that I started to beat on the sides too early. Anyway, while forging I was able to spot a crack in one side and some cold spots on the top and bottom of the steel. To get rid of both I ended up grinding a lot of material away and that’s made the final product much shorter and thinner than I anticipated.
I even had to leave a hairline fracture on the spine because the material was getting too small.
To prevent the crack from splitting open in the hardening process I tried to use some refractory cement (just like I do to develop hamons) this worked pretty well and I ended up with an usable piece of steel

Overall very happy with the result since it’s my very fisrt attempt.

Index of operation and materials:
0:25 Cutting steel with metal cutting band saw
1:00 Grinding scales off on 2×72 (holding pieces with magnet)
2:00 Stacking the billet alternating 15n20 and k720 and cleaning everything with acetone
2:37 Stick welding the billet (rebar handle added off camera)
3:16 Borax used as fluck between each heat
3:45 Setting the weld
4:44 Grinding off stick welds
4:56 Cutting billed in two pieces
6:24 Isolating tang material
7:16 Grinding to shape
7:47 Test etch with ferric chloride
8:19 Steel wire to help cement stick
8:25 Refractory cement
9:00 Hardened in my homemade heat treating oven. 810°C for 30 min and quenching in oil
9:31 Tempering in toster oven at 200°C for 2.5hr
10:02 Cleaning up on the belt grinder and sanding by hand up to 600 grit
10:50 degreasing with acetone
10:53 final etch in ferric chloride
Off camera I sanded the 15n20 parts with 1200 grit sandpaper to make it shine.

Thanks a lot for watching, I hope you liked the video!
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