Forging TWO damascus katanas!

Hey folks, in today's build we're going to be making a copper damascus katana. Not just one but two. Let's get at it. The first thing we're going to do is make some damascus. I've got 25 layers of steel. We're going to stack it up and get it in the forge. After a little dip in kerosene our billet is ready to get in the forge. After soaking at 2200 degrees fahrenheit we're ready to stick these together and make a solid billet. I'm only showing you the footage of constructing the damascus for one of the blades. I'm really doing this twice. Right now we're just working this damascus down into a flat bar. Remember it's 25 layers and we want a hundred so we're going to cut it up and restack it soon. Those bars you see on either side are called kiss blocks. This helps keep a constant thickness as I'm pressing. This hydraulic press uses 30 tons of force so that's why these kiss blocks are important. We've almost got the final thickness and shape that we want. We're just going to square up the sides and just make sure we've got a nice flat bar to work with. Here's our two bars of 25 layer damascus that we're going to cut up into four and restack to give us a hundred layers. The image on the left is a cross-section of what the construction of our blades will be. We'll use our damascus as the outer cladding, a central core of high carbon steel which will be our cutting edge separated by copper. When most people see these blades they think the copper runs through the blade. The copper line appears when the bevels are ground into the blade. Since the entire cutting edge and core of the blade is high carbon steel these are very functional weapons. Now I'll change the kiss blocks so we get the right width that we want because we need these bars to be pretty precise. This bar is going to get pretty long but that's okay because we need damascus for both sides of the katana. So after this step right here I'm actually going to cut it in half so I have half for each side. Now we're switching over to one of my favorite tools, the rolling mill, and this is really great for thin steel so for thinning out steel and getting it the perfect thickness. Our final billet, once we add the copper, needs to be 20 inches and that's what we're rolling this damascus out to be. Now I'm using the surface grinder to grind the damascus clean to get ready for the final restack. So I got the damascus all cut, the core all set, and the copper so we're ready to weld this one up. I did speak to the customer and this katana is for his daughter who likes pink so we're going to be doing a pink wrap. Well pink and copper doesn't go so well so we're actually going to be doing this one in pure silver. So this is 99.9% pure silver so we're going to do a silver damascus katana and a copper one. These are all welded up, time to set the weld. I'm actually going to use my big vertical oven for this, not the forge. I may move to the forge later. Let's get them in. Since there's copper in the construction now we have to do this at a much lower heat because copper melts around 1980 degrees fahrenheit so we're doing this at about 1800 fahrenheit. The melting point of pure silver is even lower at about 1760 fahrenheit so that one's even trickier. Now all we're doing is stretching this out until we get the length is just a hundred layer of random, what I'm going to be using are these new chevron dies that I created. It's only going to be wide enough to put a little one chevron in the center but I think it's going to look pretty cool. Manipulating the pattern like this pushes some of the damascus down and some of it up giving almost like a contour map pattern and that's going to look really cool. Now we're going to use the grinder and grind off the high spots and that's what's really going to show our pattern. Now it's time to get it back in the forge and we're going to get it to its final thickness. You can see how long these are getting. With a 30 inch blade and a 10 inch tang, these billets need to be over 40 inches long. Here I've just placed the metal pattern on top of the billet after it's cooled just to show you what it's going to look like. I've traced the pattern onto the blade and now we're grinding it out. I know some of you are expecting to hammer these to shape but you just can't do that with these copper constructions. They'll just delaminate so you really need to grind them to shape. So here we are so far on both katanas. We got them profiled out. They're still pretty thick, probably about just over a quarter inch on each one but I'm pretty happy with them. This is the silver one. You can see the silver and the edge which is very cool. So now we're going to do some bevels and get ready for heat treat. Normally I would grind the edges, the sides, but there's no point grinding the sides right now and getting them perfectly smooth and then heat treating them and having to grind them again. So I'm just going to leave them rough for now and I'm going to do the bevels and then get ready for heat treat. So here are the two katanas with the rough bevels put in ready for heat treat. Here is the copper one but this is actually the second one because this is the first one. I actually cut this. It has some delaminations right here so I was not happy with this one. I thought I would maybe get a tanto out of this end but it was still splitting down the spine. So that one's going to go in the scrap heap and I did another one. So we are all set and ready for heat treat. Quenching high carbon steel in oil hardens its crystal structure and that's what gives us a hard blade. Here the blades look white. That's only because they have some anti-scale on them to protect them. So here are two katanas out of the heat treat and temper. They are nice and straight. I had to do a little straightening on them but they are nice and straight now. Now we have to do some final grinding but let's talk about some edge geometry. So let's talk a bit about edge geometry. Right now they look like this. That's only because I wanted to grind these bevels to make sure that the heat treat at the edge was really good. What we need to have them is we're going to have a little peak at the top then it's actually going this is accentuated and then actually this is going to be a little concave. Something like that. That's what we're going for. So the first thing I'm going to do is this part. While we have nice flat edges here it's easier to do these. I'm ready to do the bevels in the very top. I've got a I've got my rest tilted at 10 degrees. Now let's go. Okay so I've completed the top of the spine or the lorem une as I think it's called. Now we're going to move on to the sides. So the first thing we need to do is just grind the sides clean and make sure that there's no decarb on these. So I will be grinding it completely and then etching it in acid to check for any white spots because that is going to be decarb and that needs to come out or we won't get a nice pattern. Now let's etch it in ferric chloride to see if we missed any spots. This only takes a couple of seconds. I think it looks pretty good. I don't see any dramatic white a little gold color because I had to actually temper this again. It just wasn't exactly straight so I wanted to straighten it with a shim temper. It is fully ground to almost sharp right now so I couldn't use the straightening hammer on this guy. But now we're ready to move on to the hibaki, the collar that goes here. I did grind the tang clean just so that it would slide nicely and I don't get any problems with it kind of sticking. So that's what we're going to do next. For this one we're going to of course be using a piece of pure silver. This is actually sterling silver and I had some layout fluid from a previous project. But the first thing I'm going to do is anneal this which is make it a little softer and then I'm actually going to roll it in the rolling mill because it's a little bit thick and I'll get some extra length out of this. So let's anneal it. Unlike steel, quenching most non-ferrous metals actually makes them softer and easier to work. I did notice this crack here before I started rolling it. I'm not sure what happened there whether it was from the anneal or what. But I think I got enough here to wrap the hibaki around the sword. So let's start that. Now we're going to use a little silver solder and solder the open end. There's the hibaki. It now fits. It's a little snug but fits really well. Nice and close against the blade. Now I'll put a little file to this. Get it all nice and shiny and then move on to the rest. Time to move on to the guard. So I've cut these out of just mild steel. They're pretty thick. 5 16ths. So the first thing I'm going to do is go and surface these on the surface grinder. Get them down to just under a quarter inch. Then we're going to put them in my rotary table on the mill and kind of dish out the inside and leave the the rim kind of wider. You'll see what I'm going to do. I decided the lathe would be much easier than trying to use the rotary table for this. So there's the relief done in the guards. The center part is quite thin. Probably just over a sixteenth of an inch which is great. I just roughly drew on where the handle is going to go just so I know how much room I have left over for the cutouts that I'm going to do. The customer's last name starts with Z. So we're going to do two stylized Z's on either side. So I'm going to go up to the the office. I'm going to laser those on just so I know where they go and then file them out. So there are the two Z's lasered on. Now we got to get to drilling and filing. So there we have it. I'm done filing the Z's into these guards. I've also gone ahead and drilled holes here and here because what I'm going to be doing is hammering in some copper and some silver into those holes just for an added effect. So that's next. Okay, so we've got our copper and silver plugs put in. They're a little oversized right now but when we sand these, it'll fix up all of the Z's and it'll also make these perfect circles. But before we go and sand that, what I'm going to do is now put a line of engraving some inlay around the border here. It'll be obviously silver on this one and copper on this one. So let's move over to the engraving station and start doing that. The guards are done now. You saw me do the engraving and I just put the slots in them. So all's good. I still have to do the sepas, which are the separators on the front and the back, but I like to do those after I do the handle. So let's move on to the handles. First thing, I'm going to just rough these in, split these down the center, and then we'll probably use the mill to route out the center and then glue I've actually already done the fuchi. That is this part that goes on the opening like that, and now the kashira. The way I do these is to bend some metal around kind of in an oval, fit it around here, then weld it and weld the top on it. So let's go do it. So I finished up the kashiras, and I've milled the hole in the center for the cord wrap to go through. Now we're going to move on to the sepas, and these are the spacers that go between the hibaki, the guard, and the handle. So what we're going to do, I just slotted these out of copper and silver, what we're going to do is put some nice relief on the outside using a checkering file on an angle. So the sepas are all done. I've just sanded these a little bit just to show off the edge of these, so those are nice. I still got to do final sanding on everything, but now I'm ready to put the ray skin on the handles. But before I do that, I need to drill the hole for the mikugi or the pin. Okay, so let's talk about the stingray wrap. So this is a real stingray skin. It comes with this emperor's node, which is actually just painted on. This actually isn't part of the stingray, but most people have come to recognize this. Normally, I would like that emperor's node to be on the right side there, right here, because the manuki or the ornament is going to be here and here, so you would see it. The problem is, I had to go with stingray skins that were slightly smaller than I normally get due to shipping and timing. I just didn't have time to wait six weeks to get some others. So unfortunately, I'm going to have to put the emperor's node on the top, because the seam of the stingray has to be on the edge here. I just don't have enough to cut it here and wrap it all the way around. So we're going to cut it and we'll make the seam on the bottom of the handle. These are the manuki or the ornaments that will appear under the wrap. Now I'm starting to work on the saiyas. This was just milled and glued together, just like the handles. And here's the one that I've already done and just done the rough cutout. I'll be moving on to shaping this one and then we'll do the lacquer finish. While this may only be a short clip of sanding the blades, this took two days. Now I'm using a special chemical salt to turn the guards and the other metal parts of the handle jet black. Now it's time to etch the blade. This is what's going to expose our pattern. This is ferric chloride acid. After this, it's going to go in hot coffee, hot strong coffee, and that'll make it jet black. So I've run into a little snag. One of the requirements by the customer on the silver katana, since it's for a girl, it was supposed to have pink wrap. This is the wrap that I had ordered and it actually came just folded in half, which didn't work because then you'd see a seam. So I ended up trying to re-glue it, fold it in on itself, and re-glue it like this. Problem is it left it a little lumpy and I was thinking, well maybe that'll be okay once it's stretched on the handle. But this stuff is actually too thick. I can't reliably fold this over, so this is a no-go. So what we did to compromise is say, well what if I make the stingray pink and we use a black wrap? So I tried just painting the stingray with some pink paint and it kind of looks purple. Luckily I have a white stingray skin from a previous project and if I paint that pink, it looks pink. So we're going to end up re-wrapping this guy with a white stingray skin and then paint it. I was on a tight schedule for this build and really under the wire. I just finished it in time because I hand-delivered it to the customer in Toronto. I didn't even have time to do a cut test, but here's some glamour shots.