Howsabout some hand forged damascus?

[Drstrangefart]

These are two kiridashis I made out of the very first and second damascus billets I've hand forged so far. The tiger striped one is unfinished but soon will be finished after which it will be my EDC as it was the very first damascus billet I ever made. I used a very old 15 inch long file and some monster 8 inch wide bandsaw blade to make the stack for the billet. It ended up being something like 21 layers with a twist.

The other one is cable damascus with was my second ever billet. I want to keep it, but it's getting raffled off at a large event to help a fellow smith put a dent in his dad's medical bills.

I'm very proud of what I accomplished with these, especially as I've only been forging and smithing seriously for a few months now. Both billets were made on live streams on my YouTube channel (Curiosity Forge) as I expected very high odds of failure and felt foolhardy enough to have a 20 some odd people deep audience when it went down.

 

[skiprat]

Very well done. And best of luck with the raffle. ( you are a class act:wink

I had no idea what a kiridashi is/was......impressed enough that you succeeded after so few attempts.:biggrin:

 

[Jim15]

Great work.

 

[Gary Beasley]

Think it helps a little that hes had some training from a Forged in Fire champion.

 

[Drstrangefart]

Very well done. And best of luck with the raffle. ( you are a class act:wink

I had no idea what a kiridashi is/was......impressed enough that you succeeded after so few attempts.:biggrin:

Those bad boys are EXCELLENT utility knives. I carry one I made from some Alabama Damascus every day except for when I'm in school for obvious reasons.

 

[Drstrangefart]

Think it helps a little that hes had some training from a Forged in Fire champion.

The damascus steel process was almost 100% learned from watching Big Dog Forge's videos. Mark's training helped with hammer control and learning what to look at my work for to fix my hammer work. I miss hanging out with him.

 

[thawkins87]

Damascus steel is so cool... how long does it take to forge a billet like those?

 

[Rifleman1776]

Had never heard of that knife style. Very interesting. Your forge work looks great. Keep it up.

 

[Drstrangefart]

Damascus steel is so cool... how long does it take to forge a billet like those?

The stacked billet was 2 hours of forge time and a couple hours spent on the setup. The cable damascus was maybe a 45 minute setup and an hour on the forge. There was also MONTHS of meticulous research before I made the first attempt.