Spent two full days trying to get a clean weld on a Damascus billet

I was working on a chef's knife for a custom order and my forge welds kept failing. The issue was a tiny bit of scale I missed when cleaning the steel layers before stacking them. It took me about 16 hours of grinding, re-stacking, and re-heating to finally get a solid bond. Has anyone else had a simple prep mistake cost them that much time?

2 comments

2 Comments

kim.wren4d ago

Oh man, that hits home. Forgot to flux one section of a canister weld once and it just blew apart. Wasted a whole weekend and a bunch of powder steel before I spotted the clean patch where it never bonded.

derek9394d ago

Feel your pain. I once spent a whole day chasing a bad weld only to find a single fingerprint oil spot. Maybe we should just glue the metal together next time.