that spray paint trick to keep the outer layer from welding was worth the price of admission! thanks for that awesome tip!

I appreciate seeing the ones that don't work out, as well.

Break it and stack the pieces and forge weld those, still might be good pattern. God bless sir

Live and learn. Can't wait to see you try again. Thanks for sharing.

Videos like this are great...they don't work out all the time, but as someone whose only metal working background was a machine shop, it's really interesting to watch, and better even for learning. I don't really have space to do this kind of thing, so watching you, and others practice their craft is enjoyable.

I think you need to keep experimenting with this concept. I think if you figure it out it will make a really beautiful pattern

As much as I enjoy the complete projects, I also really love coming along for the ride with your mini-projects. I find it very inspirational in my jewelry making. Thank you and keep them coming.

I like that you show some of your experiments. Thank you

knowing what *NOT* to do is as good as knowing what *TO* do, in the end. No big loss... you learned something.

Really enjoy failed projects. Because even when they fail, you always learn something. :)

Bummer. That pattern was looking promising. Great trial-and-error. Now we know and knowing is half the battle.💪

Love the creative thinking! Just thinking out loud with a suggestion…maybe cleaning and welding the bars before cutting the tiger would have made it work better? It’s awesome that you allow “failure” of process to be part of the process. You do good work bro

Always enjoy your ideas regardless if they always work. Never stop imagining things!

Made me shout 'No!!!' when it came apart. Really love the concept though

Nice experiment - had an interesting beginning.

Congrats!...you invented a new way to make chips!....sweet experiment, to bad it didnt work out the way you imagined!....keep it up!

A little late on here, but I'm sure having the solid steel san-mai type core may have been good! I'd love to see a re-attempt of this, definitely has potential.

I love when you go all mad scientist. Growing the craft!

Thanks for always trying something new. Education for all of us and keep up the good work!

Love the creativity and effort! Keep at it, that's how breakthroughs are made 👍

Can't hit a homerun every time you step up to the plate. Love your work

Just came across your channel last night and subscribed. I enjoy how you take us along for your trial and error as well as how you aren't afraid to show errors and failures. It's all part of the process. And you show it.

Thanks for sharing your experiment. It's always useful for me to see something tried that I haven't fussed with, especially when the result is less than hoped for.

I think a san mai with a piece of solid steel for the edge & spine would work

Welding the cuts seems like the best way to do this. Takes a lot more time to clean up but you remove a bunch of those cut stresses

Glad you show experiments that don’t turn out how you planned.

As my father told me "You learn by doing and making mistakes". I love that you were willing to experiment and find out what works and what doesn't work. Your attempt at this found flaws in the process and now you can continue to try to find a method that gives you the results you want. Even if you discover the process cannot be successfully done that way, you learned from the experience. That's what real innovation is and I love to see it in action.

I like where you’re going with this 👍 52100 is my nemesis…

Weld on the two sides and grind those down then forge weld and do your thing. Great idea keep going.

Great idea. Next time

I am glad to see you doing ambitious canister experiments. To many smithtubers doing the same stuff. For this one i would say go bigger, thicker steel, wider curf, but also start with a thicker billet to have you more room to compress the material on all sides. The solid center design sounds cool but you would have to make the frame, add powder, weld on 1 face, flip the canister, add power and weld on the other face. Or not have your center stock be the same size as your tiger scales to allow the powdered steel to work through.

I appreciate your willingness to experiment and find "what if?".

I respect the imagination, and I always post my failures as well as my successes Great Job !!

I made this comment on another of your projects, and thought I was posting it here. Oops. But the comment I wanted to post here was just something I was wondering as I watched. Combine rasp bars already have raised ridges for threshing grain, and the steel (no idea of what it is), sure is long lasting. Most any ag dealer might have a pile of used rasp bars around, and it might be a good source of unique material for your projects. Just an old farmer letting his mind ramble. I sure enjoy your site.

Dang it! That would have been really cool! Try again. If don't mind I might try it and see what happens too. More cool videos please! Keep up the good work.

That’s a good try! Hope you get it next time

A simple, light, and small vibration tool can be made with a simple battery powered motor out of a toy, added weight on one side of the shaft, in a hand held shell would work great for setting the steel dust.🤔. Or even a small speaker hooked up playing low frequency 🤔🤔🤔

I do like the concept of what you were trying to do. I'm not a metalsmith, but as someone with artistic skills, I think forge welding two types of steel first and then cutting in shallow lines on either face down to where the metals meet and then pressing the billet to stretch out the material, allowing both metals to be present on either side of your blank... like a raindrop pattern with lines instead of dots. and presumably less layers, though you could fold several times before cutting in your lines, which would give us the alternating dark and light steel layers exposed in the areas where material was removed and moved.

I would have like to see the finished pattern of the blade, good try. As you were saying the education continues!!

thanks for posting this. Most would not just deleted it. Good job. mgs

There’s a lot of empty space (i.e. air) in a powder. Maybe try using strips inlayed into the cuts? That means you’ll need straight and uniform cuts. Do you have a mill?

Suggestion: 4, 1/8” layers, 1070-1095 HC, randomly cut with the bandsaw. Clean up each layer and weld the cuts with a hard, high nickel bead, mill flat, repeat 4 times. Stack and edge spot weld the 4 layers, rip it down the middle, stack both halves onto a solid core of thin leaf spring and draw that out. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Man that was great! A way that didn’t work. So we try again

Definitely should add a solid piece for the core and make a San mai with your pattern on the outside

Compress it like an accordion first when you set the welds not just on the sides. It will work.

Glad I’m not the only guy that turns quality steel into garbage. I seem to have real gift for it 😋 Of course I’m just trying basic Damascus not fancy out of the box stuff like this. Hopefully you try again because that could turn out pretty cool looking.

Maybe forging 4 pieces together to start with your desired solid billet?

Great to see you try new patterns. Still would like to see the cheeta forge weld. (Medium darkness etching blank, drilled small holes (5-10mm) in it the diameter of some pipes (~1mm wall with bright etching meterial) and into the pipes some rods with dark etch. Then forgeweld them together and stretch it out a bit. Schould lead to the round geometry get a bit more natural looking.

nothing ventured nothing gained keep on venturing keep on gaining.

Maybe try with a narrower billet.

Cool concept!! What about leaving the middle piece whole, leaving some structural integrity, and the pattern just wouldn't go all the way to the edge?

Another way the accordian cut could have been done is using strips, and staggering welds along the layers and opposite on the other side.

Maybe solid core and then two saw cut plates with alternating cuts?

I think if you went 2 short/shallow cuts then a longer cut in the steel then flip the middle piece you would get a rather interesting pattern. You could also try doing four pieces with the cuts and a solid middle for a five-layer billet. These are just some other ideas to try.

You learn more from Failure, than sucess

Love the concept of the pattern! Couldn't the same pattern be achieved by normal stacking and grinding down (same pattern as the cuts) to the next layer and then drawing out into a bar?

Cut the slots in each of the pieces on their own, they do not have to match, in fact, best they do not, each one will support the next layer. The difficult part would be the 10/80 powder, ensuring it fills all of the cut slots. Perhaps use 4 or 5 layers rather than 3 to build a stronger more complex support structure to start.

Oh well. Still worth the try. Lesson learned. On to the next one.

It’s great watching how you experiment. That will be a great pattern if you find a way to keep it together with those thin cuts. I’m not sure that wider cuts would achieve the Tiger stripe effect I think that you’re looking for.

What the hell! You never know until you try!

I have some old digger bucket edge from a bucket I had to replace the edge on Is this suitable to forge a knife from? If so is there a way to work out what the composition of the steel is ?? Love your work 👍

Do the same thing but drill different size holes...polka dot damascus.

Make a crucible steel billet out of the scraps and do a wootz knife!

Would doing the stripes like they do a ladder pattern work to make a tiger stripe?

Next time, clamp the porta-band saw and use it like a stand up band saw. As for the cracking, curious if you flipped the middle layer, so the saw cuts don't all line up would make it stronger like plywood 🤔❓

What if you tried a ladder pattern cut, but just stopped short and alternated your cuts, that would look like the tiger stripe pattern but you should keep your integrity?

When doing cuts like ya were in the beginning you gotta keep the bottom snug in a clamp all the way across, then you can cut down with pressure and the entire base takes that pressure.

Try again with a solid piece of steel and cut into it a bit less. As good as you are I am sure you can do it. God bless

Maybe you could try getting inside the cuts with a little file, and then just giving it a little bit of vertical pressure when you weld

Okay here's what I would have done. I would have used an angle grinder with a cutoff wheel to get some v gouges about 90% of the way through the steel. I would have done 1084 to fill. I would have not used primer as it off gases and can get into the gaps in powdered Steel and cause bad welds. I would have simply encapsulated in very thin sheet metal. As you forge the sheet metal should deteriorate through scaling. Using the V gouges I would have a differential in thickness to each line. That could give you a tiger stripe pattern. Furthermore on initial heat I would have got it much hotter. Look like you are around a 2200 to 2300 hundred degree range. I would have liked to see that up towards 2500

hmm there is potential there, perhaps building up a cube billet from your starting point then cutting it down and lengthening it out would give enough depth of steel to fully combine everything in a way that won't split.

If you don't try how do you know ? Keep on experimenting 👏

rapid cooling in water also makes it brittle, especially if the water is too cold compared to the metal. Decarbonization and delamination of a blade both will kill a project in its tracks.

How about this for a stupid idea? Make a single steel billet that is 2 inches thick. From the top, drill down with quarter-inch holes about a quarter inch from the edge. Have both edges drilled down but offset like a ladder pattern. Down the middle do the same but one hole for each left and right bracket of holes on the edges. Then use your forge press to seat whatever metals you want for your Damascus into the round drilled holes. Of course, that or those metals would need to be shaped to fit first. Then forge as usual.

The experiments are great, the planning and preparation need a bit more work

This is just my observation. This is by no means critique. But I think cutting each piece individually would have worked better. Also a mounted portaband so it works like a table saw. Then one piece of cut metal and powder then the next piece turned 180° to keep the lines from being on top of each other then more powder and so on. The paint was a beautiful idea and I expect more of it in the future.

Nice concept, kind of like a simplistic version of ladder pattern. But maybe keep the can on until the shape is more formalized and keep working it at forge welding temps.

Nice experiment. I have seen both Steve Schwarzer and Jay Nielson say that canister needs to be forged at near welding temps, at least initially. Unfortunately 52100 red shorts so those high temps are tricky.

just an idea for you. what if you used a canister and do what you tried in this video, but use 15n20 for the base and filling the cutouts with 1095 powder?

Very interesting. I would try it with the pattern being a polar opposite of the one it was placed to. If the first is cut 🔺🔻🔺, the second is cut🔻🔺🔻, then the third is again cut 🔺🔻🔺 and so on. the pattern wouldn't really change and the holes in one piece, would be supported by the adjacent piece.

Do the cuts like you did and put it on a canister with powdered steel. It will give the pattern you were after without the cracks happening

This pattern could work as outer (decorative) layers for a san mai blade Just needs to be thin enough

Maybe, after cutting, you could swap the middle one around (back to front), but this will mean putting the powder in on both sides, which could be a problem. Maybe you could leave the sides off and put the powder in from both sides, tacking the one closed after the powder has bee inserted. As they say, it is better to make mistakes and stay humble, than to have (constant) success and become arrogant. The important thing is to learn out of your mistakes! When I saw the small photo of your video, I thought they were nails (one up one down) fitted inside a cage with powder filling in the spaces.

Yeah could’ve seen that coming from a mile away. :) Solid layers between the pattern could’ve saved you. Or rotate the middle layer.

When I seen him fold it over the anvil and crack it with the hammer all I could think was Poopy

I don't know a lot about forging, but, I wonder, maybe try solid steel instead of powder with the thicker stock....just a thought....

cut three pieces again, but cut the pattern only in two and put it on the sides of the solid one, like a san mai

this is not unlike my comment on your "let's try drilling holes and filling with powder to make a pattern" video from a week or so back. I even used the phrase "tiger stripes." if this is just a coincidence, cool, if not, awesome! I haven't had the chance to learn bladesmithing yet and I am glad to see some of my harebrained ideas attempted 😁

Never know unless you try =)

I just have a normal hacksaw. Good ol' fashioned elbow grease. Ps no grease left

I think if you started with a single solid base piece, and used a cut off disc on an angle grinder to make larger stripes, it would go a long way in keeping things solid. I'm no professional, so possible that I'm missing something here. We'll done and I hope you try again. Seeing both success and failures is why I love this channel. More akin to real life.

@1:37 I would’ve had a friend off camera with 9-1-1 dialed in and just wait to press SEND!

Try the same operations except instead of the saw cuts drill a series of holes in the stack, fill with powder, etc. Polka dot damascus?

How did you clean the inside of the cuts?

I actually thought you used the axe heads to make a Damascus pattern, it would have been interesting, 15n20 in-between and powder steel to fill gaps

I did a similar thing but used a 1/2” thick leaf spring I cut it about 1.25” wide then cut slots with thin grinder wheel 1/3 through like ladder pattern and filled with 4800 2% powder , then rolled it out with homemade mill rollers to about 1/8 thick and made an ornamental tanto it looked good but I don’t know how it would go as a real working knife

Where do you get your Metal from?

What was the white paint u sprayed on it

When you weld it in canister just try to weld it little bit more with borax.

Restect the pieces that you broke off, keep folding the steel, you can still get the pattern, do a semi with a hardcore to it, you might be onto something🤔