Відео

This is from the propane/diesel furnace. The charcoal furnace was largely an experiment to test whether that system would work and to provide me with ideas for how to design a future charcoal furnace. Sometimes it is easier and more effective to simply make a physical test than to attempt to think through all the variables. Now I have a better sense of how the charcoal combustion works and how to avoid some of the pitfalls of the fuel when I build the next iteration of the charcoal furnace.

Thanks! Greatly appreciated!

A5 Salamander

Thanks!

It’s a lot of fun to make good steel from scratch!

Thanks! I was quite pleased with how it came out.

Thanks Stuart! I hope things are going well for you; you certainly seem to be staying busy!

The bolster is my own Nickel-Copper mokume, the spacer is Elforyn "Super-Tusk" (a synthetic ivory), and the remainder is stabilized koa.

Pricing will be announced in the Newsletter, which I'm expecting to send out to subscribers next weekend. All of my new work is available first to the Newsletter subscribers, and only after that do I make it available on my website or through Etsy. If you are interested in subscribing just drop me an email: peterburtknives@gmail.com

Thanks! I was not aiming for laddering on this one, though it is certainly something I could do if a customer asked for it.

@@peterburt7218 That's interesting! If you are going to make the handle of the Shamshir please try to post that video.

This one went to the new owner "as-is"; I sell a lot more bare blades than I do completed swords. Some of my customers live in areas where they can easily get very nice fittings made locally, while others are planning to use their favorite antique hilt to complete the project.

@@peterburt7218 Do you, by chance, sell billets of wootz? I don’t live in America so, I am not so sure about importing a blade. If you do please let me know, I might buy 2-3 from you. Fyi, I have a friend who lives in America you can post them to him.

I rarely sell billets/bars simply because it is so easy for the pattern and other properties to be messed up by the bladesmith that buys the bar. If I give the buyer specific instructions on how to forge and heat treat the material then I am essentially giving away the information I have worked for two decades to develop. If I don't give specific instructions then it is likely that the pattern and/or performance will be poor, and this then reflects badly on me. The closest I get is to sell forged blanks that still require grinding, heat treat, and finishing. I don't know whether this would work for you.

It's hard for folks to let the old info go, especially if they learned it from a trusted source or have themselves been telling people the incorrect explanations. The first step of learning new things is being open to the idea that we don't already know everything.

I don't view it as misinformation so much as tragically incomplete information. I've had one smith message me with pictures of wootz (actual wootz rather than crucible steel) that he made using an induction forge. It was not great, but it also wasn't any worse than a lot of what I see out there that has been made using fuel furnaces. This was to demonstrate that it could be done. At the same time, he also said that there were various complications to overcome, which I think puts it in the same realm as other methods of making crucible steel. There is no magic system that makes it all perfectly simple, and that is part of the fun.

I wear ear protection throughout because the chopping portion is surprisingly loud. I wear eye protection during the bending of the blade, because that is the most dangerous portion. I probably should wear eye protection throughout, but I have yet to find a pair of safety glasses that doesn't distort my vision in some fashion; I decided it was more important to see clearly while chopping since I was confident that the steel would not chip or break during that portion of the testing.

Thanks! For the initial stack from commercial bar stock I don't prep the surfaces at all, and that goes for both HR and CR steels. If the surfaces have begun rusting I will quickly run them across a 36 grit belt simply to remove any loose oxides. For re-stacks I typically clean overnight with Prep and Etch, which is a phosphoric acid blend I think, to remove the forge scale. I then rinse and run across a standard wire wheel (make sure it is not stainless or coated in any way) before restacking. Kerosene and WD-40 aren't really fluxes, and only really make a difference when doing canister welds. All of the hydrocarbons evaporate long before the steel reaches forging temperatures, so the help that they provide is by displacing oxygen and creating positive pressure during the early stages of heating. In canister welds this can reduce the amount of oxidation that occurs at the very beginning of heating, but in an open stack the oil is long gone by the time the steel reaches even a dull red heat. This is still before C has become mobile enough in the steel to create positive pressure between the layers, so there is not that much difference between using oil and not using anything. I avoid borax except in very specific cases because it is very hard on the forge and is also the leading cause of inclusions in the welds. I believe it was Kevin Cashen who did testing maybe 8 years ago on "Kero" welds versus "Dry" welds, with the main goal being to see whether there were changes to the depth of edge-inclusions (where the seam does not weld all the way to the edge) or the degree of decarb between the layers. As I recall there was little difference between the two methods, which makes sense since they are the exact same method above perhaps 600c.

@@peterburt7218 thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to explain that.

Thanks!...and I have a wireless microphone on the way to hopefully help with the sound issues in the future.

@@peterburt7218 Your lectures are very interesting!

Knowledge is always good even if it doesn't change our operating procedures. Knowing how things work isn't a huge help when things are already working, but it is a giant help when things go wrong.

This is certainly the case given the much larger surface area. This means that powder welds will overall tend to lose a bit more carbon, but this also creates additional positive pressure within the canister. This second factor may contribute to why powder welds work as well as they do.

Thanks! It was a fun little project.

Thanks!

It all depends on the project. I try not to think too much about the time spent because I would get depressed about how little I make on an hourly basis.

Thanks! The rainbow sheen, which is particularly noticeable on the darker kard, shows up sometimes during the finishing process. It is most common on darker blades, and I think results from an interaction between the finishing wax and the texture of etched surface...but I am not 100% certain. It is something that I would love to pin down for certain so that I could create it or avoid it as desired.

@@peterburt7218 Possibly the petroleum in the wax?

My suspicion is that it comes from one of the steps of the finishing process interacting with the following steps. If the iridescence was inherent to just one substance then it should always appear, but I haven't nailed down exactly which materials are combining to create this effect. I have a theory that I will be testing in future etches.

@peterburt7218 as always, im fascinated to see the results of your experiments.

If my theory is correct it will help with all of my finishing endeavors, or at least those that involve dark finishes.

I think it will be interesting to see what people discover as they experiment with making steels using the induction forges. Induction has obviously been used at the industrial level for around 100 years, but the system has always been to melt and pour. I am not aware of any real research that has been done on solidification within the crucible using induction systems. A question that I wonder about is whether the induction field will interact more strongly with Fe crystals as they form versus the liquid Fe that surrounds them? This could have profound effects on the early solidification process.

If I am understanding what you mean by "cellular solidification" this can also be seen in melts that have C content over 2% in which the solidification follows the cast iron route rather than the steel route. This creates material in which the C precipitates as what is essentially an especially heavy form of grain boundary carbide. I see this structure in some of the very high C% bulat that is made, and it certainly creates very interesting patterns in the steel. It is very hard to control the carbide size in these "steels" because it is impossible to fully dissolve all the carbide at any point in the forging process. This means that some of the very large primary carbides are likely to persist in the final product.

Is this the same person who is making the "crystallized titanium"? In either case, the extremely slow solidification rates are actually just as much of an issue as solidifying too quickly. The pattern in wootz and similar materials is the result of microsegregation between the dendrites, and this works best within a "Goldilocks" range of solidification rates...not too fast, and not too slow. Solidification that is too fast does not get rid of microsegregation (even continuously cast bars have segregation), but it does reduce the spacing to such a degree that it becomes essentially impossible to see with the unaided eye. Solidification that is too slow, on the other hand, leads to macrosegregation, which refers to the segregation of elements at the ingot level. Basically speaking, the slower the solidification the more time the elements have to "escape" from between the dendrites and instead remain in the pool of liquid metal. This results in much higher concentrations of the "impurity" elements in the core of the ingot while at the same time reducing the contrast between the dendritic and interdendritic regions. Even worse, very slow solidification can lead to pure Fe crystallizing out of the liquid and falling as "snow" to the bottom of the crucible. This results in a lump of pure, patternless Fe at the bottom of the ingot. I have experienced this effect a couple of times on larger (6kg) ingots that I purposefully slow-cooled. I did look into these lab furnaces at one point, and the ones from reputable sources tend to be extremely expensive. They also use a lot of electricity to reach temperature, and that ramp rate is not particularly fast...I think I have seen 10c/minute as being fairly typical. If we call it 160 minutes to reach temp, that is a long melt time. Given that it is actually fairly easy to reach melting temp through low-tech means, I don't see these furnaces as being viable unless it is free...and even then it might not be a good idea.

I don't know if it is the same guy, but he does usually show very advanced forging techniques and exotic materials, he has a video of making a multi-layer canister laminate, where he welded steel to titanium and a bunch of other exotic metals in-between. This is the link to his latest video titled "About Wootz Beginning part 1" where you can see his process ua-cam.com/video/AYSaocqjaeI/v-deo.htmlsi=673_gty_nU35W-zd I have been aware that too fast and way too slow cooling are both no good for Wootz but didn't know that complications aside from more difficult forging due to larger dendritic structure could arise, it's crazy that pure Fe can precipitate and pool down at the bottom like that and also the concentration of impurities and the core and reduced contrast, Wootz is such an endless rabbithole. Those furnaces are definitely slow to ramp up and chug a lot of electricity, I had no doubt about it when I saw it's powered by 3-phase electricity. For me personally they are very alluring as essentially there is no chance of unmolten or semi-molten ingots, the heat is very even and the whole process is so controlled that it's a guarantee it'll work. But as you said predictable results can also be achieved in much cheaper setups, so unless it's a gift it does seem to remain just a fantasy. ​@peterburt7218

Interesting video, although there are quite clearly parts that aren't being translated from the Russian into English...there were several segments of 30 seconds or more where he was talking and I was not getting a translation. In any case, I would quibble with his description/drawing of the way in which dendrites/crystals form, since the implication is that they are growing free-floating in the liquid. This can happen, but crystals that form in this way drop quickly to the bottom of the crucible due to their higher density. As I noted previously, this is not a good outcome. Instead, the surface of the ingot will chill first, with the starting point of solidification changing based on the characteristics of the furnace, crucible, lid, and slag layer. The most common direction of solidification starts at the outer rim of the ingot and works inward, but I have also seen top-down solidification in cases where the upper portion cools faster than the base. The shape of the final ingot (as dictated by the crucible shape) as well as the total mass are also factors. Once an outer portion is "anchored" then the dendrites can grow inward. Fe that precipitates out and is not anchored simply falls to the bottom. It is worth noting that there is a substantial change in structure from what we see on the surface to what we see in the interior of the ingot. The surface typically has relatively smaller crystals oriented in essentially random fashion, while deeper in the ingot we find larger crystals of more uniform orientation. In the core of the ingot is where we are most likely to see the largest crystals, which again may be randomly oriented because they may result from the free-floating crystals mentioned earlier. It is also worth noting that a single grain/crystal is not the same thing as a single dendrite. If we look at a section of a wootz ingot we can recognize the individual crystals/grains by the fact that the dendritic grid is completely aligned within a crystal/grain. Each grain is typically made up of a multitude of dendrites, however, as evidenced by the grid that they create. It is possible that in certain types of solidification each crystal results from a single dendrite, but that is not something I have ever seen.

I'm happy that it was helpful! You can also use other acids, but I find that oxalic does a nice job and it is not especially dangerous.

Glad you enjoyed it!

The dendrites mostly start from the outer rim of the ingot and grow toward the center of the ingot. This is an average, though, because they do not all start out perfectly perpendicular to the crucible wall. The primary dendrites then grow secondary arms that are perpendicular to the main trunk, much like branches growing off the trunk of a spruce or pine tree. There are also tertiary arms, but these typically aren't visible. The dendrites are present throughout the ingot, but may only be visible in a few spots on the surface.

Yes, though it would probably need to be forged differently depending on exactly how much P is present. P reduces the "hot short" temperature of the steel, which is to say the temperature at which a liquid is present along the grain boundaries. You know you are forging above the hot short temperature when you start to see "wet sand" cracks in the steel. P was present in wootz ingots from some regions, but much of the Indian ore has extremely low P so it is rare to see Indian wootz with this type of hot short issue.

😂😂 I guess maybe a full 50 yet to go! I better get to work!

Thanks! I am starting to shift toward posting videos of my new work here on UA-cam since I can no longer post them on Instagram.

I went with an etched finish. It masks some of the subtlety of the hamon, but brings out more of carbide banding. To get the most out of a hamon really requires a professional polisher.

I find that a large part of the efficiency of different approaches comes down to the shape of the starting ingot and the forging tools that are available. Wider/flatter ingots, for example, are extremely difficult to forge TAE without creating "piping" in the center of the bar that leads to substantial losses. Taller ingots work much better in this orientation and can end up with minimal losses if done properly. Working by hand is also very different than power forging. As a general rule my losses are substantially less than 30%, and the majority of what I do lose is from scale and the underlying decarburized steel that needs to be ground away at the end.

Jin, do you have a sense of what % of blades are testing out at around 1.9% C? My understanding has been that these were outliers, but there are shockingly few blades that have actually been properly tested.

I do not do the stabilizing myself, so I don't have the vacuum equipment needed in my shop. I have seen similar finishes done using epoxy, but as a rule I prefer finishes that are self-dissolving. Self-dissolving finishes are much easier to refresh when the surface is inevitably damaged. Not all CA glues are self-dissolving, but most are to at least some degree.

I was expecting this to go in the “shorts” section of UA-cam, and I think those are supposed to be vertical orientation. I’ll need to look into this more closely in the future.

@@peterburt7218 One thing is certain, this format presents your creations very poorly, which deserve to be highlighted much better. When you film like this, your phone cannot take a close-up of the entirety of one of your knives, it constantly moves in all axes (x,y,z) which affects the quality and sharpness images. We even see your reflection in your blades ;-( To remove the effects you should either use a polarizing filter or choose a better axis / angle for filming. You have to practice not only making superb knives as you do very well but also creating beautiful, eye-catching and commercial images to showcase your work because, frankly, it deserves it :) Even if your prices are too high for me... I regret also this, but it's another problem.

I don't know what this means...

They certainly do!

Adding subtitles is definitely something that I am aiming to do, but it is a time consuming process. There is only so much time in the day, and my first priority has to be completing my ongoing forging projects.

Kıymetli hocam türkce altyazi yapmaniz biz gençlere çok büyük bir hizmet Projeleriniz arasindaki en büyük proje Türkçe altyazılı video eklemek olacaktır

Thanks! I appreciate that! Wootz is such a deep subject that I don't know if anyone can count as a true authority on it, but I do my best to demystify it a bit.

The CA glue finish, and similar finishes using a thin coat of epoxy, should work well on any wood that isn't super waxy or oily. For filling pores I like the CA glue for the fact that it penetrates the surface better.

Gabor, sorry to take a while getting back to you on this. UA-cam doesn't always alert me to comments, and it has been a while since I sat down to check my UA-cam account. Just to be clear, the "roast" is different than the "melt" and solidification. The roast is a treatment that is done to the ingot after it is taken out of the crucible and before the start of forging. I understand this isn't what you are asking about here, so I will cover that below. The molten Fe will generally solidify as follows: 1) the first part to solidify will be the "bowl" of the ingot since this contacts the crucible and will cool first. 2) growing inward from the bowl will be nearly pure Fe dendrites. These are shaped like spruce trees; the "trunks" mostly grow inward toward the center of the ingot, while the "branches" grow perpendicular to the trunk. Because the dendrites are nearly pure Fe the remaining liquid now has a higher concentration of the other elements. 3) As solidification continues, the trunks and branches of the dendrites begin to touch each other and trap liquid in the spaces between. The CFEs and most other elements are in this liquid, and thus there is a segregation between the dendritic regions (DRs) and the interdendritic regions (IDRs). 4) The final area to solidify will be near the top-center of the ingot, and this last material to solidify has the highest concentrations of most alloying elements, including things like Mn. We can see from this that there will be two different types of segregation going on in the ingot: microsegregation, which is the segregation between DRs and IDRs; and macrosegregation, which is the overall change in chemistry between the outer rim and the core of the ingot. Microsegregation is generally more important as far as patterning is concerned. There is another type of macrosegregation that can occur, but it rarely happens in wootz ingots and instead is more typical in larger steel ingots. In essence, if solidification is slow enough, then there will be the dendrites growing inward from the outer rim, but there will also be iron crystals that precipitate spontaneously within the liquid at the core. This Fe crystal "snow" drops through the liquid and forms a pile at the bottom of the solidifying ingot. This area will be essentially patternless because it has very few impurities to act as "seeds" for patterning. I have had this happen to me just a few times when I used to make 6kg ingots and intentionally slow-cooled through the solidification range.

@@peterburt7218 Thanks for your response, Mr. Burt. What about I am curious, that may it happen that the pattern will be uneven or different in contrast on some parts of a longer blade, because of the varying Mn distribution, please? May it happen in case of applying other CFE-s?

The pattern might change somewhat over the length of a sword blade, but this will be because most ingots are essentially a hemisphere and there is no way to forge a hemisphere into a bar without the material moving unevenly in some areas. What I mean is that, no matter which orientation the ingot is forged in, the section in the center of the ingot has the most volume and will require more forging to reach the desired thickness. This is part of why the tips of antique sword blades often have a somewhat different pattern than the center of the blade. There should not, however, be a noticeable difference in the chemistry of the blade in different areas. In an ingot that is cooled at normal speeds the majority of segregation is microsegregation rather than macrosegregation, meaning that there is a substantial chemical difference between the dendrites and the material they trap (the "IDRs"..."interdendritic regions"), while the difference between the rim and the core of the ingot is less extreme. I have seen antique blades that have strange and uneven patterns, but these typically fall into one or more of the following: 1) decarburization, which creates dark areas of little or no pattern, 2) incomplete melting, which will leave streaks or blobs of no pattern, 3) uneven forging temperatures, which can create different pattern structures from one area to another, or 4) uneven heat treatment, which can make the pattern more visible in some areas than others. The most common issues in my experience are 1 and 4. All blades experience decarburization at the surface during forging and heat treatment, and sometimes the smith does not leave enough extra material to be ground/polished away at the end. These areas of "decarb" have little or no pattern since the wootz pattern depends on carbon to form the visible carbides. It is not uncommon to see small spots of decarb, especially near the spine of a blade. As to #4, the issue of uneven heat treatment often is not original to the blade, but instead has arisen because the sword has been rehilted or refinished, possible both and possibly several times, in the centuries since it was first made. This work is often not accomplished by skilled/knowledgeable smiths, and I have heard horror stories about how little care is often put into this work. Some swords have also been through house fires or similar, which have greatly changed the original heat treat.

@@peterburt7218 Many thanks for the detailled answer, Mr. Burt. I highly appreciate it. My best wishes.

It is definitely a muddy subject, and I'm sure that my definition of wootz will ruffle a few feathers given that it puts some of the historical processes outside of "wootz" and instead classifies them as "crucible steel". The reality is that the term "wootz" (and its compatriot "pulad") has been unclear for centuries, being used in both specific and general ways even in accounts from a millennia ago. The difference is that the contemporary producers, buyers, and smiths would have had additional terminology to make the term more specific, such as "wootz from X location". That terminology has largely disappeared and/or we no longer know exactly what it referred to, and this is essentially why I am trying to create a more specific framework for the modern conversation.

Thanks! Hopefully more people start watching the video once I get around to doing subtitles on this one, as well.

Thanks! Hopefully it starts to spread more widely!

Perhaps you are hearing the furnace switching on and off in the background?

I am also planning to do subtitles for this video, which should help out quite a bit.

Thanks and yes, I mention in my description that I had a sound issue due to a new app. I think I have solved it for the future.

Hopefully the subtitles also help with the clarity of the message.

@@peterburt7218just get a bluetooth mic with the fuzzy covers like you see a the Yourubers with these days.

😂