Pattern Welding Tutorial - Part 2 - Drawing out the billet after the initial weld

[ConorC96]

What happens if I just make one billet of pattern welded steel, then I make another and I keep those for other use?

[TheJimyyy]

pk c mauve ?

[jtwilson85]

love your vids i am very interested on makeing knives in general I havent made many just a hobbey that I am starting to get into but pattern welding is something that I havent done yet and I am very interested in and your vids are great they are very explicent and I would like to see more and have more Questions

[MizuPsi]

Your anvil is so quiet... Mine rings like a giant bell :/

is it the anvil, or how you have it fastened?

[Breathor]

@MizuPsi You can use magnets to reduce the ringing sound of the anvil

[jonwelder]

Graham, you need that hydro press!!!  Jon

[FredeenBlades]

@jonwelder

Hey Jon,

This video is from awhile ago, before I built my little press. As a result of drawing this beast out by hand a few times, I built that little press and used it to finish off this billet. Now I'm finding myself "needing" a bigger press....

[attackoftherandom]

@FredeenBlades how you build press???

[pipeiroba]

Great work with the damascus!

[RingLord3]

This looks bright enough that you would need a welding mask?

[FredeenBlades]

@RingLord3

Some of the brightness is IR wash out from the camera. Cameras don't like IR and will show things looking a bit brighter and sometimes different colors. In real life the intensity is not really enough to warrent something like a welding hood, however I would recommend some UV protective safety glasses (IR filtering lenses would be nice as well, but they are pretty expensive). You can also get safety glasses in a low welding shade (like a number 3 or 4).

[RingLord3]

@FredeenBlades Thanks uv lucky for me I have uv protection glasses and contacts.

[noxagol]

Should draw out over the horn, the round surface helps a lot. Also, the cross pien of a cross pein hammer was meant for drawing out. Hit it with the cross pein and create high spots, the hammer out the high spots. Goes a lot faster.

[FredeenBlades]

In the case of pattern welded steel, this is not a good idea due to the pattern disotrtion it would cause. In the case of a random pattern, it would be alright, but with any sort of controlled pattern, this will cause uneven layer shifts and the pattern will not come out correctly. I have since built a small air over hydraulic press to draw out the billets, which makes things go much more quickly and allows for a good deal of control over how the steel is moved which prevents layer distortion

[glovnhand]

is there any way to keep the anvil from being so slippy? other than a well practiced hand, that is....

[marcheseDS]

I would try, provided a long handle on the billet like his one, to use my hip and some hardy tool as a guide for the handle itself. Pushing it with the hand against these two solid spots should be enough to keep it centered with little effort. Hope I made it clear...

[FredeenBlades]

@marcheseDS

@glovnhand

I typically don't work at the anvil in this direction, I usually stand more to the side of the anvil, however due to the required camera angle I had to work from a different position, making things a bit more challenging. Also, I didn't quite choke up on the handle enough when filming portions of this, which is why things seem a bit more un-wieldy at times. That is generally all that is necessary.

[marcheseDS]

@FredeenBlades Well then thanks twice for the video and the extra challenge :)

[FredeenBlades]

@glovnhand

Again, I typically don't work at the anvil in this direction, I usually work from the side of the anvil, which makes the slipping movement less of a problem. Hammer control and proper grip on your work give you the control you are looking for. A lot of the un-control was from grabbing the handle too far back a few times (and not stopping to re-adjust because of filming) making it more difficult to control the billet.