In October, Scott and I will be demonstrating and selling his hand-made wares in the Village of Yesteryear at the NC State Fair. While knives will be our focus, we are bringing some Damascus jewelry as well. Here are some pendants we made last weekend.
Damascus Pendants
Steel: 1095/Nickel
Finish: Parkerized*
*Matte and bright finish on the nickel
The process of making Damascus is extensive and starts with a stack of steel.
For jewelry, we use 1095 interspersed with pieces of pure nickel.
First, the stack of steel is MIG-welded together.
Then a handle is welded on the stack, and the billet is heated to 2315 degrees in the forge.
It's a hot process.
The hot steel is then forged together using a power hammer . . .
. . . and a 25 ton hydraulic press.
It takes a lot of pounding, mashing, and grinding,
but eventually the steel all bonds into one bar.
For this billet of random Damascus, Scott decided to add a pool and eye design to the pattern.
This is done by drilling various depth holes in the billet.
Then the billet goes back in the forge . . .
. . . and is hammered and pressed . . .
. . . until it is once again a relatively flat bar of steel.
You can really see the pool and eye pattern when the steel is hot.
The pendants are simply cut from the bar stock after it is ground to the desired thickness
on a surface grinder and etched in ferric chloride to bring out the pattern.
We Parkerized the 1095 to turn it black and protect it from corrosion,
but the nickel stays bright, especially if hand-sanded prior to Parkerizing.
Thanks for looking.
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