Last week I published the first part of David’s guest post on making Damascus Steel. Read that before continuing on with part 2!
This week you’ll see how the billets are manipulated into the beautiful bottle openers he sells over on his Etsy shop.
Then next step is great exercise, and why I need a hydraulic press and/or rolling mill…  that is, drawing out the billet.  Drawing out is basically stretching it in one direction.  The goal here is to take an initial billet that’s 1″ x 6″ long and stretch it to the point where it’s roughly 1″ x 1/4″ cross section (ideally 2′ long, but there are a lot of losses from scaling).  This is high carbon steel to start with, so it’s already a lot more difficult to move than mild steel.  The most efficient way to stretch the billet (by hand hammer at least) is hammering over the horn of the anvil and using the peen rather than the face of the hammer, both of which leave deeper indentations and tend to stretch much more in one direction (we’re trying to lengthen the billet) than both directions.

This drawing out process is the most time consuming of the whole deal, which is why more time is required for higher and higher layer counts (and why they cost more).  The two billets below took roughly 2 hours of probably 75% duty cycle hammering to draw out and they are still not even double the initial length, although at this cross section, they stretch a lot faster now…

Once the billet is stretched and fairly uniform cross section along the length, it’s cut into equal lengths and used to create the next billet (increasing layer count) – recently I’ve been adding more 15N20 layers between these sections as the nickel doesn’t compress as much during forging and this leads to different thickness layers in the final billet.

Once the billet has sufficient layer count, then comes the choice of pattern…
Recently I’ve been doing more twist patterns – here the billet is twisted, hopefully not to the point where it breaks.  To help prevent billet failure during twisting, the first step is to break the edges on the portion to be twisted, or forge it to an octagon, or even to round, prior to twisting.

Then just twist it…

Then forge it back to square, and try to avoid letting it shear apart…

The billets can then be used as is, or ground to different depths to expose different patterns (the core).  Additionally they can be forged to other twists to make more intricate patterns (better for bigger bottle openers I guess…)
Other standard options are surface manipulation of the billet – that is either grinding away material and forging it flat, or forging down part of the material, and grinding away what is still raised.  The most common here is raindrop, where round indentations are made, and ladder where horizontal grooves are cut.  These surface manipulations can be combined with twists as well…  and then there’s mosaic damascus…

Finally they are etched and ground, leading to the beautiful bottle openers you see here!