Forging A Japanese Style Knife With Water Quench

Is 125Cr1 a better high carbon steel? In this video I'm utilizing some Japanese blade smithing style techniques to forge a san mai knife. The cladding is mild steel.
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[@AndyFromBeaverton]

Pounding that scale off the blade was crazy. I love seeing you experiment with new old styles of forging. I'm sure the Japanese pounded the blade equally on both sides as well as heating equally on both sides. One can never ignore practices that worked for hundreds of years.

[@cdwoodwerks6464]

Awesome video. I was always led to believe working the metal cold would introduce micro cracks/stress cracks and increase the risk of failure. We need more people like you showing different methods and techniques and experiments so the community can learn and grow.

[@muellermade]

That was awesome to see you cold forging, and explaining the process! Great work, man!

[@FireCreekForge]

Thanks man!

[@hulkthedane7542]

Nice. Love seing different techniques, especially when explained so well. 👍👍👍

[@ryanblystone5153]

Thank you

[@brysonalden5414]

Thanks for sharing your experiments. Clearly your process can create some awesome kitchen knives. Surprised you didn't dunk them in Ferric just to see what happened.

[@FireCreekForge]

Thanks! There's a quick shot of where I had it in the ferric chloride for a short time..

[@media3338]

Awesome! Blessings from Cape Town South Africa!

[@FireCreekForge]

Thank you!

[@minnesotatomcat]

Very cool, you could even make some interesting patterned Damascus out of cheap salvaged mild steel for the outside pieces and still keep the pattern welded look without having to use a bunch of good steel.

[@vandelftcrafts2958]

thats called San-Mai (three layers) and is done a lot in knife making with all kinds of materials and a good steel core examples are wrought iron, copper, nickel, pattern welded steel (damascus), etc... although just using mild steel for damascus is not great as there won't be much contrast in your damascus.

[@johncoulter1507]

It's fun to try new things!

[@FireCreekForge]

Yes sir!

[@MASI_forging]

Nice work dude ☺☺

[@FireCreekForge]

Thank you!

[@wrightfamily5625]

I thought the was a karambit at first glance, i like Japanese knives ,they aren't the prettiest knives but they work .

[@hannable3871]

Yeah I think it's the wrong thumbnail😅

[@mushfiqurrahman2515]

That's some wide camera lens, everything looks curved

[@hannable3871]

Clear eyes, clear eyes are awesome.

[@minnesotatomcat]

Is it a special clay that they put on the spines of the blade or is it just something to shield it from the heat?

[@FireCreekForge]

A thin clay (which includes some additional ingredients like stone and charcoal powder) coating over the entire blade is used for creating an even quench in water. The differential hardening is done with an additional, heavier application of clay mixture to the spine.

[@terenceblakely4328]

Why do so many people conflate sharpeness with hardness?

[@Caseic]

I've always been curious about if it's possible to forge weld mercury in a canister billet with other metals. 😂 Big imaginings over here

[@cae2487]

I've considered trying a mild steel san mai a few different times and just never brought myself to do it yet but I think that might be a project in the near future. For the core steel is it necessary to have a pretty high carbon steel core like what you used or would anything from 5160 and up work well?

[@FireCreekForge]

1080, 1084 would work fine and weld easier than 5160.

[@Little_River_Forge]

I dig it, what happened with the pukkos?

[@FireCreekForge]

Thanks! Well, they're still sitting there..😬

[@Little_River_Forge]

@@FireCreekForge I completely understand that, I got a decent pile of half finished work as well

[@therory6888]

Good video, thanks! What did you use for the mild steel 1060?

[@FireCreekForge]

Thanks for watching! The mild or low carbon steel is A36 which is about the equivalent of 1025 steel I believe.

[@therory6888]

@@FireCreekForge Thanks for the info and the replys!

[@krissteel4074]

Yes, very successful! The water quench and cold forging takes some bravery thats for sure, especially considering how super thin you got it down to. I put Erick (Rivers experience) onto some quenchant you might want to look at as well, the Houghton's Aqua-Quench as you can dial in the speeds of the quench depending on the ratio of water to additive ratio. It's pretty important when you're working with the nearly-pure carbon steels without a lot of manganese in them for deeper hardening. Even the really very fast oils sometimes can't go fast enough and you end up in a tricky spot of using water and risking cracking

[@amazoniancustodian]

Splitting atoms

[@therory6888]

No W2 steel available?

[@FireCreekForge]

It does not seem to be as readily available. Also, it has a lower carbon content.

[@sonoffenix3399]

​@@FireCreekForge there was a guy selling certed W2 on amazon for a while...carbon at 1.05%. Thing is, even in plain carbon-manganese steels, you won't quench in any media to the Martensite finish tempersture past 0.75% carbon. As you saw with the hardness tester, you got retained austenite in the quench despite the leanness of the steels alloy content. I wouldn't be surprised if you'd still got some retained austenite even after a low temper at 1.25%C

[@therory6888]

@@FireCreekForge Thats not good.

[@jeanladoire4141]

Frankly i disagree that san-mai blades were made to combine toughness and hardness. In my experience, an iron core and steel edge makes a knife that behaves like a crap steel plate that cuts. Mild steel is not "tough", yes you can bend it on itself and it's not gonna break, you can even make a knot with bars of steel, but compared to tempered steel it's pretty damn disappointing. If you want a tough material, you can quench and then blue temper the back of your blade. Blue tempered steel IS tough, much more than mild steel. Don't forget at the time making steel was an extra step, and was costly. They used as much crappy cheap steel because they could, and it saved material and money. It's not about performance.