Forging A Knife From Steel Grindings?? Will it work?? Knifemaking, Blacksmithing, forging
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- čas přidán 7. 07. 2021
- I've had multiple requests to try forging a knife from steel grindings, so here it goes!
firecreekforge.com
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#canisterdamascus #forging #weirdknifematerial
Maybe this could work using traditional Japanese bloomery steel refinement methods? Japanese iron ore was mostly powder and also notoriously shoddy, so they developed a lot of techniques to work with subpar ore. From what you’ve explained here, these shavings have so much scale and impurities in them that they might as well be treated as ore…
yes or wash the shavings in alcohol first and or maby some rust remover and then use a magnetic separation step to sort out the abrasive from the metal then add flux and carbon to a canister that might help
Try making crucible steel, I think that is what it's called.
Beat me to it!
I completely agree. Crucible would be the best way of forming a billet
Lots more heat involved.
Yup, crucible steel is the way to go with this.
^^^ What, they ^^^^ said^^^^.
Smelt it! Treat it like magnetite that’s essentially what it is with some trace elements.
I’d try mixing some kind of flux into the powder with something that’ll help strip oxygen from the grains during the heating process.
One thing to consider. As you grind the sparks that come off are "glowing" meaning they are approaching an extremely how temp if only for a microsecond. However that extreme temp + rapid cooling could easily be enough so that each particle of grinding dust is essentially covered in a microscopic layer of what amounts to scale. With billions on billions of that easily half of that material is scale.
One thing that "might" work better but is A TON of effort would be to file/scrape multiple clean steel bars to generate the "dust" minus the heat to prevent scale and minus the water to prevent rust...Might be worth a try and if nothing else you've learned and all that hand filling will be excercise.
i might try that
good point
@@FireCreekForge Shavings off a band saw (without a coolant) would probably be good for this purpose I would think.
I was thinking the same thing. It's mostly oxide rather than usable steel.
Would be easier with a carbide burr, or spinning a piece of metal, in a lathe or however, and manually filing it as it spins.
Maybe should have used the press to pack the shavings in the canister and not a hammer first then try forge welding? just wondering? was a welder/fabricator for years but never got into forging but always wanted to try it! Metallurgy is a tricky thing!
Given the spongey nature of the shavings, maybe a better way to separate everything is to put it into a food processor, which could help mix the different steels together and get it down to something more powder like and less spongey, and it might help expel rust dust if you open the processor up, let it breathe etc
You could also try putting wire in with the shavings maybe it will help with bonding?
@@TheArchitectThatWas you nailed it he pretty much cooked a lot of the steel due to the high amount of oxygen in the can. I've only worked with 01 a couple of times and while it's super tough it's also a pain to work with and hard to sharpen and grind. But if you do it right you can come out with a knife that could chop through a Craftsman wrench.
I second the crucible steel. Melt it down, skim the impurities and pour an ingot that you can weld a rod onto for working. You would think if you got a pure enough pour for the ingot it should be some really good steel.
I have a couple hundred pounds of 15N20 saw steel grindings from my years as a saw filer. This video interests me because I wanted to see if a canister weld would work for it. Very soon, I'm going to try to throw some of my dust into a remelter and see if I can work it sort of like bloom steel or tamahagane.
i think that will work well a bloom of tamahagne good idea and good luck there are videos that show the formula that works how much metal powder to how much charcol and how often and how long good luck it would be fun to do Something like that
It should work fine. I been collecting mine and storing in a sealed container. Essentially it’s steel powder but bigger pieces
Crucible or heat a pot of water with Dawn™ in it, then some acetone or similar, then canister it, and use the press to press it, give it a vent hole, and then a second seal.
It's too dirty.
@@mrchrysler9736 there certainly has to be some residue from the grinder. In my case, it would be a 36 grit grinding wheel. I think that what you mentioned will go a long way toward helping this succeed.
Honestly sounds like a decent idea, the remelter won't have the separation issues as bad like the canister and you'll probably clean a decent half of the material with liquidizing it.
So good to see real life video's. Your humility speaks volumes. Thank you for your content.
Thank you for watching!
You should have washed the steel shavings in some type of solvent, then soaked it in rust remover for a bit before washing it one last time. Put it in a vacuum chamber to dry it without oxygen to prevent rust formation. Then you could pack it into a canister using a hydraulic press to remove as much air and excess space as possible.
This might work.
This would have been the right first few steps, yeah, You should always, always clean your materials first for the Best possible result.
i've seen borax used is forge welding for the boric acid when attempting to make two solid pieces weld, might help here too
@@Lecherous_Rex that’s what they call flux. I’m positive he used it. It’s a staple when forging. The reason this didn’t work was because he didn’t clean his piece. He mentioned the sand paper particles contaminating the work. That’s the reason it didn’t weld together. That and the tons of air with the contamination together made it impossible for the shavings to weld together. They just oxidized and the metal that did fuse only fused to metal that was right next to it with the least amount of contamination. I’m positive if he did it again using the method I described or a similar but better method, he would get better results. Such a shame because this is something I search on CZcams for regularly. I’ve been waiting for the day that someone finally does it.
@@MisterRorschach90 You normally don't need flux for canister welding since the canister itself prevents oxidization as long as it stays properly sealed. However this does nothing when you put oxidized material in the canister from the start. This project is completely infeasible unless he cleans and sorts out the material before hand as you mentioned.
One other thing to consider is that as you are grinding, the slivers of metal that come off are red or orange hot and tiny. They will form an oxide layer on the exterior quickly and the surface to volume ratio, because they are so small, is quite high. You have a lot of essentially forge scale covering each sliver of steel. As other have said before, it might be better to use as a base to make crucible steel. Not that a welded billet can't be done, I believe it to be much harder though.
you need carbon to absorb the oxygen in the rust. Load a bunch of charcoal in the ends of the canister to convert that ferric oxide into carbon dioxide. Might work, might not
I’ve been waiting for someone to do this for years
Oh how I love the 01 tool steel. My Dad made handmade knives from that wonderful material. In the past 30 years, they've only needed a few strokes on a steel rod knife sharpener to cut up thousands of deer.
gonna be a lot of abrasive particulate in that as well.
You have some skills. I am learning by riding on your shoulders. 👍
This is an awesome compliment!
well you are too kind but thanks for watching!
The Shadow Systems hat! Love it. Just got the MR920 Elite not long ago
Did that last year after bigdog forge did it . love your bids . keep them coming.
Thats who it was!
your best bet to get something usable from waste metal filings is to combine them with aluminum powder into a thermite mix and light it off and collect the iron.
Ok so admittedly I skipped around some, but when I got to the part where you put the other end cap into the canister it caught me off guard. I was like "did he really just hammer those shavings into a solid/shiny steel block?" lmao. Awesome video.
Thanks for sharing your experiment! Thanks to your video I probably won't try this in my forge.
You bet, thanks for watching!
You can make wootz steel with those. Then, rust won't be a problem. I'm sure interesting patterns will show up if you add pieces of drill bits, files or bearings, too.
It it would probably work if you made a kiln out of cement or something and actually melt it the way that they used to make metal from raw materials . Then you could essentially pour it out into a mold , and have an actual block of steel too start with .
Old school forge used grinding remains to make a billet.
He built a bloomery furnace and cooked the filings down into a bloom.
Those chunks made me think of a video about the original method of katana forging, after the quench in water to shatter the metal. Then sperating the harder and softer chunks into two piles. Then forge both into billets, putting the softer one on the interior of a san-my (hot dog) style. if I find the video, I'll link it.
"What we have here, is a failure to amalgamate"
Try using shavings from a lathe or band saw. Then you won’t have abrasives in there, and the shavings can be soaked in an alcohol to clean them from lubricants and such before hand.
I’ve searched for this off and on for a while now hoping someone would finally do it.
Throw it in a crucible, like the wootz steel is made. Might work, but I'm not a blacksmith, so there's that!!🤣
Being so fine and so full of air I would imaging it would just burn up in the crucible, but I’m just guessing here.
Need a lot of borax for that to work
There are multiple kinds of oxides of ferrous metals, one that is commonly known as rust (Fe2O) and the others Iron(II) oxide (FeO) for example which is dark black, since the material you grind of often glows out (sparkles) before hitting the ground it is relatively safe to assume a big portion of your gathered material consists of other iron oxides or at least with particles coated in oxide, which would probably ruin any forge welding attempt. "washing" the whole pile with some sort of deoxidizer or rust converter probably yields a better starting material
I dip my knives in a windex solution instead of straight water. Not sure why it works for preventing rust but it does. Perhaps the ammonia is helping dry the water up faster. There’s probably a lot of grit from your belts stuck in there too.
As others have said, it's probably due to oxides building up on the shavings. Whatever heat effects happen to the blade during grinding are probably a hundredfold for shavings. Like someone else said, might make a good base for crucible steel. At least then you'd be able to work out any impurities.
It was an interesting idea and still great to watch. One idea ive always had is doing canister Damascus, but using high carbon steel for the sides of the canister to see if you could make a billet all in one. Might not be practical at all but it's just something that's intrigued me
You can forge mild on for the canister so as long as it doesn't decarb too much it should work
Ive seen it done before on another channel. Its dirty dirty dirty.
I have been wondering about all that steel I have been vacuuming up out of my work area after I get through grinding. Thx for answering!
I have seen someone else try to turn his massive piles of grinder shavings into a usable steel. He went with making a basic bloomery and then worked the steel down from there. Amazingly he managed to forge a knife with a reasonable hardness to it, but it was a lot of work. It did have the bonus of being able to forge out a lot of the impurities as he was working the steel bloom.
I think your idea is worth having another go at, but try using the press to really compact the shavings as you're filling the canister. I was also wondering if you can put some flux into a canister or if that is just something that's not a good idea? Thanks for the video 👍👍
If I have anymore carbide powder to my company I'd like to send it to you I won't try because I'd definitely screw it up but I love that you experiment and make the wheels in our head turn keep up the good work 👍
Haven't watched the video at this point, saw the title and started to cry and die on the inside. Good fucking luck man.
Your trying that all that counts good video 👍
Loving these experiment videos.
I think part of the issue would be the particles of the grinder belts mixed in with the powdered steel. Running it through a very fine screen strainer first might help to remove some of the impurities like the rust and belt. I would also recommend drilling a tiny hole in the end of the billet and then soaking the it in kerosene.
I have been able to make a solid billet using only powdered 1084 and powdered 1095 mixed together but it was store bought steel.
One more thing. When I did that I hand hammered the billet. The forge press might displace the can too much giving the powdered steel too much room to move around.
Try melting the filings in a crucible and cast a block, then try to forge it?
I wondering if that would be able to be melted down into metal plug
"Forged in Fire" had a competition where they had to use steel shavings for forge a knife.
I agree woth some of the other comments about smelting it in a crusible. They can't stay seperate if they're liquid!
I think there was too much space inside the grindings. Perhaps compress them with the press before putting them in the canister? Mix them with powdered steel? But I think once you found rust the battle was lost because you can't really get rid of that. If you have a forge that will reach melting point, put it in a crucible and liquify it.
6:40 it's a forbidden burrito xD
I think part of the issue might be the particles from the sanding disc coming off into the shavings as well.
I like the idea of trying the same thing with bandsaw shavings and seeing if there is a difference!
What if you put that whole pile of shavings into a bucket of water, stirred it up and while it was all swirling in the bucket, dip a strong magnet in to try and collect the steel shavings while letting the belt grit settle out? Then, put the metal shavings in a cast iron skillet and heat it so the water burns off, then try packing it and forging it? My guess is the reason for the steel no compressing and solidifying was due to the contamination from the grit
Awesome informational educational video experience Y'alls God Bless Ya 🙌🙏
Thank you appreciate you watching
I dig the shadow systems hat
Thanks!
Itd definitely take awhile to collect but if you could get shavings from metal only hand ground with a file (definitely going to be a long process lol) you might be able to get clean enough material in which to try this forge weld again. Maybe you could take a few small sacrificial bits of a couple of good forge welding steels 1080 15n20 and so on and file them down to dust it could be done. The downside to that is you'll most likely ruin a good file as well as ruin a few bits of steel that could have been used for something else.
Might be neat to make wootz out of the grindings, it should separate any contamination from rust or abrasives, may make a cool knife as well
I think it would work
That's what I was going to say. I think the whole process of melting, forging, and finishing would make a terrific video. Kinda a circle of knife life thing.
You pretty much touched on all the points I was going to make except for the fact that 01 has a tendency to decarbonize if not forged in a vacuum environment. Therefore it's going to lose the carbon that makes it tough. I would assume all the air that was in that mix of dust along with the contaminants from the belt sander would make it something that would be pretty unstable and I don't think it would be possible to forge anything decent out of this. Not even to mention the fact that all of those disparate metals need to be quenched and heat treated differently.
Try cleaning up the crumbs from your bandsaw and add that in.
That is Recycling 👍
Still a really cool to learn..thanks for video
Your anvil edges are ground like mine, yours must be an old ranch anvil that was used for cold shoeing horses also.
You could save about 3lb worth of the shavings and send it over to the hydrologic press and have it compressed in to a canister then try to forge it. Or just melt what you have down in to a brick.
When your tradesman tells you to catch the grinder sparks
I am not a blacksmith, and I haven't actually seen this video yet, but I do watch Forged in Fire, so I immediately thought canister Damascus.
yes, i want to see this long time ago. there are more possibility too. such as...using a piece of magnetized iron as core to line up the shavings. adding different materials such as carbon on different parts to make different hardless. this powder method make it a possible experiment in home shop level.
That would make an interesting Damascus pattern
I'm curious if a hydrolic press would have helped somehow in the packing process along with or aside of tamping it.
He used a press.
@@dlmperformanceandracing I'm referring to pryor to forging. Pryor I only seen the tampling method to pack the container. My simple suggestion was to a higher pressure prepacking under a potention hydrolic press.
I believe it has lots of sandpaper abrasive as well mixed on it.
mixing all the steels together to create one supper seal
Yeah I had tons of trouble trying to forge knives with O1 tool steel. I did end up with a couple successful blades that got REALLY nice and hard and seem really tough but the majority of attempts failed because of cracking in one way or another. Plus it just doesn't like to move under the hammer as easily as say 1085 or W1 or W2. The O1 I used (bought on Amazon in a 1" rod) just didn't like to spread out very much. Great for hardening really crappy for forging.
Am thinking add a bit of organics into the can to burn off that oxygen in the rust? Maybe a lil WD-40 added to remove moisture? And since the can was so short, maybe squish end to end with the flat dyes first? And how much sanding belt dust in the mix?
I think the material jus had way to many impurities
@@FireCreekForge I've seen a video or two of someone actually successfully incorporating the cone behind the grinding wheel into a billet, maybe some borax was in the canister? It's gotta be possible, it's been done before.
Hmm might be better in the future too try crucible steel with your grindings it’ll definitely be better at a high end recycling project .
I tried the same thing but with grindings soaked in vinegar then cleaned with acetone and got same results as you
Have you tried metal shavings from a brake lathe? Very consistent material. I have a brake lathe and I turn drums and rotors I don't have a forge or press though. I don't know what kinda steel brake rotors are made of but they're pretty tough.
Based on the thumbnail I had high hopes it would work until I saw the bits of rust in the pile… Maybe try grinding down some sacrificial pieces without water to avoid/minimize the rust, spread the shavings out in as thin of a layer possible and then run the magnet back over it so you minimize the belt pieces in the shavings? Hell I don’t know, probably an impossible feat but cool idea either way.
Cool tip for ya, you can reduce rust with carbon (grilling charcoal) back to iron.
I saw the dust coming out of the canister as you were filling it. And I immediately started coughing
I'm making some wild suggestions here: Shake the shavings in a sieve to get rid of the abrasive particles, then mix with some oil or diesel to get the rust off and then clean the whole lot with acetone. Some borax could be added to the shavings in the canister to promote welding. Maybe a bit of steel powder can be added too?
What about melting down the shavings first in an open cauldron and letting any impurities burn off? Pour it into a mold, then try heating that up to forge temps and forging it from there?
@@Regoriroger that should work!
What about melting down the shavings first in an open cauldron and letting any impurities burn off? Pour it into a mold, then try heating that up to forge Temps and forging it from there?
Perhaps.....if you were to smelt the fillings down you could get at least some of the impurities and/or lesser quality metals out. Then pour that into a billet and go from there. May not work at all but it’s a thought.
You should have used flux. Borax is good, but gillespie borate is better. You can get it from ceramic supply houses. It will even melt the ceramic impurities. I use gillespie borate to do just that. It can be mixed with ceramic frit and it will make it melt at a low temperature because that's how you make low temp pottery glaze. Will you still have inclusions? Yes. But that's why you have to fold this kind of cannister damascus. I only make thin little rods of recycled damascus. I use it for decoration. There's birds in my forge chimney and I'm busy with other stuff at the moment or I'd make a video on it for you. Also, rust isn't as big a problem as most people think. Big Dog Forge put out a video on faux damascus made from rusty barrel hoops. If you carbonize the rust in a reducing flame, it turns from ochre to magnatite. Magnatite can be welded. You can also reduce the rust to native iron using anaerobic bacteria in a bog by burying it with manure in saturated clay soil. Kind of an odd method, but it works. Takes like 6 months tho. (Can you tell I like to experiment?)
In theory, powdered steel has been used for centuries, in wootz (traditional Damascus) and modern methods of powdered metal (like Chevy engine rods) or mmc for small intricate parts - like for firearms. So it's totally possible. The modern methods are gonna use very clean, systems, atmosphere ect. Old wootz Damascus was basically cast and then forged traditionally, which may be the better low-tech option.
I suggest saving your time, retain the shavings/grinding and melt the it all. It will separate accordingly. You'll have a mass or more than one that could then be combined.
Just wondering, if you had used your press to pack the shavings into the canister, could you have gotten it tighter?
Next time put the steel shavings in a crucible before melting it in the forge. Then pour the liquid into a clay form. I think it would make a good video.
You could try and separate the steel from the belt abrasives by putting a magnet in a plastic bag and then passing it over the steel grindings
one suggestion to separate the steel get a powerful magnet covered with some plastic wrap, rust is non magnetic so only steel will stick to it
There’s a channel from Russia called shurap I think and he had success in making a knife from grinding waist
What do you normally do with your grindings? I wonder if it would be worth it to dump a large quantity into a crucible and melt it and pour into a form, then forge it?
I am a tad late to this conv. but, I would advise you Literally melt it down to liquid so you can borax it, and remove impurities. Then you can forge it to which ever shape knife you would like.
The steel must be melted very well in a porcelain container ... There is a boy in you who shows it very well ..... Greetings .... Make yourself a Galactic Meteorite knife .....
Just curious, could you mix flux in the steel grinds inside the canister to help mitigate the oxides that get mixed in with the good steel?
Could you try to cast the molten shavings and refine the billet using the tamahagane technique? I think that would make a cool video.
You might try to run all the material into a ball mill to break all the lump and mix everything together and add some charcoal and borax in the canister. The charcoal would help get ride of oxygen in the mix.
I think there's something called powder metallurgy. They press layers of different metal shavings/powder/granules in a mold.
Try mixing with small amounts of powdered and use the press to pack it in to the can I had luck that way
You could put it in a ceramic crucible with a lid and some flux in a charcoal forge.
I would have put your shavings pile through a tumbler with some steel balls to allow you to have nothing but a powder with no clumps, allowing for more even packing in your container.
And as others had mentioned, if there was a way to... de-rust the particles first, it would have helped... but would a flux mixed in be able to offset any released contaminants?
i sat waiting to see if you were going to try to wash the non metal particles out of that or not, i knew soon as you started packing the canister it would be like chalk. you should have cleaned the shavings with evaporust then retrieved them with a magnet to get out all impurities.
Melt the shavings in a crucible, then cast and forge!?!?
What about putting some flux into the canister as well?
The whole package is kind of rust(iron oxide). You can't weld them unless you use some reducing agents(kerosene, raw leather, graphite, charcoal etc) in the canister. Eventually you will get some pure iron and low carbon steel. Try 'em.
What about impurities from the grinding wheel. Aluminum oxide?
You should have used the dies to compress the shavings. I'm sure it could compress it pretty good.