OT: Making a knife

[John Rumm]

Yup.

He starts with two different types of steel - which was not obvious from the film. They are interleaved and then welded before being forge welded later.

The knife he produced was supposed to have something like 180 to 200 layers.

(he elsewhere describes a viking sword he did with 700)

The etching process at the end reveals where you can see element of many of the layers that have been pushed about by the hammer blows.

There is some information on his web site:

[John Rumm]

Slightly less pretentious camera work, and a bit more information (even if only subtitles) would have been nice.

[Nightjar]

According to the link provided by John Rumm, he uses a high nickel content steel and a plain carbon steel. That produces a pattern of grey and silver that can be seen in some of the pictures of knives.

He would have done that several times.

[Bod]

The more steel is folded, the stronger the blade gets, if I recollect correctly....yes?

[John Rumm]

Here is the actual knife by the looks of it:

[damduck-egg]

My excuse is that we suffered from very poor reception and I'm sticking to it.

G.Harman

[Nightjar]

True of ancient Viking or Japanese pattern welded swords, as the frequent re-working removed pockets of impurities and created crack arresters. The result was that swords made that way would not shatter or break if they hit something hard. However, modern steels are both far more consistent and considerably stronger than the ancient steels. Folding modern steels does not give any advantage and may even weaken them, by reducing the carbon content. However, pattern welding looks nice and a large number of folds gives a finer pattern.

[Bod]

Nice explanation and ta.