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Amazing looking carver! Have you stopped updating this tread or just very busy lately? Do you make pettys ~150mm in your feather Damascus?
 
What an awesome knife. If If only it was just a little longer for me :D. My Catcheside petty is used every day
 
Have been doing some more san mai as I have some different core materials to play with. 01 has been causing me a huge headache with plain clad, it likes to split up the core as it seems the expansion rates are too different. They split on HT, usually not all the way, but enough to make a large piece quite allot smaller :(
Besides that I have a small bar of White 1 steel, a gift from Maxim at the Gathering, thanks mate:)

I wanted to make the most of the steel and also try out a process for some single bevel work in the future. So I did these a very traditional way, which is very frugal on core steel;)

I made up a slightly different mix of flux too, with heated borax, steel filings and graphite.

After heating it all until the moisture is removed from the borax, it gets pulverised into a grey powder......



Mild steel and white 1 core steel. The core is L shaped, the long side is for the edge side, therefore infront and into the tang is soft steel only.



Pieces fluxed and brushed clean and refluxed, then put in place....



And into the forge, did not tack them the molten flux sticks it in place enough and long as you don't knock it over!!!



So these are some san mai to add to the Mono blades coming up on my site over next few weeks.



Mono steel pair on the left, then a Stainless clad Suji in 1.2442 core, a plain clad 1.2442 and the two plain clad White 1 knives, these were of course brine quenched:)

The 1.2442 steel I ground and tested at home, very nice steel, great hardness, similar to Blue 1 on the tungsten but should have a finer grain with less carbon and chromium. Tests would confirm this, very hard, but still on the tough side, edge is more toothy to the touch but it takes a super edge on holds it very well.
 
Needs a more catchy name than 1.2442 steel though? Its been around a long time and was an early HSS tooling steel. Achim Wirtz sell it in the EU as a blade steel.
 
I know that Tilman is a big fan of 1.2442 as his carbon option. I think it's also quite similar to O1.
 
Thanks bud, its a different beast to 01.....1.2442 has 2% tungsten, 1.25% carbon and no vanadium. 01 is very fine grained indeed with very little excess carbon, (above 0.8) and only small amounts of alloy ,this one is most similar to Blue paper 1, with a slightly finer grain as it has less excess carbon and less chromium, (compared to blue 1) however Its on the medium/toothy spectrum as far as edge behaviour. Both are great steels, but different flavours really.:)
 
looking fwd to seeing these come up, Will.
Always enjoy the depth in which you take you WIP's!
 
Count me in for one with this steel San Mai .
 
Kind of, its an excellent steel. Im hoping Achim makes another batch of 145SC pure carbon steel next year also. Which would be more like White 1, a simple 1.5% carbon steel. But this steel is fantastic and gets great hardness, but if you prefer white 1 to blue 1, maybe we use something else.
 
Hey Will, I heard there was only one tonne of it made. I'm lucky enough to have a suji in SC145 in the pipeline :D I'm very excited to see the results!!
 
Next lot will be 4 tons, but not sure when that will be. Hopefully next year and I will stock up. Congrats on the Suji!
 
Quick phone snaps of how the first 1.2442 core stainless san mai turned out, and this weeks mono knives.




 
Well you should drop in next time, Im in a little village called Peterstow, in the heart of cider country ;)
 
Some general workshop Updates, here is a list of what is on my bench at the finishing handling stages.

Stainless damascus batch, finishing two up for customers this weekend.
Yanagiba project, test piece at this stage
Composite test piece Nakiri, finishing handle over the weekend, Will be available next week.
Carving Set, spoken for.

In grinding stage we have....
3 blades from stainless damascus batch.... one will be available due to a cancelled order.
Stainless San mai, 1.2442 core spoken for.

In Heat treatment next week we have the last of the composite blade commissions, 3 altogether.

In Damascus production I am just finishing Feather damascus for a few of the Mosaic commissions and some high layer double carbon for Ladder....And am a few stages in to Production for my last set commission for this year, but will keep that under my hat for a while ;)

So next to the bench after this lot will be Feather damascus pieces for customers, hopefully in about 3 weeks time if I all goes well :)


In the mean time some random shots during hand finishing from the Stainless damascus and Yanagi-ba.... A quick dirty stone finish to show the pattern in the stainless damascus before full polish.

Im using various stones and grits at various stages of finishing both edgewise , controlling geometry precisely into the edge and surface finish, not just for the look but for the mechanical way they cut or prepare a surface for the next stage, will go more into details of this another time:)











http://i798.photobucket.com/albums/yy262/catcheside/2015/IMG_1826_zps6fdf****.jpg

















 
Laying out handle parts for the stainless dmazzzzcuses.....

These are my stainless dammy front and end cap.....some possible layouts here.....






Endcaps, laddered for a bit more visible layers on the end... One extra for a special something else i thought of today.



 
And the Jewel in the crown of my day....... finishing the blades......:)

Made using my special extra secret ingredient.........elbow grease......dam I let slip ;)


Laddered 180mm stainless damascus 1.2442 @ 65 hrc











And the 240mm stainless damascus clad 1.2442 @ 65 hrc core......, classic random......oil on water.....









All in all a rather productive day.

Have a great weekend everyone :)
 
...smh

Unmatched levels of craftsmanship. I'd love to visit your shop someday Will.
 
You would be most welcome, its good to have visitors :) A couple of weeks ago I gave a kind of talk and demo to 30 Steiner school children, all about 8 years of age, full of beans and questions, I did some forge welding and showed them some etched pieces of laminates with some basic as possible explanations. It was an exciting half an hour, I should have got it on video really but in the excitement did not think of it. It was a struggle to find enough safety glasses, fortunately they brought a few from the science lab.
 
No problem with bringing safety glasses (Professor, Chemistry). Doing schools outreach myself I know how much fun it can be.

I lived in Bristol (and in Bath) for a while - right place, wrong time. I'm back in the West Country a couple of times a year though, I'd love to take you up on that someday.
 
Thanks Tim, It was fun, many were asking the right question, but over and over again:) Some of the boys just wanted to know about the drill press at the end after showing them forge welding and pretty damascus.... I said its just a drill....it drills holes.... does it work upside down on the roof they asked..........its a bit heavy to be up there I said...
 
Customers went for solid pure nickel spacers on one and nickel silver on the other, All are hard silver soldered to the stainless damascus, looks luscious and one less glued joint to worry about, Metal/metal glued joints are always the most iffy, especially when they get warm on finishing. So makes for the strongest possible construction as well as having a nice detail of a hairline of Silver in the joint. :)
 
I have been rather neglecting you all, sorry about that, but Ive been here in the background, and pretty much in the workshop dawn till dusk:)

Here are a few things on the table at the moment.

Feather Damascus custom batch with custom profiles, in the grind....

Will be my old school tight feather pattern but in my latest materials. Will update as we go...



A Huge Gyuto in the works, In the Historic weapons grade iron clad 1.2442 core.

Here forging the tang then entire geometry of the knife, taper , and hollow forged bevels.























End result, 320mm length 60mm height. 5mm spine over heel, full distal taper and bevels, current edge is at around 2mm, soft hollow forged. May do this one forge finish and just grind lower bevels, or may just follow the forged geometry with the grind to show off the gorgeous iron....See how it turn out. Beast for sure though.....One for those Tuna!

In heat treatment this weekend we have...



Thats the two new Catcheside Integrals, triple quenched silver steel. A long overdue stainless san mai!
The iron clad Giant, and a couple of pretty nickel damascus clad parers.

Some close ups of the integrals raw forgework before HT and grind.....











And here were this weeks sale knives, Will update some finished pieces to the gallery later.



Thanks All
 
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