Couple Questions about cable

Ernie Swanson

Ernie Swanson

SASSY PINK LUUNCHBOX KNIFE MAKER
I was thinking about trying my hand at making cable damascus.
but thought I would as a few questions first.

Is it possible to do with a two brick forge and a jth-7 torch?

If so what and how do you flux? is it just get it hot and put borax all over it?

Is there a special way to heat treat it?

Thanks for any help here, I am totally new to forging and my brother in law says he has a bunch of cable of various thicknesses that he can get me.
 
Honestly, my opinion is that it would be much easier if you started with laminated type forge welding. Although some encourage beginners to start with cable, siting that it's "easier", I totally disagree. Achieving good, solid welds on cable can be difficult for advanced forgers. Imagine, a bunch of tiny round rods, all stacked together lengthwise, then loosely twisted....that's what your trying to weld with cable. The rods (wires) keep wanting to slide past each other, and it takes a decent degree of skill to make it all work well. Assuming that you get good welds throughout, the next issue you face is heat treating. Unless you know exactly what the make up of the cable is, you can only guess at what the heat treat should be. There are so many types of cable, that unless there is a tag affixed to it that says "X Improved", or "XX Improved", I would not waste my time with it. You would be time, money, and effort ahead to just purchase some 1080 and 15N20, and try forge welding it.
 
I have limited experience with cable damascus but enough to know that it's not as easy as it looks. First of all, I doubt that you can get good enough of a heat to weld in a two brick forge powered by a propane torch even if you switch to MAPP gas. You have to get the steel up to a bright yellow heat. Basically you just have to burn the gunk out of the cable. You can soak and scrub it, but in the end, you just have to burn it out. The little wires have a bad habit of standing up here and there on the cable and about the only thing that can be done is to weld up the rest of the cable and grind the loose strands out. More experience smiths have stated that welding bar is a lot easier than welding cable and I think that I believe them.

As far as using borax as a flux, just heat the steel hot enough to make the powder stick to the surface of it and return it to the forge until it's liquid and bubbly then give it a short soak. Some say that the borax will kind of "sing" to you when it's at the right temperature but I've never heard it. Maybe it's my hearing loss.

Doug Lester
 
reread everything that Ed posted above AND DO IT. cable is in my opinion the biggest wast of tim in knifemaking. Of couse I use it at times but only if I want to waste time or have some specific thing for it. It is actually easier to weld stainless than it is to get good results with cable. Yes there are a lot of knifemakers who use it but only a few of them are getting good pit/inclusion free welds.
 
I have to agree its not worth the effort. I didn't make the billet a friend of mine did with a hyd. press and it still had areas that didn't weld which I found out after forging and grinding the blade . I have made a few billets of layered damascus with out the problems of the cable. That said you sometimes learn more by doing... Good luck.....Steve Randall
 
Canister welding of "new/clean" cable offsets many of the welding issues that cable presents.
But as stated above if you don't know what steel you are working with there is no way to heat treat the blade that is made from the cable billet.
If you are new at this the suggestion to use 1084/15n20 makes sense and getting good welds from the start really helps to build your confidence.

We have made quite a few cable billets at the small hammerins we have held here at Bethel Ridge Forge. All the cable was new and we new the makeup of the cable and the source. All of the billets were done "packed" inside a sealed stainless tube with the welding pressure applied with a press using squaring dies.

The blade at the bottom is made from canister welded cable, that was set "on end" inside a 3 inch stainless steel tube, packed with 1084 powder.

Fred
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