My first experience with damascus steel. Forged by hand from k720 (O2) and 15n20 tool steel.

This project started out very easily prepearing the billet, but as soon as I started hammering on it I realized it was going to be a real challenge. Tool steel is very hard to move! Specially when it's as thick as the billet I made.
After setting the weld I decided to split the stock in half so I would have had a better chance to heat it all up properly and possibly weld it for good by hand.
Unfortunatly I had mixed result with making it forge weld, not really sure about the reason why, maybe low heat, cold forging (even though I tried to never forged under orange) or the fact that I started to beat on the sides too early. Anyway, while forging I was able to spot a crack in one side and some cold spots on the top and bottom of the steel. To get rid of both I ended up grinding a lot of material away and that's made the final product much shorter and thinner than I anticipated.
I even had to leave a hairline fracture on the spine because the material was getting too small.
To prevent the crack from splitting open in the hardening process I tried to use some refractory cement (just like I do to develop hamons) this worked pretty well and I ended up with an usable piece of steel

Overall very happy with the result since it's my very fisrt attempt.

Index of operation and materials:
0:25 Cutting steel with metal cutting band saw
1:00 Grinding scales off on 2x72 (holding pieces with magnet)
2:00 Stacking the billet alternating 15n20 and k720 and cleaning everything with acetone
2:37 Stick welding the billet (rebar handle added off camera)
3:16 Borax used as fluck between each heat
3:45 Setting the weld
4:44 Grinding off stick welds
4:56 Cutting billed in two pieces
6:24 Isolating tang material
7:16 Grinding to shape
7:47 Test etch with ferric chloride
8:19 Steel wire to help cement stick
8:25 Refractory cement
9:00 Hardened in my homemade heat treating oven. 810°C for 30 min and quenching in oil
9:31 Tempering in toster oven at 200°C for 2.5hr
10:02 Cleaning up on the belt grinder and sanding by hand up to 600 grit
10:50 degreasing with acetone
10:53 final etch in ferric chloride
Off camera I sanded the 15n20 parts with 1200 grit sandpaper to make it shine.


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