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
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.
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.
@terry folds a good lathe would make great quality shavings for this. The shavings plus some powdered steel should do the job, but thats been done 1000x over now.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
@Mr Chrysler 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
@Arkanic but from how far the can squished, there was still quite a bit of air in the shavings. I've seen knife makers put a piece of paper in the can to burn off excess oxygen. That might have helped
@Misterrorschach 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.
@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 KZclip for regularly. I’ve been waiting for the day that someone finally does it.
I was interested if those grinder material particles would make it act like diamond cuttig discs - cut everything, never get dull. But it didn't fuse together. But definitely interesting!
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.
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 👍
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!
@TheArchitect 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.
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
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?
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 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 👍👍
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.
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.
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.
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.
@Bryan Stagg 2 considerations with that, alot of run of the mill crucibles do not get hot enough to full melt steel, non-ferrous metals no problem, but you really really need good concentrated heat to get steel to start to melt. Next, youd have the issue of carbon content, it is very possible that you would have an inferior product by making it completely homonogus, as the carbon content is all over the place, also it is possible that you drop the carbon content so far that it becomes un-useable.
Yeah I'm gonna have to agree with you here. A crucible and a blast furnace is definitely going to be the better course of action for steel shavings. At least then once it's all melted down and poured into something like a muffin pan, then you'll have your ingot or two for a future project.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 .
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.
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?
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.
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.
If rust and scale are in there, you'll ne reducing agent. That will help convert rust and scale back into iron. A solid fuel melting solution (i.e. Bloomery furnace, Tatara, etc.) will be the simplest way to get that reducing atmosphere and a way to help the ceramic/aluminum grit escape the material as it is consolidating.
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 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.
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.
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
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?
When you start grinding steel, the tiny chips will start to warm up and glow. In this time the steel chips start to build a massiv layer of oxide. So basicly you try to blacksmith 80% Oxide and 20% steel and this gonna not working. Another one here says male crucible steel and this is the only chance for you to turn the oxide back to steel or you made a clay kiln like the people in the early medievil and the people before.
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.
The whole time I was thinking why didn't he smell this first... I would like to have seen what would happen if you melted that stuff down in a crucible and added a little aluminum, then poured it into a billet mold. I would theorize the aluminum would absorb the oxidization from the steel, would settle on the top of the billet cooling down faster than the steel and cracking and breaking itself off the steel billet. You could try adding other things like nickel, but that would make the steel softer, though after seeing how brittle it was when it came out that might be a good thing. you could try it, I would like to see the shavings smashed into the can in thin layers and then add a nickel plate, add more shavings, smash it in with the press, add another nickel plate, repeat until its full. This might work better with a tub though.
Should of used shavings from a cnc,lathe,9r, drill press. They wouldn't be contaminated from grinding, and most cnc,lathes,and drills use oil so the shavings don't rust as easily
The reason why I think the metal failed to fuse is because you underestimated how much iron oxide is in it. I personally think every speck of metal is coated in a layer of iron oxide and therefore unless you process the metal it will never fuse or forge. Remember when you were grinding the metal, there were sparks, meaning the metal got more than hot enough to rapidly react with the air and coat every particle of shavings with an oxide layer. If this is the kind of project you want to try I really suggest using a Crucible furnace to liquefy the iron and get a more uniform piece of steel to help improve your success. If you already do not own a crucible furnace it is possible to make one and buying crucibles that can handle 2200F online is possible. I have seen a few people try to make bloom steel out of a similar source metal and had more success. Thus I believe a crucible furnace is the best option. you might want to add 0.6% carbon and some silicon. The source metal may be low in carbon and the silicon can help de-oxidize the liquid metal. Considering the source metal, if you do liquefy the metal in a crucible I would like to see a scientific analysis of what percentage of alloying agents are in the metal.
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?
what if you made an ingot using a crucible instead of forge welding it. i personally think because they were shavings they were too thin to "weld" together. from personal experience with using a crucible it is a good process to combined steels of different grade along with being able to just add. that and a crucible will burn the rust and forcing it to either float or sink. at that point just making an ingot would be best then working off of that.
The only thing I'm questioning is, does the abrasives become magnetic in some way? Wouldn't pouring over a magnet a few times help filter out the abrasives as the metal sticks to the magnet?
They tend to bind to them and melt a good amount, the best way to get it out is to burn it out in a crucible, it might be possible to use a magnet but it would take so much effort it really wouldn't be worth it.
Try making a bloomery furnace and smelt it. Ive done it with quite surprising results. Btw...get plenty of charcoal. Im talking 100+ lbs cus i went thru 50 lbs in 2 hours which was not long enough of a burn.
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?)
Use a much bigger can and fill it then use a press to compress it, fill and repeat until full then press the lid in as far as you can then weld it under tension
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.
You should have put it into a bullet blender with a little bit of borax to act as flux to mitigate the inclusions. The used a press to apply consistent pressure. I agree with José Rubens Kassai also.
What if, instead of trying to forge weld the material in a canister you first put it in a crucible and melted it down to form an ingot, and then forge out the material from that??? ( Woot steel essentially)
you cant forge it, the particles while grinding oxidize, the only way to use it is to melt it, like crucible steel then forge it. However there are some videos of guys mixing that dust with borax with high levels of sucess.
did u clean and or pour rust remover on the shavings?? getting rid of rust/dirt i think may have given better results? i think maybe u should of also put it in the smelter, melt it all the way back to liquid metal.
Yes, the sparks are definitely burning carbon, however I think this project could have been successful if he had smelted it with either some carbon powder and or something to add carbon and remove oxygen, along with some scrap high carbon steel
@Daniel Morris 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.
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
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.
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.
@terry folds a good lathe would make great quality shavings for this. The shavings plus some powdered steel should do the job, but thats been done 1000x over now.
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.
I was thinking the same thing. It's mostly oxide rather than usable steel.
@Fire Creek Forge Shavings off a band saw (without a coolant) would probably be good for this purpose I would think.
good point
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.
So good to see real life video's. Your humility speaks volumes. Thank you for your content.
Thank you for watching!
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.
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!
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.
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.
@Mr Chrysler 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.
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.
It should work fine. I been collecting mine and storing in a sealed container. Essentially it’s steel powder but bigger pieces
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
@Brendan Bush "But like, why? It's a pain"
that's why we want to see someone else do it :D
@Arkanic but from how far the can squished, there was still quite a bit of air in the shavings. I've seen knife makers put a piece of paper in the can to burn off excess oxygen. That might have helped
But like, why? It's a pain
@Misterrorschach 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.
@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 KZclip for regularly. I’ve been waiting for the day that someone finally does it.
Could you try to cast the molten shavings and refine the billet using the tamahagane technique? I think that would make a cool video.
I was interested if those grinder material particles would make it act like diamond cuttig discs - cut everything, never get dull. But it didn't fuse together. But definitely interesting!
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.
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 👍
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!
@TheArchitect 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.
You could also try putting wire in with the shavings maybe it will help with bonding?
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
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?
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 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 👍👍
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.
Loving these experiment videos.
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.
Cool tip for ya, you can reduce rust with carbon (grilling charcoal) back to iron.
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
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?
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.
How about trying to use different metal shavings from a cnc or lathe? Iv always wondered what something like that would look like.
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.
Try making crucible steel, I think that is what it's called.
I was also curious why he chose not to pour the shavings into a crucible instead and then cast it into a die
Yes Melting it down in a Crucible was something i was thinking about too !
@Bryan Stagg 2 considerations with that, alot of run of the mill crucibles do not get hot enough to full melt steel, non-ferrous metals no problem, but you really really need good concentrated heat to get steel to start to melt. Next, youd have the issue of carbon content, it is very possible that you would have an inferior product by making it completely homonogus, as the carbon content is all over the place, also it is possible that you drop the carbon content so far that it becomes un-useable.
Yeah I'm gonna have to agree with you here. A crucible and a blast furnace is definitely going to be the better course of action for steel shavings. At least then once it's all melted down and poured into something like a muffin pan, then you'll have your ingot or two for a future project.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
if you made crucible steel out of this, that would be really cool
I think there's something called powder metallurgy. They press layers of different metal shavings/powder/granules in a mold.
Just wondering, if you had used your press to pack the shavings into the canister, could you have gotten it tighter?
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.
For particle collector better to use a funnel leading to a 2L bottle with magnet attached to the bottom
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 .
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 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.
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?
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
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.
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 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.
If rust and scale are in there, you'll ne reducing agent. That will help convert rust and scale back into iron.
A solid fuel melting solution (i.e. Bloomery furnace, Tatara, etc.) will be the simplest way to get that reducing atmosphere and a way to help the ceramic/aluminum grit escape the material as it is consolidating.
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
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.
I think it would work
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.
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.
I’ve searched for this off and on for a while now hoping someone would finally do it.
Awesome informational educational video experience Y'alls God Bless Ya 🙌🙏
Thank you appreciate you watching
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
Did that last year after bigdog forge did it . love your bids . keep them coming.
Thats who it was!
Old school forge used grinding remains to make a billet.
He built a bloomery furnace and cooked the filings down into a bloom.
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?
When you start grinding steel, the tiny chips will start to warm up and glow. In this time the steel chips start to build a massiv layer of oxide. So basicly you try to blacksmith 80% Oxide and 20% steel and this gonna not working. Another one here says male crucible steel and this is the only chance for you to turn the oxide back to steel or you made a clay kiln like the people in the early medievil and the people before.
I've always wondered how those powdered steels remains rust free? Is there a great big desiccant tab in the bottom?
Just a sealed can is all
These were contaminated from the get go…. But that being the case the maybe smelting them into ingots? Anyway, cool video and definitely educational
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.
The whole time I was thinking why didn't he smell this first... I would like to have seen what would happen if you melted that stuff down in a crucible and added a little aluminum, then poured it into a billet mold. I would theorize the aluminum would absorb the oxidization from the steel, would settle on the top of the billet cooling down faster than the steel and cracking and breaking itself off the steel billet. You could try adding other things like nickel, but that would make the steel softer, though after seeing how brittle it was when it came out that might be a good thing. you could try it, I would like to see the shavings smashed into the can in thin layers and then add a nickel plate, add more shavings, smash it in with the press, add another nickel plate, repeat until its full. This might work better with a tub though.
Should of used shavings from a cnc,lathe,9r, drill press. They wouldn't be contaminated from grinding, and most cnc,lathes,and drills use oil so the shavings don't rust as easily
Thanks for sharing your experiment! Thanks to your video I probably won't try this in my forge.
You bet, thanks for watching!
The reason why I think the metal failed to fuse is because you underestimated how much iron oxide is in it. I personally think every speck of metal is coated in a layer of iron oxide and therefore unless you process the metal it will never fuse or forge. Remember when you were grinding the metal, there were sparks, meaning the metal got more than hot enough to rapidly react with the air and coat every particle of shavings with an oxide layer.
If this is the kind of project you want to try I really suggest using a Crucible furnace to liquefy the iron and get a more uniform piece of steel to help improve your success.
If you already do not own a crucible furnace it is possible to make one and buying crucibles that can handle 2200F online is possible.
I have seen a few people try to make bloom steel out of a similar source metal and had more success. Thus I believe a crucible furnace is the best option.
you might want to add 0.6% carbon and some silicon. The source metal may be low in carbon and the silicon can help de-oxidize the liquid metal.
Considering the source metal, if you do liquefy the metal in a crucible I would like to see a scientific analysis of what percentage of alloying agents are in the metal.
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?
@Paul Bennett 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?
I believe it has lots of sandpaper abrasive as well mixed on it.
what if you made an ingot using a crucible instead of forge welding it. i personally think because they were shavings they were too thin to "weld" together. from personal experience with using a crucible it is a good process to combined steels of different grade along with being able to just add. that and a crucible will burn the rust and forcing it to either float or sink. at that point just making an ingot would be best then working off of that.
What about mixing all the filings with Flux before adding to the Cannister?
you need to smelt it . it has grinding wheel particulates in it .
I’ve been waiting for someone to do this for years
The only thing I'm questioning is, does the abrasives become magnetic in some way? Wouldn't pouring over a magnet a few times help filter out the abrasives as the metal sticks to the magnet?
They tend to bind to them and melt a good amount, the best way to get it out is to burn it out in a crucible, it might be possible to use a magnet but it would take so much effort it really wouldn't be worth it.
I wonder if washing the shaving covered magnets in mineral spirits would have helped remove the non-steel particulate and rust?
Try making a bloomery furnace and smelt it. Ive done it with quite surprising results. Btw...get plenty of charcoal. Im talking 100+ lbs cus i went thru 50 lbs in 2 hours which was not long enough of a burn.
Could you try creating a steel bloom from the grinding first than forging that into a billet?
I think it would have worked out better if you had packed it using the press and had forged it flat to begin with.
Sift the shavings, then use a magnet 🧲. That should separate most of the rust out.
The Shadow Systems hat! Love it. Just got the MR920 Elite not long ago
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?)
Could you use them to make crucible steel and forge from that?
Use a much bigger can and fill it then use a press to compress it, fill and repeat until full then press the lid in as far as you can then weld it under tension
crucible steel or adding stuff to it like you would powder is the way to go. As this has been done before.
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.
You should have put it into a bullet blender with a little bit of borax to act as flux to mitigate the inclusions. The used a press to apply consistent pressure. I agree with José Rubens Kassai also.
What if, instead of trying to forge weld the material in a canister you first put it in a crucible and melted it down to form an ingot, and then forge out the material from that??? ( Woot steel essentially)
You have some skills. I am learning by riding on your shoulders. 👍
well you are too kind but thanks for watching!
This is an awesome compliment!
Have you considered making wootz steel?
That would make an interesting Damascus pattern
you cant forge it, the particles while grinding oxidize, the only way to use it is to melt it, like crucible steel then forge it. However there are some videos of guys mixing that dust with borax with high levels of sucess.
If you tap the canister on the bottom as youre packing it, itll fill better
What do you think about trying to smelt it all together that should get rid of most of the garbage in the steel i think
You could put it in a ceramic crucible with a lid and some flux in a charcoal forge.
did u clean and or pour rust remover on the shavings?? getting rid of rust/dirt i think may have given better results? i think maybe u should of also put it in the smelter, melt it all the way back to liquid metal.
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
Finally! So what is the risk of decarb? The sparks are burning steel right?
Yes, the sparks are definitely burning carbon, however I think this project could have been successful if he had smelted it with either some carbon powder and or something to add carbon and remove oxygen, along with some scrap high carbon steel
I'm curious if a hydrolic press would have helped somehow in the packing process along with or aside of tamping it.
@Daniel Morris 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.
He used a press.
"Forged in Fire" had a competition where they had to use steel shavings for forge a knife.