wire rope damascus free sample

The modern connotation of Damascus steel is different from the original Damascus of the past. Historic Damascus steel referred to as crucible stee,l which had a very high carbon content and had a visible surface pattern because of its crystalline structure.Tthis Damascus steel, or Wootz steel, ended up being called Damascus steel because the crusader,s on their way down to the Holy Lan,d would purchase new blades of this superior steel (superior to medieval European steel) in cities like Damascus. The modern connotation, however, is instead different kinds of steels that have been pattern-welded and that display a similar surface pattern when acid etched. The Damascus you will see made here is is of the latter definition. Cable Damascus is perhaps one of the easiest ways to create Damascus steel with a complex pattern. Unlike other techniques, this method requires no folding and essentially comes in its own ready to forge shape.

Like they always say, safety first! Seeing as how this whole process involves forging, grinding and dipping metal into chemicals, it is important to use the proper safety equipment. For the forge welding stage, many people who do any kind of smithing, know the basic safety equipment: gloves, apron, closed toed shoes, etc. Howeve,r one piece of equipment sometimes goes overlooked. Everyone knows that eye protection is important but for this kind of work you need a special kind of eye protection. The above and only picture in this section is of a pair of dydidium glasses. The reason that it is the only picture up there is because just about everybody who works with metal knows the safety basics but rarely do I see people point out this kind of eye protection. Normal goggles are usually fine for most crafts but not for forge welding. The heat required for forge welding puts out a bit of radiation that over the long term can cause vision loss. Dydidium however will block most of the radiation and save your eyes. One final point, dydidium glasses are not the same as welding masks or sunglasses. If you use either of these while forge welding, your pupils will dilate and your eyes will get even more of the radiation.

Before you can forge out your section of cable you have to set it all up. Before it goes in the fire you first have to cut off your section like in the first image. I cut off 3, 12 in sections of 1 inch cable at the time with a chop saw. You can use whatever method you like to cut the cable just be sure that the cable that you use is all steel with no plastic involved and that it is not galvanized as the heat reacting with the plating will produce gas that can make you very sick or even kill you. So keep that in mind when getting cable. Also, if this is your first time attempting cable Damascus you might not want to jump right in to the the larger diameter cable and instead start out with a piece of half inch. You wont be able to make anything more than a toothpick with the results but its a good way to practice without wasting bigger and more expensive cable.

After the cutting, be sure to wrap the ends of the cable with steel wire. This is to keep the section from unwinding during the first parts of the process. Be sure to only use plain steel wire because other wires that are coated or are made of other can melt or react with the heat and just mess everything up.

Everybody who makes Damascus has their own list of steps or additives that seem to make the whole process work for them. I encourage you to go, do some research and discover one that works for you. For me, I spray my cold metal with WD40 until it is just completely soaked and then coat the whole thing with regular borax before putting the sections in the fire. Both the borax and WD40 act to prevent oxidation which can make forge welding impossible. The borax won"t typically stick to metal unless its hot or wet and the WD40 will burn off in the forge so getting the section wet with WD40 and using that to stick the borax on seems to make everything work for me.

Damascus steel when ground down should look just like one solid piece of metal. In order to get the pattern, you need to etch the steel with an acid. There are several options as far as acids go but personally I use ferric chloride. If you only want a very superficial etch, like the one in the cover image, you only need to dip the metal in the acid for about 20 min. I wanted a very deep etch that could actually be felt so I dipped mine for 7 hours. Once you are done with the etch, you need to clean it and neutralize the acid. One of the easiest ways to do that is just to spray Windex on the etched piece after it has been rinsed off. Don"t forget to wear gloves and eye protection for all this. If you want to add some color to the piece, like the last two images in the title, just heat the piece up a bit after the etch until the desired color has been reached.

The piece I made here didn"t require any quenching or heat treating because it is a decorative piece. If you choose to make a blade out of cable Damascus one thing to keep in mind is that when quenched, the steel has a tendency to warp in the direction of the cable twist. If you want a functional piece, make it thick, otherwise you might start with a knife and end up with a corkscrew.

Hi Armeria. Thanks for your informative instructable.I think the warping is caused because the wires of the cable are nearly aligned in one direction and after quenching, the contraction force is also exerted unequally in one direction to cause the warp. Don"t you think folding the cable several times during the forge welding can obviate the problem?

I think that you might be confusing the revealed pattern with having gaps in the steel. Proper forge welding will create a homogeneous billet. The pattern that is shown is the result of acid reacting to the different carbon contents of the former wires that experienced carbon migration before being welded. I hope that this helps!0

Let’s talk about wire “damascus”. It’s not really wire. It’s not really pattern-welded steel, and it’s not really Damascus, but it’s fun and easy to do. It’s a great first project, and you can find your stock in any scrap-yard in the world. Almost fool-proof for a beginner so far as mistakes are concerned, and if manipulated properly can produce some striking results in terms of pattern. I’ve sold a few small knives as letter openers, and I’ve used it to make “Celtic” pommels, and guards, as well as chapes, accents for scabbards, and jewelry. I’ve used it to trade for chain mail, and other stuff I choose not to take the time to do myself. Among the better Master Blade-smiths, at the larger Blade Shows it will be “poo-poo’ed” as “cheesy” but that’s okay for me, as I’m an up and comer, and also the kind of guy that really doesn’t feel bad that I didn’t come out of the womb knowing everything. It’s pretty, and if made from high carbon suspension bridge, or industrial cable (non-galvanized ) makes for a pretty good knife, short sword, and if you weld on a solid edge… sword. I’ve seen stuff by Colonel Hrisoulas and Charles Kain that rivals anything, by anyone, ever, out of cable.

Lots of guys start off with wire, and others take it on to an art-form. I know a few that have stuck with it, and make great table cutlery, and artwork to dazzle. Google the expression “Wire Damascus” and see some of the books in the bibliography at the end of this tutorial, and see good shots of some magnificent pieces. I myself have done a few, and have on hand enough bridge and crane cable to make much more in the future.

The bottom is low carbon, “choker” cable, like you find on oil riggers, and boom lifts. Not so great for blades, as it won’t harden properly without a sandwich of high carbon on the cutting edge. It has either a solid steel center, or a nylon rope center, and must be taken apart, and re-twisted before being forged. Lot of work for a crap steel right? As you can see I’ve done just that. I took a six inch section of oily cable, degreased it in my cleaning station, heated it up some to burn off all the junk. Don’t use your normal gas forge for this, as old crap oil, and gunk, will come oozing out of it once it’s reached 600 degrees or so and severely contaminate your forge. No matter how good you clean it with gas, and no matter how clean it looks on the surface, and no matter how much anti-greasing agent you use. Nevertheless, make sure all grease, dirt, grime, and the rope are wholly burned out. I do this in my trash bin -for as of yet out in the country the EPA doesn’t swoop down on every outdoor barbecue. Wouldn’t they love to taste my hot dogs?

Heat up the cable a section the width of your vice, 3-5 inches if it’s a longer piece. Heat wise, once cherry red, have a pipe wrench, or as I have done, an old style pipe-wrench, pre-set to size, with a two foot handle welded on, and twist the wire down on itself. I try to use counter-clockwise as a goal. As above.

And here is the long 2″ wire in the first picture up above, welded solid, and drawn into a blade billet. I have not finished it into a blade as of yet, this will be posted soon after I do the pic’s for welding on a high carbon edge.

Below is a nice shot of a finished piece. Done in chain-saw blades. Same idea as the wire, but you just forge down a glob of chain-saw blades. Each chain saw has three different metals in it. The tip is usually some sort of carbide, the pins holding the chain bodies together is high carbon, and the bodies are a lower carbon steel.

One of the most beautiful wire damascus knives I think I can remember is one of Jim Ence’s in the book: Points of Interest, Volume II ( ISBN 0-9613834-2-9 ). If you can beg, borrow, or steal a copy, they are very collectable now, as only so many were made. I don’t have permission to publish the picture here, so I may not, but you can also see nice pieces in books still in print. Try Decorative and Sculptural Ironwork: Tools, Techniques & Inspiration by Dona A Meilach, 2nd Edition 1999 ( ISBN 0-7643-0790-8 ) for our craft pages 199-234. And as already mentioned, Col Jim Hrisoulas book The Complete Bladesmith, back cover, left pic, and on page 150-153 of his book for how too.

Starting to reveal the soul of it. Got to keep it happening both ways. Notice the wire brush and chisel still sometimes necessary. Always remember the more you do hot, the less you do with grinders and files later.

I start with new "Improved Plowshare" wire-rope (similar to 1084). I "fuse" both ends with my TIG (heat, but no filler) to keep the strands from separating, then firmly weld it to a piece of re-rod. This particular piece of cable was 1.25". (this was shiny and clean, but the TIG will catches the oil on fire, thus the sooty appearance)

It’s possible you have heard of Damascus steel, particularly if you are familiar with old swords, knives and guns. A book, The Art and Beauty of Damascus Steel, has been written on the subject. While this treatment of the topic might not do the book justice, Damascus steel is quite beautiful and holds much mystery.

Although the heyday of Damascus steel was between 900 and 1600 AD, the origins began as early as 300 BC in India. At that time, wootz steel was made using a new technique that produced high-carbon steel of unusually high purity. Glass was added to a mixture of iron and charcoal in a small, sealed, clay crucible, and it was then heated. The glass acted as a flux to combine with other impurities in the melt, allowing them to float to the surface. The result was a more pure steel. This technique spread from India to modern-day Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan around 900 and to the Middle East around 1000.

Modern metallurgical analysis has proven that Damascus steel differs from pattern welding (to be discussed later). Blacksmiths of today use pattern-welding techniques to reproduce the look of Damascus steel.

No one really knows why this steel is so unique, but it is believed to be due in part to its vanadium content. In addition, it is believed that the steel was “hot short” due to its sulfur and phosphorus content. Our theory would be that this hot shortness required a lower and more precise forging temperature than conventional European blacksmiths were accustomed to. The vanadium content, and possibly also molybdenum, could create “primary” carbides, which would not be affected by the lower-temperature thermal processing (forging). Some of the iron carbides might go into solution during forging, but the primary, vanadium carbides and certain other metallic carbides would flow in a pattern established by the forging process. These flow lines would lie parallel to the forging plane of the blade, and the bladesmith exploited this to create a more exotic pattern upon polishing and etching of the blade.

Another forging-process creation was not known until recent metallurgical analysis revealed the presence of carbon nanotubes and nanowires in a 17th-century sword. The complex forging and annealing process is believed to have developed the nano-scale structures. These nanostructures help give Damascus steel its distinctive properties.

The origin of the Damascus steel name is almost as mysterious as the steel itself. The assumption is that the steel or the swords were made in Damascus, Syria. It’s just as likely, however, that it comes from the Arabic word “damas” meaning water, referring to the surface pattern that resembles turbulent water. One source refers to swords made by a man named Damasqui, which could also have been the origin of the name.

Damascus steel is both hard and flexible, which made it an ideal sword-making material. The primary and/or precipitated carbides that create the pattern are much harder than the low-carbon steel matrix. These carbides allowed the swordsmith to make an edge – using the precipitated carbides – that would cut hard materials, and the softer matrix allowed the sword to remain tough and flexible.

The beauty of Damascus steel has resulted in craftsmen attempting to duplicate it. Present-day blacksmiths use one of two techniques: cable Damascus or pattern welding. The cable technique began with the availability of steel-wire rope in the 1830s. The wire rope is forged, creating repeating images along the blade similar to the Damascus steel of old.

Pattern welding involves welding different types of steel and iron bars together to form a billet. The billet is drawn out and folded several times during the forging process. Historically, Japanese samurai swords were made with this technique. Typically, the folding and re-forging process is repeated from eight to 16 times, which helps refine the impurities and remove excess carbon. Believe it or not, if you start with a single bar and fold it 16 times, you will end up with 65,536 layers. If, however, you start with a pattern-welded, eight-layer billet, 17 folds will result in 1,048,576 layers! The resulting layers will be aligned parallel to the forging direction, producing superior strength properties as well as a pattern similar to the Damascus patterns of old.

Damascus steel is tie dye for knives. That’s the heart of the matter, and if that feels like enough for you then you can happily go read about some Damascus steel knife we’ve reviewed. I promise that article is more to the point than this one will be, because this article is mostly about indulging my own nerdy compulsions.

The problem is that there’s more history and science behind the term “Damascus steel” than any other knife steel in existence. So when you try to find anything specific about it, you end up in a sea of confused misinformation, generally propagated by idiot bloggers like myself who know more about how to manipulate an internet search algorithm than what actually goes into making a knife.

John Verhoeven and the work he did alongside bladesmith Al Pendray is possibly the most thorough and successful scientific endeavor to recreate genuine Wootz Damascus steel.

Update:Blade Magazine wrote a good piece on Damascus steel in 2022 called “Who Made the First Damascus” that has a pretty good discussion of the history of pattern welded steel and wootz Damascus. It’s pretty concise (although I’d argue with less damn personality), and they talk to blade smiths who have some great insight, but it still doesn’t quite give enough context or detail about history and steel composition to have satisfied my curiosity when I was first working on this haphazard blog. It’s still a good article that’s worth checking out, and probably provides as much information as most people would care to have on this topic.

One of the first things you’re likely to realize if you know nothing about this at all is that the term “Damascus steel” can refer to two different steels:A pattern welded steel where two or more different steels have been forge welded and twisted together to create a distinctive pattern (Modern Damascus steel),

A crucible steel forged from a single ingot from south India that develops a surface “water” pattern after being forged and thermal cycled (generally called Wootz Damascus).

That’s a rough rewording of the definitions that Larrin Thomas gives in his “5 Myths About Damascus Steel” article (which is a great primer on its own). In that he also refers to modern Damascus steel as “pattern welded steel” and to the crucible version as “Wootz steel”, which seems to be the standard way to distinguish between the two for the competent people who write about this kind of thing.

That word “wootz” has a whole history of its own that I’ll touch on later, but right now we’re just concerned with the question of “which is the real Damascus steel”:

If you’re talking to an especially prickly historian, the answer is that crucible Wootz steel is the real Damascus. That’s the one that started the craze and got everyone trying to make water-patterned blades (unless you’re talking to an even more prickly historian who tells you other countries might have been making similar crucible steels around the same time, but we’ll talk about Anne Feuerbach later).

The real answer, though, is that if you ask a knife maker today for a Damascus steel knife he’s going to make you a pattern-welded steel blade. The best proof of that is probably on Bob Kramer’s site, where he explains what Damascus steel is by calling it pattern-welded steel, then giving a pleasantly concise description of making and drawing out a billet.

When you want a crucible Damascus blade with the more natural looking “water” pattern, there are actually a few custom knife makers like Peter Burt capable of making one every now and then. Whenever I see those knives pop up, though, I see them referred to specifically as wootz Damascus.

Fulad steel hasn’t gotten anywhere near the same kind of attention, and it doesn’t do much here to deepen our understanding of what Damascus steel is, because I’m not even going to attempt to synthesize her work into the discussion as a whole. But it’s worth knowing that the process was apparently more widespread than most people think.

You can thank Dr. Ann Feuerbach’s dissertation Crucible Steel in Central Asia: Production, Use, and Origins for adding this complication (or, for a shorter read, her paper Damascus Steel and Crucible Steel in Central Asia).

That was mostly a matter of good marketing and convenient geography. I think. I really don’t have the expertise to make a new claim about this, though, so I’ll just paraphrase what Ann Feuerbach said about it in her dissertation (and what has since been referenced by a handful of people who have actually read about this, like Larrin Thomas):The word for water in Arabic is “damas” and Damascus blades are often described as having a water pattern on their surface.

What they don’t do is suggest at all that the term started with Crusaders coming back to Europe, which seems to have become one of the big modern assumptions. The term was being used before even the first Crusade happened, and even longer before legends like the sword of Saladin cutting a piece of silk floating in the air in a competition with Richard the Lionheart started circulating.

Without getting too tied up in dates, though, the important thing here is legends like that did spread, and became overblown enough that Damascus weapons developed enough of a reputation that the surface water pattern became a sign of quality.

There’s an excellent documentary by Mike Loades called The Secrets of Wootz Damascus Steel that follows Al Pendray and John Verhoeven trying to develop a consistent method for creating and forging a crucible steel that produces this swirling grain formation.

Thanks mostly to those two, the claim that the “secret to making true Damascus steel has been lost” is mostly false now. While the exact method for making that pattern show up consistently is still up in the air, there are now people like Rick Furrer and Niels Provos who have worked in the past to reproduce Wootz steel with a water surface pattern with various degrees of success.

I don’t know if that means we’ll see Wootz steel in mass production at some point in the future. There are a few groups actively trying to bring the process into the laser age, but for the time being, crucible Damascus steel remains in the territory of historians, metallurgists, and tenacious smiths.

Pattern welding is a pretty old technique in bladesmithing, especially between iron and steel, but it wasn’t always done to copy the Damascus water pattern.

There was apparently a process for it in place on the Iberian peninsula in pre-Roman times based on some of the Falcata swords that have been found there. There’s also evidence that Celtic and Germanic tribes developed a pattern welding method, and the discovery of the Ulfberht swords shows that Europeans were doing this at least as far back as the 9th century.

It would be really easy to say that European blacksmiths saw people going crazy over these water-patterned Syrian weapons and tried to copy the pattern so they could sell their blades at a higher price. It would even make a bit of sense. But I just can’t seem to find enough reliable sources to support that claim, so I’ll jump ahead a few hundred years to the claim that can be backed up.

Moran got knife makers back into forging knife blades and creating their own alloys at a time when the mass production of stamped blades seemed to be pushing that art out of existence, and along with that he brought back the popularity of the word “Damascus”.

Gun manufacturers had been making Damascus gun barrels (sometimes called “twist-steel” barrels) since the 19th century at the latest. There’s a bit of confusion even here about exactly who first started calling pattern welded steel “Damascus steel”, but the idea popped back up during England’s occupation of India, and people started bringing cakes of Wootz steel to the Isles.

The pattern got popular again, and soon smiths and metallurgists started playing around with it. In the early 1800’s, a man named J. Jones got a patent for creating a Damascus gun barrel in a way that would later be called the Crolle Damascus Pattern. Guns like this continued to be made in Britain until about the 1930’s.

People kept writing about the stuff even after Damascus gun barrels stopped being made, but it really wasn’t until Moran dropped into the scene with this Damascus knife in 1973 that the term became truly relevant to everyone again.

When you’re looking at a modern Damascus steel knife that doesn’t have the steel composition in the description, it’s usually safe to say that it’s those two, with the possible variations of 1050 or 1095 traded in as the tool steel.

People jump to the idea that because the process for making Wootz steel is an ancient, lost technique that it must be better, because all old and lost things are better, or that pattern welded steel is better because it’s complicated to make. The truth is that most claims about any kind of Damascus steel being harder or sharper or more wear resistant are unfounded.

Not a lot of experiments have been done in this area, but Verhoven did do a CATRA test to compare the edge on a Wootz Damascus blade to 1086 and 52100 tool steels and AEB-L stainless steel.

Ultimately he concluded that at high hardness both 1086 and 52100 cut better than true Damascus and both have better edge retention, and the Uddeholm AEB-L stainless steel, in broad terms, outperformed all of them at high hardness. Wootz steel did seem to start doing significantly better at a softer hardness, though.

Meanwhile, the Thomas family did their own CATRA test of a pattern-welded Damascus steel made up of AEB-L and 154CM against an edge on a solid piece of each of those steels (detailed at the end of Larrin’s 5 Myths article).

Shockingly, they found that the pattern-welded Damascus performed pretty much right in the middle of each of the steels it was made of: It had a higher edge retention than the softer AEB-L edge, and a lower edge retention than the harder 154CM edge, with an initial slicing ability that was equally centered.

It’s not really fair to say absolutely that Wootz steel is worse than all modern steels and a pattern-welded steel can never perform better than the sum of its parts. These were single experiments done with a small range of materials. But this should give us an educated skepticism of any manufacturer’s claims that their knives perform better because of their Damascus steel.

For what it’s worth, Verhoeven also mentions in his report of the Wootz Damascus CATRA testing that the true Damascus steel blades “from antiquity” likely were better than what was being used by European Crusaders.

It’s possible that European blades were only being hardened to about 40 HRC (which is where Verhoeven said Wootz started to excel) because of the ore and techniques they were using. Pure steel could be tough to come by in the medieval era, especially on a massive enough scale to equip an army, so the ability to make Wootz ingots would have been an incredibly useful technology.

Just for context, the criteria for becoming a Master Bladesmith set by the the American Bladesmith Society are to forge a pattern welded knife with 300 layers that can slice a one-inch rope in half with one cut, chop all the way through a 2×4 without chipping, keep a sharp enough edge through all that to shave hair, and then get bent 90 degrees without cracking.

There are a few basic patterns you tend to see in Damascus blades. You can get a pretty good sense of the possibilities fromthe patterns that Damasteel makes. But the sky’s the limit with highly skilled smiths. Once you start getting into mosaic patterns, Damascus becomes another show altogether. You don’t generally see that in mass produced knives, though.

Master Bladesmith Rick Dunkerley wrote a great article for Blade Mag on some of the different Damascus variations you can make back in 2011. Here’s a rundown of the basic ones he covered:Random: this is where the layers remain flat and a flowing, organic pattern forms during patterning (you’ll see this in a lot of the higher end Japanese kitchen knives).

In most cases you don’t need to take any more care with a Damascus blade than you would with any of your other knives: keep it clean and dry, and maybe put a coat of oil on it every now and then.

Since most Damascus blades are made with a high carbon steel and a high nickel, it makes sense to treat the blade as if it was just a high carbon steel. Chris Reeve’s site actually has a good blog on maintaining Damascus steel knives (even though they don’t seem to make Damascus knives any more), so these tips are adapted from them:Wipe the blade as soon as possible after cutting anything acidic like fruit. Even your finger oils can pose a long term risk if you keep touching the blade without wiping it off.

In that vein, I’d highly recommend getting Larrin Thomas’ book, “Knife Engineering: Steel, Heat Treating, and Geometry” for a great, detailed primer on learning the science behind knife making. Besides the massive drop of comprehensive knife making information, he has a great section on Damascus steel in there.

John Verhoven also wrote a book about his experience trying to create Wootz steel with Al Pendray called “Damascus Steel Swords: Solving the Mystery of How to Make them”, which has a nice mix of science and history tied in with the story of his friendship with Pendray (Verhoeven wrote a bunch of other books on metallurgy that are probably worth reading, but are also crazy expensive).

There are probably hundreds of books on forging pattern welded Damascus, and since I’m not a blade smith myself I can’t say with much certainty which is a good source, but I’ve heard Jim Hrisoulas referenced by actual bladesmiths. He’s done a lot of work in historical weapon making, and written a lot on the topic, so it might be worth checking out his books like “Damascus Steel: Theory and Practice” or “The Pattern Welded Blade: Artistry in Iron” if you want to start learning how to do this stuff.

In stricter senses, the term wire rope refers to a diameter larger than 9.5 mm (3⁄8 in), with smaller gauges designated cable or cords.wrought iron wires were used, but today steel is the main material used for wire ropes.

Historically, wire rope evolved from wrought iron chains, which had a record of mechanical failure. While flaws in chain links or solid steel bars can lead to catastrophic failure, flaws in the wires making up a steel cable are less critical as the other wires easily take up the load. While friction between the individual wires and strands causes wear over the life of the rope, it also helps to compensate for minor failures in the short run.

Wire ropes were developed starting with mining hoist applications in the 1830s. Wire ropes are used dynamically for lifting and hoisting in cranes and elevators, and for transmission of mechanical power. Wire rope is also used to transmit force in mechanisms, such as a Bowden cable or the control surfaces of an airplane connected to levers and pedals in the cockpit. Only aircraft cables have WSC (wire strand core). Also, aircraft cables are available in smaller diameters than wire rope. For example, aircraft cables are available in 1.2 mm (3⁄64 in) diameter while most wire ropes begin at a 6.4 mm (1⁄4 in) diameter.suspension bridges or as guy wires to support towers. An aerial tramway relies on wire rope to support and move cargo overhead.

Modern wire rope was invented by the German mining engineer Wilhelm Albert in the years between 1831 and 1834 for use in mining in the Harz Mountains in Clausthal, Lower Saxony, Germany.chains, such as had been used before.

Wilhelm Albert"s first ropes consisted of three strands consisting of four wires each. In 1840, Scotsman Robert Stirling Newall improved the process further.John A. Roebling, starting in 1841suspension bridge building. Roebling introduced a number of innovations in the design, materials and manufacture of wire rope. Ever with an ear to technology developments in mining and railroading, Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, principal ownersLehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N Co.) — as they had with the first blast furnaces in the Lehigh Valley — built a Wire Rope factory in Mauch Chunk,Pennsylvania in 1848, which provided lift cables for the Ashley Planes project, then the back track planes of the Summit Hill & Mauch Chunk Railroad, improving its attractiveness as a premier tourism destination, and vastly improving the throughput of the coal capacity since return of cars dropped from nearly four hours to less than 20 minutes. The decades were witness to a burgeoning increase in deep shaft mining in both Europe and North America as surface mineral deposits were exhausted and miners had to chase layers along inclined layers. The era was early in railroad development and steam engines lacked sufficient tractive effort to climb steep slopes, so incline plane railways were common. This pushed development of cable hoists rapidly in the United States as surface deposits in the Anthracite Coal Region north and south dove deeper every year, and even the rich deposits in the Panther Creek Valley required LC&N Co. to drive their first shafts into lower slopes beginning Lansford and its Schuylkill County twin-town Coaldale.

The German engineering firm of Adolf Bleichert & Co. was founded in 1874 and began to build bicable aerial tramways for mining in the Ruhr Valley. With important patents, and dozens of working systems in Europe, Bleichert dominated the global industry, later licensing its designs and manufacturing techniques to Trenton Iron Works, New Jersey, USA which built systems across America. Adolf Bleichert & Co. went on to build hundreds of aerial tramways around the world: from Alaska to Argentina, Australia and Spitsbergen. The Bleichert company also built hundreds of aerial tramways for both the Imperial German Army and the Wehrmacht.

In the last half of the 19th century, wire rope systems were used as a means of transmitting mechanical powercable cars. Wire rope systems cost one-tenth as much and had lower friction losses than line shafts. Because of these advantages, wire rope systems were used to transmit power for a distance of a few miles or kilometers.

Steel wires for wire ropes are normally made of non-alloy carbon steel with a carbon content of 0.4 to 0.95%. The very high strength of the rope wires enables wire ropes to support large tensile forces and to run over sheaves with relatively small diameters.

In the mostly used parallel lay strands, the lay length of all the wire layers is equal and the wires of any two superimposed layers are parallel, resulting in linear contact. The wire of the outer layer is supported by two wires of the inner layer. These wires are neighbors along the whole length of the strand. Parallel lay strands are made in one operation. The endurance of wire ropes with this kind of strand is always much greater than of those (seldom used) with cross lay strands. Parallel lay strands with two wire layers have the construction Filler, Seale or Warrington.

In principle, spiral ropes are round strands as they have an assembly of layers of wires laid helically over a centre with at least one layer of wires being laid in the opposite direction to that of the outer layer. Spiral ropes can be dimensioned in such a way that they are non-rotating which means that under tension the rope torque is nearly zero. The open spiral rope consists only of round wires. The half-locked coil rope and the full-locked coil rope always have a centre made of round wires. The locked coil ropes have one or more outer layers of profile wires. They have the advantage that their construction prevents the penetration of dirt and water to a greater extent and it also protects them from loss of lubricant. In addition, they have one further very important advantage as the ends of a broken outer wire cannot leave the rope if it has the proper dimensions.

Stranded ropes are an assembly of several strands laid helically in one or more layers around a core. This core can be one of three types. The first is a fiber core, made up of synthetic material or natural fibers like sisal. Synthetic fibers are stronger and more uniform but cannot absorb much lubricant. Natural fibers can absorb up to 15% of their weight in lubricant and so protect the inner wires much better from corrosion than synthetic fibers do. Fiber cores are the most flexible and elastic, but have the downside of getting crushed easily. The second type, wire strand core, is made up of one additional strand of wire, and is typically used for suspension. The third type is independent wire rope core (IWRC), which is the most durable in all types of environments.ordinary lay rope if the lay direction of the wires in the outer strands is in the opposite direction to the lay of the outer strands themselves. If both the wires in the outer strands and the outer strands themselves have the same lay direction, the rope is called a lang lay rope (from Dutch langslag contrary to kruisslag,Regular lay means the individual wires were wrapped around the centers in one direction and the strands were wrapped around the core in the opposite direction.

Multi-strand ropes are all more or less resistant to rotation and have at least two layers of strands laid helically around a centre. The direction of the outer strands is opposite to that of the underlying strand layers. Ropes with three strand layers can be nearly non-rotating. Ropes with two strand layers are mostly only low-rotating.

Stationary ropes, stay ropes (spiral ropes, mostly full-locked) have to carry tensile forces and are therefore mainly loaded by static and fluctuating tensile stresses. Ropes used for suspension are often called cables.

Track ropes (full locked ropes) have to act as rails for the rollers of cabins or other loads in aerial ropeways and cable cranes. In contrast to running ropes, track ropes do not take on the curvature of the rollers. Under the roller force, a so-called free bending radius of the rope occurs. This radius increases (and the bending stresses decrease) with the tensile force and decreases with the roller force.

Wire rope slings (stranded ropes) are used to harness various kinds of goods. These slings are stressed by the tensile forces but first of all by bending stresses when bent over the more or less sharp edges of the goods.

Technical regulations apply to the design of rope drives for cranes, elevators, rope ways and mining installations. Factors that are considered in design include:

Donandt force (yielding tensile force for a given bending diameter ratio D/d) - strict limit. The nominal rope tensile force S must be smaller than the Donandt force SD1.

The wire ropes are stressed by fluctuating forces, by wear, by corrosion and in seldom cases by extreme forces. The rope life is finite and the safety is only ensured by inspection for the detection of wire breaks on a reference rope length, of cross-section loss, as well as other failures so that the wire rope can be replaced before a dangerous situation occurs. Installations should be designed to facilitate the inspection of the wire ropes.

Lifting installations for passenger transportation require that a combination of several methods should be used to prevent a car from plunging downwards. Elevators must have redundant bearing ropes and a safety gear. Ropeways and mine hoistings must be permanently supervised by a responsible manager and the rope must be inspected by a magnetic method capable of detecting inner wire breaks.

The end of a wire rope tends to fray readily, and cannot be easily connected to plant and equipment. There are different ways of securing the ends of wire ropes to prevent fraying. The common and useful type of end fitting for a wire rope is to turn the end back to form a loop. The loose end is then fixed back on the wire rope. Termination efficiencies vary from about 70% for a Flemish eye alone; to nearly 90% for a Flemish eye and splice; to 100% for potted ends and swagings.

When the wire rope is terminated with a loop, there is a risk that it will bend too tightly, especially when the loop is connected to a device that concentrates the load on a relatively small area. A thimble can be installed inside the loop to preserve the natural shape of the loop, and protect the cable from pinching and abrading on the inside of the loop. The use of thimbles in loops is industry best practice. The thimble prevents the load from coming into direct contact with the wires.

A wire rope clip, sometimes called a clamp, is used to fix the loose end of the loop back to the wire rope. It usually consists of a U-bolt, a forged saddle, and two nuts. The two layers of wire rope are placed in the U-bolt. The saddle is then fitted to the bolt over the ropes (the saddle includes two holes to fit to the U-bolt). The nuts secure the arrangement in place. Two or more clips are usually used to terminate a wire rope depending on the diameter. As many as eight may be needed for a 2 in (50.8 mm) diameter rope.

The mnemonic "never saddle a dead horse" means that when installing clips, the saddle portion of the assembly is placed on the load-bearing or "live" side, not on the non-load-bearing or "dead" side of the cable. This is to protect the live or stress-bearing end of the rope against crushing and abuse. The flat bearing seat and extended prongs of the body are designed to protect the rope and are always placed against the live end.

An eye splice may be used to terminate the loose end of a wire rope when forming a loop. The strands of the end of a wire rope are unwound a certain distance, then bent around so that the end of the unwrapped length forms an eye. The unwrapped strands are then plaited back into the wire rope, forming the loop, or an eye, called an eye splice.

A Flemish eye, or Dutch Splice, involves unwrapping three strands (the strands need to be next to each other, not alternates) of the wire and keeping them off to one side. The remaining strands are bent around, until the end of the wire meets the "V" where the unwrapping finished, to form the eye. The strands kept to one side are now re-wrapped by wrapping from the end of the wire back to the "V" of the eye. These strands are effectively rewrapped along the wire in the opposite direction to their original lay. When this type of rope splice is used specifically on wire rope, it is called a "Molly Hogan", and, by some, a "Dutch" eye instead of a "Flemish" eye.

Swaging is a method of wire rope termination that refers to the installation technique. The purpose of swaging wire rope fittings is to connect two wire rope ends together, or to otherwise terminate one end of wire rope to something else. A mechanical or hydraulic swager is used to compress and deform the fitting, creating a permanent connection. Threaded studs, ferrules, sockets, and sleeves are examples of different swaged terminations.

A wedge socket termination is useful when the fitting needs to be replaced frequently. For example, if the end of a wire rope is in a high-wear region, the rope may be periodically trimmed, requiring the termination hardware to be removed and reapplied. An example of this is on the ends of the drag ropes on a dragline. The end loop of the wire rope enters a tapered opening in the socket, wrapped around a separate component called the wedge. The arrangement is knocked in place, and load gradually eased onto the rope. As the load increases on the wire rope, the wedge become more secure, gripping the rope tighter.

Poured sockets are used to make a high strength, permanent termination; they are created by inserting the wire rope into the narrow end of a conical cavity which is oriented in-line with the intended direction of strain. The individual wires are splayed out inside the cone or "capel", and the cone is then filled with molten lead-antimony-tin (Pb80Sb15Sn5) solder or "white metal capping",zincpolyester resin compound.

Donald Sayenga. "Modern History of Wire Rope". History of the Atlantic Cable & Submarine Telegraphy (atlantic-cable.com). Archived from the original on 3 February 2014. Retrieved 9 April 2014.

Conventional pattern-welded Damascus steel uses alternating layers of steel which will etch at different rates to provide contrast between the two different types. Layer counts can be modified by using thin stock, taller billets, or by cutting, stacking, and re-welding the billet.

I previously wrote about the history of pattern-welded Damascus steel in this article about Damascus steel myths. I did not provide a full history of pattern-welded Damascus steel in that article nor can I do so in this one. For convenience I will refer to “pattern-welded Damascus steel” simply as Damascus steel for the rest of this article. Damascus steel was produced anciently and production of it continued into the early 20th century especially in rifles. It was popularized in the USA as a knife material by Bill Moran starting in 1973. In the 1970’s and 1980’s there was a steady evolution of different patterning techniques in Damascus to make different types and looks of the final steel. One of the patterning techniques explored was the use of specific images in the steel, recognizable pictures, words, etc. Gun barrels were produced in the 19th and early 20th centuries with the name of the gun manufacturer forged into the Damascus [2]. Daryl Meier was able to use a similar technique in 1978 to produce Damascus steel that had his last name in it:

The knife was produced from “multi-bar” Damascus which you can see with the different sections, the bottom being a twist pattern, above that the “USA” section, then the flags, and finally another twist Damascus bar. Below you can see a closeup of one of the flags in the knife.

Both the stars in the flag produced by Meier and the hunter scene produced by Schwarzer used wire EDM blocks to produce the images. This requires two large blocks of steel in contrasting materials where a male and female block are produced so that once mated they can be forged to the final solid piece. Once etched the two different materials will be different colors so that the image is visible. Wire EDM and large blocks of steel are very expensive so this method has never had particularly widespread use.

In the mid-1980’s, Steve Schwarzer was presenting on Damascus steel at a Jim Batson hammer-in. Gary Runyon was working for Allegheny Technology and had access to nickel powder. Runyon was attempting to get nickel powder to stick to cable to produce a nickel-infused cable Damascus. Schwarzer suggested that he put it in a piece of pipe so that the powder could not escape. In the early 90’s Schwarzer had his signature cut out with wire EDM and was attempting to stuff thin nickel sheet around the signature but it was not working. He contacted Runyon to acquire nickel powder and poured that around the wire-cut signature instead.

Pelle Billgren was the CEO of Söderfors [7], a division of Erasteel, a producer of powder metallurgy steel. I wrote about the history of powder metallurgy steel in this article. Billgren visited bladesmith Kay Embretsen who produced Damascus steel using traditional methods. They decided together to develop a method using the powder metallurgy steel to produce a Damascus steel product. This method relies on “hot isostatic pressing” of two or more steel powders to produce relatively large billets in different patterns. They submitted a patent application in Sweden in the beginning of 1994 [8]. This product was branded as Damasteel and is still sold today.

Hank Knickmeyer is another USA bladesmith that started using powder in the early 1990’s. Knickmeyer had heard about the use of powder from Steve Schwarzer and Daryl Meier. Knickmeyer credits Daryl Meier for teaching him many patterning techniques when he got started with Damascus steel. Knickmeyer was aware of the wire EDM work being done by Meier and Schwarzer but felt it was too expensive to be worth it. Knickmeyer had been experimenting with the use of different steel shapes and odd pieces in canister Damascus but needed a filler in between the pieces. He started with steel “sandblasting grit” to fill in the pieces. Hank says that he is most proud of the way that he used “distortion” of the bars of steel as he forged them to make unique and interesting patterns. Hank told me that he presented the use of this powder method at the 1994 ABANA conference in St. Louis. He suggested that I attempt to find a list of presenters from that conference to check his dates. The summary of the 1994 conference did not list Knickmeyer’s name though it was a summary of the highlights, not a full list of presenters. So if powder Damascus was presented there it apparently wasn’t a highlight (Ha!). I did find, however, that Knickmeyer presented at the 1995 conference of the Florida chapter of ABANA where he discussed mosaic Damascus.

Ed Schempp was experimenting with different powder metals around 1996 where he tried some unusual combinations like canister Damascus with solids and powder nickel. He also later attempted some stainless steel powder mixed with tungsten carbide. Sources for powder steel were rare at this time. The first iron-based powder he purchased was “reduced iron” which is produced for fortifying breakfast cereal and other foods. It was purchased in a 750 pound drum so it was split between Ed Schempp, Devin Thomas, and a few others. Because this was iron it had insufficient carbon for good hardness and contrast after etching in acid. So they were adding graphite to increase the carbon content of the iron. The graphite was lighter than the iron so it tended to float to the top. Schempp added WD-40 to the graphite so it would stick to the iron and better mix through. Schempp also made a competition chopping knife using 1084 and 3V powders along with 15N20 and roller chain. He successfully cut 7 pieces of free hanging rope with the knife.

Devin Thomas used long pieces of nickel sheet to form different shapes and then fill them with powder. This provided a cheaper method than the use of wire EDM blocks for producing images. Relatively intricate designs can be produced this way without expensive wire EDM.

A Knife produced by William Henry Knives (circa 2000) which was one of four pieces commissioned by Billy F. Gibbons of ZZ Top. The Damascus steel was produced by Devin Thomas using nickel sheet and steel powder which has the letters “ZZ TOP” forwards and backwards.

Devin made a piece of Damascus with a fish in it using his nickel sheet and powder method and showed it at Rick Dunkerley’s hammer-in in 1997. Dunkerley is one of the original members of the “Montana Mafia” which included Shane Taylor, Barry Gallagher, and Wade Colter. The four had been producing a range of different mosaic Damascus steel patterns and the use of powder offered new possibilities. At Dunkerley’s 1998 hammer-in he presented how to produce mosaic Damascus using nickel sheet and powder. Rick Dunkerley produced a knife for the 1999 Blade show using powder steel and nickel sheet for the Damascus. At that time Dunkerley only knew of one other person who had produced a knife using powder (Schwarzer). So despite the use of powder by Schwarzer and Knickmeyer in the early to mid-90’s, it hadn’t really begun to build in popularity until about 1998 or 1999.

Another powder Damascus knife produced by Dunkerley. The inset piece in the handle is fish Damascus produced by Devin Thomas described earlier in the article. Image provided by Eric Eggly of PointSeven Studios.

Before the mid-90’s, there were a variety of steels being used in Damascus such as W1, 1095, 5160, 52100, A203e, and others. There was no wide agreement about the appropriate steels to use, and forge welding could be difficult with all of those different steels with varying compatibility. Rick Dunkerley tells me that Devin Thomas began encouraging people to switch to 1084 and 15N20 because they were easier to forge weld and very compatible for forging and heat treating. 15N20 has a similar carbon content to 1084 but with a 2% nickel addition to provide contrast after etching. When stock for Damascus steel became regularly supplied by people like Jeff Carlisle of Swains Spring Service, 1084 and 15N20 became the standard choices.

After learning about powder Damascus from Rick Dunkerley, Jeff Carlisle acquired 1084 and 4600e powders to sell to any Damascus makers that wanted to use it. 4600e was similar to 15N20 so it was easy to use for Damascus steel makers that were using 1084 and 15N20 sheet of plate in their Damascus. Bob Kramer found the source for 4600e that Carlisle began purchasing for sale to Damascus steel makers. Because of the ubiquity of 1084 and 15N20, 1084 and 4600e were easy choices as alternatives to the prior sheet and bar stock. Somewhat later Kelly Cupples also became a popular supplier of powder and sheet for Damascus steel.

Many of those I interviewed expressed how much of a collaborative atmosphere there was at this time in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. There were many small discoveries related to Damascus steel patterning techniques and who offered each one is a bit difficult to track down now. There were several hammer-ins at the shops of different people like Ed Schempp, Rick Dunkerley, Shane Taylor, Jim Batson, and John Davis. There was a lot of sharing between Damascus steel makers at that time leading to rapid growth of different techniques. I obtained a copy of “Hammer Doodles” by Joe Olson (thanks John Davis) where Joe illustrated demonstrations from several different Damascus steel makers between 1997 and 1999, which you can see here: Hammer Doodles. His illustrations included humor and some good information on making steel, to boot.

Many other Damascus steel makers at this time began experimenting with powder and offering their own tweaks to the process, people such as John Davis, Gary House, and Robert Eggerling along with those mentioned so far. John Davis sent me a photo of a knife he made in 2000 where he made a lion using nickel sheet and it won “Best Damascus” at the 2000 Oregon Knife Collectors Association show. So it was pretty shortly after Dunkerley’s knife that others were making their own.

With teaching of powder techniques being more widespread and easy availability of powders to use, the number of Damascus makers using powder and nickel sheet grew rapidly. One of the most impressive users of nickel sheet and powder for “picture Damascus” is Cliff Parker, which you can see an example of below:

Matt Diskin saw a presentation of powder Damascus produced with powder and thin sheets and first tried using a similar method. However, Diskin had learned CAD in college and was familiar with laser cutting and waterjet methods. He used laser cutting to cut shapes out of sheet steel and then stacked them on top of each other and then filled that with powder. Matt tells me that he first produced steel using an elephant that he cut out. Because of the much lower cost of this method when compared with wire EDM other makers were interested like Steve Schwarzer and Shane Taylor. Diskin produced plates for several of those makers. Diskin’s favorite was Shane Taylor who did interesting and unique images like dragons which you can see below:

Powder isn’t only used for the creation of images. Perhaps its most common use is as filler material when making Damascus with bicycle chain or ball bearings. While images were an exciting new possible use for patterning in Damascus, powder offers other more subtle patterning techniques. The use of powder continues in a range of different Damascus pieces. Powder is applicable in any situation where it is difficult or impossible to fill steel in between other types of “solid” steel stock.

Damascus steel has greatly grown within the knifemaking community since the 1970’s when it first gained popularity. Patterning techniques have evolved to where a large range of possibilities are available, from simple random to complex mosaic patterns. The use of powder is a fun one to cover for my site since I like to discuss different material types and creative uses of steel for knives. There are many people who contributed to the level of mastery we see today among the greatest Damascus steel makers. Understanding the development of these processes and the methods that are used in making more complex pieces means that future Damascus steel producers will be able to take Damascus to further heights. And buyers will have a greater appreciation of the knives that they purchase and the work that the maker put into it.

Skiving, cutting, shaping — this authentic Damascus steel-bladed knife does it all. One of the oldest and most versatile knives used in leatherwork, this Japanese-style skiving knife cuts leather beautifully. Use this knife for general leatherwork, cutting and skiving. You can use it to cut patterns and square ends, and to make fine, delicate cuts.

The authentic Damascus blade features a beautiful grain pattern. The blade is made from high carbon stainless steel and features a beautiful pakkawood handle. Suitable for both right- and left-handed users.

Winner of the JCK Tucson Design Challenge, our Snakeskin Damascus ring offers the strength of American-forged Damascus steel combined with an interior of our proprietary Forged Carbon Fiber. The first of its kind, the ring offers a unique raised pattern, giving it a one-of-a-kind look and feel.

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It is believed that Damascus blades were forged directly from small cakes of steel (named "wootz") produced in ancient India. A sophisticated thermomechanical treatment of forging and annealing was applied to these cakes to refine the steel to its exceptional quality. However, European bladesmiths were unable to replicate the process, and its secret was lost at about the end of the eighteenth century. It was unclear how medieval blacksmiths would have overcome the inherent brittleness of the plates of cementite (Fe3C, a mineral known as cohenite) that form in steel with a carbon content of 1–2 wt%, as well as how the steel"s characteristic banding could have arisen from these plates.

Using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, we have now also detected carbon nanotubes in a specimen taken from a genuine Damascus sabre (sabre no.10 (ref. 6); sample kindly provided by E. J. Kläy of Berne Historical Museum, Switzerland) produced by the famous blacksmith Assad Ullah in the seventeenth century. Its microstructure has been investigated previouslyFig. 1) after dissolution of the sample in hydrochloric acid (for methods, see supplementary information). Some remnants (Fig. 1c) show evidence of incompletely dissolved cementite nanowires

Figure 1: High-resolution transmission electron microscopy images of carbon nanotubes in a genuine Damascus sabre after dissolution in hydrochloric acid.

a, b, Multiwalled tubes with the characteristic layer distance d ≈ 0.34 nm (ref. 12), as indicated by the Fourier transforms (see insets). Scale bars: 5 nm (a) and 10 nm (b). In b, the tubes are bent like a rope. c, Remnants of cementite nanowires encapsulated by carbon nanotubes, which prevent the wires from dissolving in acid. Scale bar, 5 nm. The fringe spacing of the wire is 0.635 nm, taken from the Fourier transform (inset), and is attributed to the (010) lattice planes of cementite.