Hi. I’m new here. Looks like this area hasn’t been active for a couple of years, but I figured I’d introduce myself and ask a quick question anyway.
Name’s Jake. I’ve done a bit of blacksmithing and knife forging in the past. I’m finally finishing up my new shop/forge here. I’m very happy to be getting back into smithing.
Where is (are) the best place(s) to buy nickel stock? Is the most common thickness 0.04” when making Damascus?
Edit: Realized I didn't put any of my work up; so I linked my Instagram (https://instagram.com/jakejohnsonblades) and made my first knife my profile picture, if anyone is interested.
Benjamin Abbott
Hi Jake,
One place that I buy nickel sheet from is Jantz: https://knifemaking.com/products/201-pure-nickel-sheet-stock?_pos=12&_sid=4ac8192c9&_ss=r I use 0.010" for most of my stuff, but that's just my aesthetic choice. Other thicknesses will make bigger or smaller stripes, obviously.
Jake Johnson
Awesome. I'll go there. Thanks for the reply.
Hey, do you know what a steel-nickel weld looks like atomically and molecularly, meaning nickel and carbon and their interaction within or against some sort of carbonic iron alloy when force and heat are applied? Hopefully that makes sense. Chemistry isn’t my area of expertise. Physics isn’t either.
My guess before seeing you do it would have been 'if it works at all it would be more like some sort of glue layer than a true weld'. Does it create some sort of carbon bridge from one layer of steel to the other through the nickel, or can nickel truly weld to steel?
Thanks again. Looking forward to working through your courses.
Tristan Benedict
I use Maritime Knife Supply for a lot of my stuff.
https://maritimeknifesupply.com/products/nickel-sheet-stock?variant=47169192722736
The sheet is bigger, which may be good or bad depending on what you want to do with it.
Jake Johnson
Thank you, Tristan. I knew of Jantz and have purchased from them in the past, but I’ve been seeing MKS a ton during my Google searches. I wasn’t sure about them, so this is great. Thanks again.