Rocketman,
To quote yourself "Carbon can't be mechanically driven into iron - it must "disolve" in a high heat environment."
I know what you mean, the carbon must be absorbed on a molecular level, but when you're standing there with the tongs in one hand and a hammer in the other, molecular injection is not the model the old timers had you thinkin' about. You layer and sometimes folded (rarely) the carbon (ground bone and charcoal dust) into your separate bars. After welding with heat and hammer, the single massive bar is twisted hot with borax and the remaining slag is driven out using heat and hammer.
Well at least this is the technique I was taught or maybe my perception of what I was taught.(30 yrs ago)
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Well I could sense that you weren't buying that concept, and it's easy to see why...I'm not in disagreement with you, I just didn't want you to go away thinking that I had my ass on completely backwards...so in defense of erred (maybe) concept, I would like to post his page from a book published by Johns Hopkins University press (1960's)
Maybe you can't mechanically drive carbon into steel, but we didn't know that, so we went ahead and did it anyway...My blacksmithing experiments, unlike my case color experiments, rarely resulted in defeat. Bob Chambers
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P.S. except for the common beginners mistake of forging the billet way too wide, I can think of no other reason to make longitudinal folds. The longitudinal folding technique allows the smith to concentrate the high carbon area at the cutting edge of the blade (in the crease). Wrong or right, that was the idea. Keep in mind that I learned farm implement smithing, the only kind still in existence in these parts. 100+ years ago, this technique was used when making implement blades out of regular mild steel. Nowadays most steel choppers just run over the cutting edge with some hardface welding rod and grind it sharp, the technology has changed, but the idea is the same.
