well it is the end of December and as promised we're going to actually forge some Damascus now the trick with this one is as we've come a very long way in order to get here if you have made it to this video and you plan to follow out and actually make a piece of cable Damascus you've had to have mastered basic Forge welding to begin with and let me tell you friends that is no easy task but at any rate what we're going to go over is the forging of a piece of Damascus that is made from a steel cable and there's a couple of caveats I want to throw at you at this stage because once again this is the forged welding process it has a tendency to throw slag sparks and everything else so please please please make sure that all your safety equipment is in place friends this is where it starts to get a little hairy now let's first of all talk about what you're going to be working on when I say cable I made big honking cable you need to start with a cable that is no less than an inch in diameter and now this piece here is actually a rusty nasty piece of cable now I've had a lot of people tell me that you cannot Forge weld an old nasty rusty piece of cable and I'm going to contend that you can is there a better chance for inclusions and things like that absolutely however I have gotten good results from even nasty cable to good cable so if you will follow what I do there'll be a good chance you can get a good piece of Damascus out of this guy so first of all let's talk about preparation okay so one of the first things you want to make sure of is that you have plenty plenty of good flux I mean buckets of it it's going to be very critical for the rust that you're going to be taking off of the cable now the only other consideration you've got to have is you're going to have to let this bad boy soak in the heat because if there's rust oxidation you've got to give that time the flux time to eat everything off of it so that's how you get away with the dirty cable outside of that you got to take it put it in the fire heat up and then a good tight twist is going to be key to a good piece of porins Damascus so let me take the first heat flux it and what Gander okay once you brought this guy up the heat you need to flux it liberally I'm talking coated slaw [ __ ] in there let it sink let it soak because the boric acid will actually act to eat a lot of the nasties off of this thing don't get too ambitious what you want to do is you want to make sure that you you know do a 4 or 5 inch piece of this but don't try to forge out the whole bar like I said start small but as you can see this stuff is going to sizzle down it's going to cook into the actual metal fibers itself you want to put it back in the fire once you flux it bring it up to a heat and you want to pretty much soak it give that a flux time to get in there and do its work so we're going to pop it back in there and you don't want to bring this to forge welding heat yet you want it a good orange but probably nothing more than that like I said what you're doing right now is making sure that all the rust is going to fall off and that the boric acid has time to dissolve whatever nasties it can dissolve and if there's any hemp in the middle of the cable the hemp can burn out as well the next process when we come back out when it sure is nice and good if you've actually got to twist the cable a little bit tighter but I'll tell you more about that on this next round so every now then I forget to turn my microphone back on and this is one of those times so instead of live live audio you get to hear this voice over now once the cable comes out of the fire you want to make sure to lock it in the vise and use a pair of tongs a pair of channellocks works great for this and you want to twist the cable tighter now this is absolutely necessary to get a good pattern because the first time you hit it is going to have a city to spread the first forged weld heat that you want to make is a light welding heat you don't bring it all the way up because what you want to do is just pretty much tap it this causes all the fibers to stick together and once again if you try to just crush this thing at this point all those fibers will separate and that will not be a good thing you want to wait until your second heat until you really put the gussto to it as you can see the metal is a little hotter and I'm hitting a lot harder with the hammer this is what's really causing the fibers to fuse but you have to work it up very very slowly the real trick with cable is getting everything in position to forge weld remember because there are lots and lots of different little fibers it's going to have a tendency to separate so getting it into a square form first is absolutely crucial to getting a good weld this also helped knock some of the slag out and make sure everything's sealed up when you go for that final weld the third weld is going to come up and this is where you're going to start flattening the metal just a little bit so back to the fire and here we go with the third weld a full welding heat as you can see here now this is where I start flattening it into a rectangular bar now the great thing about doing the work this way and going all the way up to forge welding heat on three separate welds is the fact that you really have little what they call delamination you're not gonna have a large chance for that first well to fail because anything that you missed on the first go-around you'll get with a second and anything that you missed with the second go-around you will get on the third the first weld is absolutely crucial though because that is the weld that tax everything together now with this particular bar what we're going to do is we're going to leave it right there if you were doing blade stock you bring it on out to something a little thinner however I'm going to cut this off go ahead and acid etch it just to show you what pattern can be achieved by using this simple form so now I'll cut it off and take a few minutes to go with the acid etch guys it's been about 15 or 20 minutes and I have dropped the piece in a acid etch and I wanted to show you what the final piece looks like look at that now you can actually see the pattern and the grain of the cable Damascus as is it's very beautiful it can be manipulated in several different fashions I have not cleaned this up so this would not be the the final edge of the final polish but it is a very attractive piece of cable Damascus one weld and you're there so it is the simplest of all cable Damascus but however it is certainly a milestone for you as you start working into your knives so guys that is pretty much the deal with cable Damascus now yes it's pretty simple if you know the proper techniques such as the Forge welding the acid etching other things that we have built upon this month you need to know in order to produce that good piece of cable now the great thing about cable is the fact that you don't have to make fold after fold after fold it's one weld and you've got a piece of bonafide certified Damascus so guys I hope you learn a little something keep at it this is a difficult process so if it does not work right the first time don't sweat it keep at it keep trying and you will eventually have yourself a piece of real Damascus to show off to your friends and your family outside of that guys thank you so much for coming by and watching the little show I will see you again next month in January we've got a whole new slew of new items techniques tools maybe even axe and maybe even a piece of armour see you guys later before I left out I want to show you one final picture this is that same bar of Damascus that had been polished out using a buffing wheel now Damascus in every operation there are many different twists and different things you can do to tweak it this is one of them I want to show you that finished piece and isn't it an absolutely stunning pattern one forged weld on the cable so guys this is what you can do without having to go through a power hammer I have buddies or strikers this is very much within your grasp so I hope this has given you a better concept and better grasp on how to do the cable Damascus and of course if you have any questions shoot me an email take care guys you