This hunter came about as a result of some experimentation with damascus patterns. The steel is 1095C and 15n20, about 240 layers so the pattern is quite fine. I used my standard 'shark fin' design, with a full tang, cocobolo slabs and two stainless pins - fully epoxied.
What was the experiment you ask? I was really hoping to get s chevron/herringbone pattern down the side of the blade. To avoid potential issues of delaminating, i decided to try to stack my pattern internally in the billet and have the pattern come out to the surface as I ground in the blade shape. I started with a piece of flat 80 layer steel, then added two 27 layer pieces of twisted damascus with opposite twists to provide the chevrons, a piece of the flat 80 layer steel in the middle, the two twisted pieces again, placed opposite to the other side so that the chevrons would match on both sides, and last a piece of the straight 80 layer damascus. This all adds up to a lot of layers!
When I was ready to forge weld this billet together it was about the size of a large chocolate bar - maybe 1 inch by 1 inch by 6 inches. I got the billet up to welding temperature, did my initial weld by hammer to get things started and then moved to my press. The weld was great, all I had to do was draw out my new chunk of steel to blade size and I would have a nice piece of patterned steel from which I could make two or three nice blades.
Unfortunately, it did not work out exactly as planned. I figured out later that in the drawing out process, the inside of the billet stays relatively hot and pliant, while the outside gets cooled quickly and doesn't do a whole lot of moving except for the first few hammer blows. As a consequence, my twisted pieces that were providing the pattern, along with the centre piece of flat damascus, did almost ALL of the moving as the bar was drawn out to length. When I finished the hunter above, I found that chevron pattern had moved all the way to the centre of the billet and was therefore located right at the knife edge of the blade!
All in all, the blade and knife turned out very nice - basically a random damascus pattern with quite fine detail, but my chevron pattern got obliterated in the drawing out process.
Next time!
The next time I try for a chevron pattern, I'm going to try it the usual way; stacking full billets, forge welding them and then drawing out the bar - since the pattern is all the way through. I guess it would be the same process I went through before, except I would complete the forge weld and then turn the bar 90 degrees and draw it out on its edge. I have done some drawing out on the edge before when making 'W' damascus, but I was really hoping that I could avoide drawing out on the edge by being a little sneaky. Apparently not!