Pattern welding question???

[Bobby Urban]

Well I finally bought some known steel.  Just received $200.00 worth of 1080 and 15n20 from Kelly Cupples and realized this is possibly a lifetime of damascus pounding material for me. Geesh you get a lot of steel for 200 dollars.  Most of it was purchaced to make pattern welded blades with a few larger pieces mixed in for mono steel blades.  Because I have never ordered steel I just told Kelly what I was looking for and ask him to put together a box for me.  

My question is:  Before I get to welding up a billet do I need to do anything to the steel?  Obviously this is very clean, new steel but do I need to wipe it down with acetone or anything?  Grind the slabs at all?  

Also, would you recommed welding the edges shut with my mig or just tack them together and use flux?  Do you flux between the steel pieces before you tack them or just flux the edges while welding/forging?

Thanks

[Doug Campbell]

Kelly carries good stuff Bobby, it will work fine.

You will need to clean the mill scale off the 1080 to shiny metal.

Just "tack" you billet together good enough to hold everything then after the initial forge weld you'll want to grind off the mig welds to elliminate the possibility of including that into your pattern.

I heat my billet to around 2000º then apply my flux just to the edges so capilary action will pull it between the layers, put it back in the forge to contiune heating to 2250º or so the weld.

Have fun!

[Bobby Urban]

Thanks Doug - I do not have any conventional way to tell the temp in my forge so I heat it until it looks sweaty, let it soak a bit and weld.  So far, so good - for a rookie.  I am lookng forward to working with some quality, known steel.