Damascus Steel From Milling Chips!

Thanks for watching guys, I have a bucket of grinding room floor dust I think we need to test next 👀👀. Please check out our sponsor today, LMNT I’m really excited to work with them as love the product! drinklmnt.com/forge

I would recommend putting a majority of the chips into the canister and filling the voids with the cast iron powder. Also let it soak in a little so the carbon content can combine with the two materials and make a possibly usable steel billet.

The difference in tool life in the milling inserts is because the round inserts are stronger because they don't come to a sharp point like triangular or square inserts. The round inserts also make a more gentle engagement with the material verses the sharp points of other inserts.

"Isn't that pretty" 11:37 😂 Guy's having a blast

Wow, I caught this one quickly Edit: My guess on the rounded face mill is there's more surface area doing the cutting vs. the triangular cutters.

A small high pitched 'yes' escaped my mouth when I saw this video

The lower melting point of cast iron is kinda the reason it get's used for casting in the first place. At 4.3% carbon content, the melting point of that eutectic iron-carbon alloy is lowest at 1147°C

I really like how you sealed the 4140 box in the press

If you still have some cast iron dust, try mixing it with charcoal first and making your own carbon steel.

I think if you add some river sand to the cast iron it'll help bind it, I think that's an old Japanese katana forging technique

Great to see your doing something with all those filings you removed from sharpening your teeth on that old power hammer!

Next week: making a sword from grinder dust

13:18 larger corner radius causes “chip thinning” takes less horsepower and is a more consistent load on the carbide. Less chatter and better cutting geometry on the new insert.

I’ve always loved how Alex uses these tongs. So smooth and effortless

Try making Wootz/Crucible steel instead of forge welding maybe?

This is giving me the "can you forge a meteorite" vibes. I'm going to say that it might be a better idea to melt the powder / shaving chips in a crucible to form a liquid that you can then cast into ingots would've been a better idea, then you can just take the ingots from there and do all your other projects with onwards. Also, there seems to be a lot of stuff in the powder / chips besides steel so maybe that's why the forge was billowing out the huge flames. I'm hoping Alec comes back to revisit this one soon!

Alec. I saw some other channel that if you spray paint the can on the inside, the chips will not stick to the can, and you can easily separate it after forge weld. Which should save you hours of grinding.

Making an epoxy table out of the chips would look really cool, especially with all of the blue chips.

Man, I appreciate your thirst for knowledge and trying new things!

The better performance and longer lastings of the round inserts has different reasons. First of all the working area is much bigger and has a lot more strengh to it, if you're removing a lot of material in one go. Furthermore I think the quality of those round inserts is much higher than your previous pointy ones. You've got a bunch of different shapes, materials and qualities of inserts for all the different metals and applications.