Brought to welding heats, steels of different compositions (or iron and steel) can be welded together with pressure. Traditionally this was done by a Japanese bladesmith. The materials are brought to welding heats at the forge, one metal is placed over the other on an anvil and are struck with a hammer to merge them.
A piece of high carbon steel and two smaller pieces of wrought-iron are put on a larger bar of wrought-iron.
Iron sands and boric acids are used as our forge welding powder, this is one of our secret ingredients!
Another of heated wrought iron is put on top of all the pieces.
The photo at the left shows the high carbon steel being sandwiched between
wrought iron. The laminated steel becomes two double bevel blades. Heat
and hammer, heat and hammer!
The photos above double bevel, below single bevel: The forge weld lines on the knives are clearly visible.
It's easy to see the structure of the blade. A thin layer of high carbon
steel has been forge welded to a much thicker layer of wrought iron.
There are several advantages to this process. For example, the iron backing
is tough and dampens vibrations, resharpening is easy, and the blade holds
an edge longer than western blades because of hard.
The structure of laminated steel blades can be compared to that of a pencil.
A pencil is composed of a wood and a lead. The wood provides the dampening
for the lead. So the pencil can have a hard lead core, but is still tough
and durable. Without the wood, it would break easily. Also, the soft wood
allows the pencil to be sharpened easily.