a couple new ones in works

[Don Krag]

I host almost-monthly hammer-ins here at my place and the last one's project was welding up cable damascus. Here's what I made from the billet we did at the hammer-in.
 
OAL is ~9"
Drop-point, single edged with a bit of a clip on the top first couple inches.
 
I have some tan on black G10 I layered up last night That I'll use for the handle slabs with some black canvas micarta pins. It will be inset from the edges of the tang so that about 1/8" of the tang is visible around the edge and the lanyard hole will have a cut-out section in the slabs as well. I'll go back and filework the entire upper edge and rear edge, then re-etch a bit to darken it to blend in with the rest of the blade.

Sometimes cable damascus can be kind of boring looking after you've seen it a million times. This one came out a little different than most of the cable I've welded up in the past. The majority of the strands were very high carbon and etched very dark after heat treating (manganese alloyed in maybe?). The center wire bundle had some low carbon strands that make the light streaks. I really like the pattern and contrast in this one.

The second pic is a seax I'm working on. The blade is ~13.5" long. I plan on trying some new things as pracxtice for some larger planned projects for this Summer. It'll get some runic inscription chiseled in and filled with silver wire. Blade is W1 on the edge and spine, 1018 and 1050 twist in the center two bars. The handle is planned to be carved bone with fittings of wrought iron with copper/silver twisted wire inlay in some bands in the guard (Jeff Pringle did an awsome one a while back and gave some really good tips www.vikingswordsmith.com.)
 

[Joel]

That top one looks like it really does have nice contrast.  I find most damascus, except for the mosaic types, to be pretty boring but that has a nice look to it.

[Don Krag]

That one was rubbed down with polishing paper and remained very dark. As the first blade from this cable, it's going to get quite a bit of testing. I've never really been impressed with most cable knives' abilities, but this one is showing promise. It was an interesting wire arrangement that didn't seem to fit the ASTM standards I looked up. based on the etching pattern there seemed to be three types of steel used in it, with only the centermost wire in each sub-bundle being low carbon. I hope it performs well since I like the contrast and pattern.....and I have 6 feet of it! I usually just keep it around for teaching forge welding and doing demos since it's a great beginner's project and a crowd pleaser.