Battleship Texas WIP

[Jason Fry]

This is the beginning of what I hope will be my most epic knife to date. I suspect it'll take me 6 months minimum to get through the process. Given the complexity and the fact that I'm working with pure unobtainium, it seems like a good idea to record the WIP thread. Target is to finish in time for Blade Texas, but it may take until Blade Atlanta 2023.

So where do I start... First off, I love Texas, and I love history. As it turns out, there's a World War 2 gunship called the USS Texas that was commissioned in 1914 and decommissioned in 1948. Since roughly then, it has been known at the "Battleship Texas" and has been a public display/attraction in the Houston area near San Jacinto. In my search for history items, I was reminded of the ship.

And so through various means and diverse places, I ultimately obtained a GREAT collection of items related to the Texas.
- Bearings from the gun turret. These are about 1" in diameter, and I ended up with six of them.
- Wood from the deck. This was purchased in the "normal" way...
- Side plate from the hull. Barter/trade. Includes a Texas shaped cutout that I'll incorporate in the stand.
- Shrapnel from Okinawa. The Texas shelled Okinawa extensively during the WW2 battle there.
- Silver half dollars, 1914 and 1948 for the commission/decommission year. Ebay.
- A small commemorative tourist coin from the park from the 1960's. Ebay.

Next post has pictures of the raw items. From here I'll start with all the cleanup and preliminary forging over the next few weeks.

 

[Jason Fry]

I will try attaching and hosting the pics here rather than linking to the pics elsewhere.

 

[Jason Fry]

OK, started the prep. Welded the BB's to little sticks of 1/4 rod so I can forge them a bit. Want to get them from round down to 1/4" thick with square sides. Ends I'll leave rounded likely. Plan there is to stack with probably W2 for an intentionally low contrast section. I want it to look like "sky" at sunset, but not bold and bright.

Next I started cutting up the plate. Most of it is 3/8 thick at the thick parts, but is pitted at least 3/32 deep in some spots. There was also a piece that had two rivets in it. It all sparks a little bit more than mild, so has some alloy but not much carbon. Plan for this is to also forge down to 1/4 or 3/16 to get uniform thickness and flatten out some of the pitting without losing so much material. I intend to put a couple of layers of it early into the "waves" billet that'll end up 300ish layers. The rest I'll stack with 15n20 for the fittings and frame handle billet.

The rivet posed an interesting thought. The shank was right at .7" It crossed my mind that if the color is right it might make the "sun" to echo the Japanese flag and improve the scenery. LONG way from that part of the project. Won't be in play till the very final weld months from now.

 

[3fifty7]

Looking forward to every bit of this !

 

[John Cahoon]

Subscribed!!

 

[jfk1110]

I'm in for the ride!!!

 

[donnord]

A great Idea. Good luck with the build.

 

[ADBrown]

Sounds like a forged in fire episode!

 

[Jason Fry]

Got up and started working at 7 this morning. Just stopped for the day as far as forging goes. I ran out of propane before I was quite done, but it’ll do.

First I forged the bearings flat for stacking. Since they’re all the same size material, it was pretty easy to get them all about the same size as far as stacking goes.

 

[Jason Fry]

Next I forged the ship material. It was in goofy jagged mountain range looking shape, with LOTS of pitting, so I forged it out into more uniform flat bar. My plan is to stack it with some 15n20 and maybe nickel foil and use it for fittings and frame.

 

[Jason Fry]

Here’s what I started with this morning.
.

I also welded up the three billets. Ran out of propane while drawing out the last one. Gonna be some tall stacks.

Tons of cutting and cleanup is next.

 

[Jason Fry]

It got hot today, and the sunlight was bright. I recently built a forced air burner to replace my 3/4” Venturi and it definitely gets hotter.

 

[Jason Fry]

Got the billets sliced and stacked. Now they need to be ground clean, restacked, welded etc. The front two stacks I’ll weld up, draw out And weld the two stacks together. Back stack will get another 4x restack after the next weld.

 

[Jason Fry]

This is one of the cooler parts of the project. I have Okinawa shrapnel, and some bits of the ship plate. Soaked it in vinegar a few hours and it cleaned right up with a scotchbrite belt. Put it in a can with 1095 powder hoping for darker contrast. Fingers crossed, sticking this can is right at the cutting edge of my skills. Have hit more than I’ve missed, but have missed a few.


Traveling next weekend, plus it’s stupid hot. It’ll be a few weeks before the next welding session. Cleaned and prepped the other 4 stacks also.

 

[Jason Fry]

Welded up all the restacks from the last session

Can welded good. Tomorrow will be clean and restack, and probably weld and draw a couple of billets that will be good to go after that final weld.



And a few shenanigans.

 

[BD_01]

I’m expecting a beautiful plastic golf club-rubber ducky Damascus.

 

[Jason Fry]

I was planning on taking it easy today, but a guy wanted to come over and “help” (really watch lol) so I went ahead and prepped the billets again. Looks like I’ll weld in the midday heat.

Ship/15n20 is getting stacked to 62 for today, then 3x stack for the next session.
Can is getting doubled, and will get 4x cut and stacked again for the next session.
Regular billet is getting 5x to get to 405. That’ll be its final.
Bearings billet is getting doubled to 71. That’ll be it’s final.

I’m also writing this down in the shop as I go. Too many different ones going into this project, don’t want to mix them up.

I also have a test billet for a ladder/river pattern. Plan to forge a knife or two out of it today so I can check pattern.

 

[Jason Fry]

So all the welds went OK today. Got the sea and sky billets done and at 3/4" thick for laddering. Got the shrapnel can welded fine and drawn out for a restack. May twist it at the final if I can get the dimensions right. Got the ship ready to restack, although I got it mixed up a little and left it at 3/4". It'll be a tall stack of 2" pieces. Next work days on this project will be cleaning up and laddering the sea and sky. Of course nothing about what I'm planning to do will be traditional lol. I'll have to do some creative fixturing if I'm going to use the mill. May have to use the angle grinder instead.

One point of followup, the ladder/ROF billet came out really meh. Just random-ish pattern. You can "kind of" see the river, but it's unermarkable. The billet I did that on was only 1/4 to start with, so I cut about .1 deep cuts with a 3/16 endmill. May have worked better with deeper cuts or 1/4" mill but the outcome wasn't promising enough to continue down that road. I did forge a couple of kitchen knives out of the meh billet. One will be a small octagon handle slicer in the 6" range, the other a full tang in the 8" blade range, but it's only about 1.3" tall edge to spine. Probably push those down to 3/32".

I'd show pictures, but we all pretty much know what a welded up billet looks like

 

[Jason Fry]

Ground in the “ladder” grooves. Sea billet gets angled waves. Sky billet gets sun rays. Next time I’ll draw these out to 5/8 or so and start the cleanup/fitup process.

 

[Jason Fry]

So there’s been a development. The battleship itself is going in for major repairs. This will result in literally TONS of material. The battleship foundation is working with various artisans to make items from the material and sell them to raise funding for the restoration. I will be participating. I’ll make a different knife for the foundation.

One thing this means is that I will be accelerating the timeline for this project. I want this knife to hit the market right as the surplus of material drops. Got a few busy weeks ahead, but I’ll work in some knife days.