Peyton Ramm uses the 3D printing process for canister patterns to make his dream knife.

It was ABS journeyman smith Peyton Ramm’s dream to make a knife themed after his favorite childhood TV show, Dragon Ball, and the new 3D printing process for canister patterns provided him with the perfect vehicle to do so.

“Before I heard about 3D printing, I dreaded the idea of paying someone to wire EDM every single dragon ball out, but my good friend Ron Hardman introduced the idea,” Peyton wrote. “I sent him pictures of Gohan [a prominent character in the Dragon Ball series] and the dragon balls, and asked him to recreate the image in the best way possible to forge down. His students at Kilroy’s Workshop got a rough draft for me and once I approved it, they printed and sent it.”

Peyton stated he had to build a new forge just to do the canisters, as he only had a vertical forge and it’s important to forge weld lightly on the two end caps first before welding the sides.

“My first billet fell apart because of this, a mistake I didn’t [repeat],” he wrote. He combined the two images with a flower mosaic he made with a damascus of 1095 carbon and 15N20 nickel-alloy steels to break the pattern up, and finally had his damascus. From there he matched the blade and bolsters as best he could so it would look like an uninterrupted transition.

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