Damascus Steel part 2

Last nights damascus class did not go as well as last week. I prepared my billet for folding by grinding off the scale. I was able to get it folded at the beginning of class like I had planned, but while we were folding, the billet broke. So we had to tack weld the halves together which is not the ideal method. I then heated it back up and away we went on the press to forge weld it. Well it started off good but then one side began to slip at an angle which made it bulge out on one side, then the other end began to split apart. No matter what my teacher and I tried to do, we could not get the split to weld back together so we cut it off. This sucks because now I have a little less material to work with for the billet, but I did keep the scrap pieces and am going to try thinning them down for earrings, a necklace pendant and maybe a small carving knife. The billet end still had a small split so we just used the welder instead of the press.
After all that craziness, I was able to get a few presses in and begin to draw the billet out for another fold next week. The press made my billet go into a diamond shape, so the first thing I will have to do next Tuesday is get it back into a square, which is not as easy as it may sound. With only three classes left, I don't think I will be getting the layer count I had orginally planned for.