Trying to make Japanese Katana | The Forge Fire | Forum

Will that be OK?  OK for what?  If you're looking to make something to hang on the wall, then 14/18 gauge steel will be fine.  And you can fold it as many times as you want, or not fold it at all, it won't make any difference.

If you're looking to make a tool that will hold an edge, you need a high carbon steel (at least .60 percent carbon) to be able to heat treat.  1080 and 1084 (.80 - .84 percent carbon) are considered good basic tool steels

Regarding the folding, that was only necessary back when you couldn't just go out and buy a bar of tool steel and everything was made by hand, mainly to distribute the high carbon steel throughout the blade but a pattern was also a result of the different types of steel folded together.  Nowadays, it's done mainly to give a pattern to the steel and the higher the number of layers, the finer the lines of the pattern. 

Here's about 50 layers

This one's about 150

This one's about 300

Most folks say you start to lose the pattern at around 400 layers.

For this effect, you need to be able to forge weld bars of high carbon steel with bars of high nickle steel.