Home Forums Gear Knives and Blades About Damascus Blades...?

I would appreciate hearing your opinions (based on experience) about the suitability of a well made Damascus blade for a knife that would be used regularly. I have no experience with Damascus bug have my eye on a beautifully made folder. Thanks for your thoughts.

Dave

My thoughts: there is a great variation in the quality of damascus steels ranging from exceptionally good to extremely poor. You'll want to speak with or at least investigate the knife maker with regards to his steel selection.

I have built knives with cheap crap made in Pakistan, the blanks are cheap and they make for nice gifts but I wouldn't carry one. Letter openers, cheese cutters, and like, are acceptable uses for this cheap steel.

damascus is certainly beautiful & some CUSTOM FORGERS HAVE MADE THE MOST fantastic blades in the history of the world.my exspearance with most factory offerings was'nt very positive but a few custom forgers have produced blades that cut very well. i do'nt think anyone has produced a blade that can surpass the cutting endurance of the of the really good custom blades.however the casual user should be very satisfied with the good custom gang.cranky72

I bought these a few years back. I kept one, gave the others to my Brothers.
They have used them constantly. Neither are knife guys, and don't know any better than to just abuse a knife with all sorts of daily chores.
So far, both of those are holding up just fine. Mine has been taken much better care of.
David Winston made the steel, Jason made the knives.

Thank you.

d.

Damascus steels made in the US has improved substantially in the past 10 years, but is not of the overall quality of most Japanese damascus steels. I recommend that you google knife making steels to learn about the various qualities of steels being used for knife making. All of the suitable steels including damascus have good things and not so good things including machining and sharpening issues. Any metal that is easy to machine and to sharpen would probably not stay sharp very long and must be hardened. It all depends what steels the damascus are made of.

Any knife made of any steel is going to have to be resharpened eventually. Even steels like 10V and S90V will eventually need to be stropped at least. The Japanese do not have any "magic" steels they use that stay sharp forever. A quality damascus from a reputable supplier will give very satisfactory results with the proper heat treat. Typical damascus steels are 1095, 1084, W2, and 15N20; any of which will give you a 60+ rockwell hardness and hold just as good an edge as most any knife. I have in my shop some stainless damascus that is comprised of D2 and 19C27. Properly heat treated it will give service and cutting ability just like D2.

This Seax is on the way, from Kevin-the-Professor. Should have it by Saturday. Kevin made the Damascus in his shop.
It's a companion piece to the langsax he made me a couple of years ago. Steel is 1075 and 15N20. Blade length on this one is 10 inches. Handle is Walnut, accents are copper. Very period correct.
Yeah, I like Damascus/pattern welded stuff.

That's a cool knife. Traditional, and period correct. A 10 inch blade...? Way cool. Simple yet elegant. Very nice Damascus too.

Like antlers said, that is a very nice knife.

Pattern welded steel is no better than and hopefully no worse than its component parts. The only exception to that general statement is that perhaps a combination like 01 and L6 may give your that "goldilocks zone" quality of being almost as good of a slicer as straight O1 but tougher. Same for 10XX or W2 and 15N20. A number of year ago before cutting cometitions went "pro" Jerry Fisk ran a number of them at the ABS hammer-ins. One year, he asked Kevin Cashen to make a damascus "race knife" just to prove that they could be competitive with the straight carbon steel knives. He made a big chopper from O1 and L6 and WON! AND it was a gorgeous Persian style recurve knife, not one of the current cleaver style race knives. ;-)

well howdy there jdm61! Good to see another ABS Journeyman join us here. Welcome my friend.

One of the people I know Ray Kirk is a Mastersmith in the ABS . He is the first person I know that won the cutting competition at The Spirit of Steel Show that was held at Mesquite, Texas. His damascus was made of 52100 and 15n20.
He was also the only one in the competition that cut a business card in two while it was held by clothes pin. He cut it completely in two with out pulling it out of this light grip.
He did this back in 2002.

Ray is a really good guy. Like any event of that type, most of it is skill. The design construction and raw materials of the knife might give you that last 5%. Ian Allen-Rawlinson aka Longstrider is a Brit who came over to compete at Blade a couple of years back. he came in 5 IIRC, using a very heavy knife that he had mae himself from 3/8 thick O1 using a HT recipe recommend by Kevin Cashen. Ian learned to sharpen knives and tools from his grandfather who was a cabinetmaker. One of Ian's tricks is to take a lightweight Rizla cigarette paper folded in half and standing on its end and slice it in half with one stroke from his personal Buck 110. Now THAT is skill. LOL

I'm not sure where you got your info about "Japanese damascus" and its alleged superiority, but in the world of Japanese kitchen knives, the most expensive are those that are "honyaki" which roughly translated, means "true forged" What that means in English is 'mono steel" thats right, they are made from a single material, typical one of the Hitachi "paper" steels like white or blue. The laminated or san mai blades are cheaper. Most of the "damascus" that I see coming out of Japan is low carbon, low layer count stainless stuff used as cladding on kitchen knives. it probably doesn't even harden, but is just for looks and IMO, it looks like crap.
As for the last 10 years. while more complex patterns may have been developed in that time period, the materials used for making high carbon damascus have not changed much at all since smiths started using nickel bearing steel alike L6 or 15N20 instead of low carbon steel in order to get more contrast and keep the carbon content higher. if anything, the quality may have gone down in the lower enbd of the market because their are people mass producing the stuff now.You can get some high carbon damascus today for less per inch than what guys were charging for it in the late 70's and early 80's.

I did not write anything about "alleged superiority" of anything. I wrote quality. 20 years ago US damascus didn't have the quality steels available to them and didn't know how to put together the layers or to properly HT the bars or blades. There have been great strides in putting together 512 damascus in the last 10 years. Thanks anyway for your opinion.

Damasteel only thing I ever used worth a piss. Jerry McClure might get the hang of it someday.

That is fantastic!

Funny. What we now call damascus was not produced in Japan until recently. The European style pattern welded steel was reintroduced by Bill Moran at the 1973 Knifemakers Guild show in Kansas city. The various steels that we used today to make pet tern welded steel have been around for quite some time, In the case of tool steel like W2 or 52100, they have been around since before WW2 if not earlier. The most common steels used for stainless damascus by guys like Devin Thomas like AEB-L are some of the oldest stain resistant steels around. I am not sure what you mean by "512 damascus" but guys have been doing things pretty much the same for quite some time. Daryl Meier was asked by the former Governor of Illinois to make his "American Flag" mosaic damascus bowie to former President Bush���that's former President George H.W. Bush and the year was 1990. By that time Mr. Meier and others like Steve Schwarzer were already using a wire EDM machine to cut out pieces of pattern welded steel to make his mosaic patterns. He started playing around with pattern welding not long after the 1973 Guild Show. These are not "my opinions" but part of he history of the modern custom knife business. i can't tell you off the top of my head when some of the stuff was first done, but I can tell yo that by the time that i went to my first Guild Show in Orlando in 1992, Al Pendray had already made wootz and guys like Jerry Rados and Robbin Hudson had been making multi-bar "Turkish twist" steel for a while. So much for not knowing how to put the steels together. As for heat treating them, you do that the same as you would for the component steels. That is why you choose compatible steel combinations like say 1080, 1084, W2 or W2 and 15N20 (shallow hardening steels) or O1 and L6 (deep hardening). They harden pretty much the same, so you don't have to worry about the billet trying to tear itself apart when you quench it.

Sweet!!!!