Ask a Knifemaker: The Truth About Damascus Steel
thetruthaboutknives.com
thetruthaboutknives.com
When steel quality varied widely between batches, you needed a reliable way to mix it up so that the overall properties of the resulting object were predictable. This evolved into a more sophisticated technique that gave you not only predictability but differential properties (harder steel at the edge, more ductile in the spine) and a pretty visual result.
The batch variability problem isn't a problem any more, and we can get differential properties with very precise heat treatments now, so all that's left is the pretty visual result.
So, if it appeals to you; great! Just don't think you're getting anything that's super magical above and beyond what a modern alloy can do.
I am not saying that most of it isn’t cosmetic - that is certaninly the point most of the time, but, for boutique knife makers, it can give you more options if what you want is not available in a commercially made alloy. Keep in mind that most commercial steels are not the “best possible” for knives, but frequently the best balance of performance, and manufacturability (I.e. they avoid very complicated heat treats, and very expensive hard grinding with lots of embedded carbides).
These days we have a molecular knowledge of steel and can control and test the microstructure at that scale. If you really want the best knife you look to metallurgists not artisans. Whatever you could do with Damascus steel you could do better with modern alloys and science.
There's nothing wrong with the old ways, but there is a lot of magical thinking about knives and swords that doesn't have much basis in reality. Buying in to the mythology can be fun as long as you don't get too attached to the myth and start confusing it with actual utility.
In other words, nobody owns a Rolex because they think it'll do a better job at letting them know the time.
Are you arguing that modern alloys and methods can do a better job at that than Damascus or other classical methods involving layering and folding?
But still, the patterns can be beautiful. I've seen blades with patterns that resemble engravings. Maybe the approaches could be merged, to yield modern performance with classic beauty.
Someone could certainly do some studies comparing methods and results, but anything of that matter would be very easy to bias.
What is clear is that classical methods are being employed by artists and not scientists. Mythology and visual appeal are being used to sell things, not quantifiable facts.
What matters now is mostly appearance. And maybe vague stuff about ability to keep an edge. But back in the day, you were in deep shit if your sword shattered. Or even got notched, if that put you off the flow.
In war, people mostly use polearms. In a sword fight, as has been shown in many HEMA videos i have seen, it's over in a single exchange. At that point it doesn't matter if your sword is shattered or not. And the idea that your sword being notched will 'put you off the flow' just doesn't buy it for me.
If you are using it in a battle and your sword breaks after the first exchange, what then?
Here is an hour long documentary answering your question: https://www.pbs.org/video/nova-secrets-viking-sword/
You're thinking of theatrical fencing. All that cling-clang-cling makes for great visuals and sound but is undesirable in real combat.
Unless you have two knights in full armor clobbering each other over the head (at which point a mace is probably more efficient than a delicate sword) sword-on-sword contact is a means of last resort when you can't move out of the way.
Although D&D may have taught you differently, a "sword block" is a wasted counter-attack. Why bother binding your sword if you could have used the opportunity to slip out of the way and catch the opponent off balance and end him?
In fact, blocking is what sidearms are for. Grab a dagger or a buckler and take down the opponent's sword without binding yours. If swords do touch in combat it's usually at an angle and just enough to deflect the blow without overcommitting too much to risk wasting a the chance to get in a counter.
(full disclosure: I'm talking about European medieval swords and from having watched experienced HEMA fighters)
But still, stuff happens.
I dunno, I did a bit of fencing and I know there are all sorts of ways to bind the blade and counterattack simultaneously.
In fact, the a HUGE portion of the Die Blume des Kampfes (historical weapons manual) clearly includes a variety of sword-binding techniques. See the pictures yourself if you don't believe me:
http://www.wiktenauer.com/wiki/Die_Blume_des_Kampfes#Sword
It would seem that binding, blocking, and counter-attacking is a fundamental skill of historical sword fighters.
In my experience, it is virtually impossible to avoid the opponent's blade like a Hollywood sword master. Swords are surprisingly light when held with two hands (even a 5lb Claymore moves very quickly, even in the hands of a weakling!!), far faster than you can move your torso or even legs.
EDIT: Lots of other stuff here, but I was ranting. So I deleted it.
The reason the 5lb sword still moves swiftly is that it's not used for a Hollywood cleave.
But about those Claymores. You're right that they'd be slow for cleaves, with the huge rotational inertia. But in melee, it's my impression (perhaps colored by too much fiction) that one can make that an advantage. Basically, by never reversing direction, but rather by following 3D Lissajous curves. Which isn't really that different from Aikido.
The only problem with that is that it creates predictability, which is what you want to avoid.
That said, my entire argument was that it's not helpful to imagine swords as having been specifically designed for causing damage to other swords or even withstanding repeat blade-on-blade strikes for extended period of times. And we seem to agree on that.
http://cfd.citizen.co.jp/english/prod-tech/product/pdf/datas...
This $0.79 (yes, 79 cents) quartz crystal is specified at 5 ppm (parts per million), or 0.432 spd.
That's its manufacturing tolerance by the way. With proper calibration, you can get it better than that. (Ex: a microcontroller tuned against an atomic clock, you can add / subtract cycles to get higher accuracy. Like, every million cycles, add or subtract a 5 cycle offset to correct for any manufacturing error).
The temperature turnover point is guaranteed to be 25C +/- 5C. Which means the crystal won't drift due to temperature somewhere in the 20C to 30C range.
Quartz crystal clocks from cheap Casio watches are basically all you need with modern technology. Low cost, low-drift, super cheap, high-reliability from manufacturing, cheap electronics (just a counter + a cycle offset if you calibrate), cheap calibration (atomic clock radio signals from any 1st world country is free).
32768 is the perfect number for 15-bit register. Move the second hand every 2^15 cycles (aka: every 15-bit overflow), possibly with a bit of offset if you have a calibration routine somewhere.
You can get temperature compensated quartz watches that run at 10 or 5 spy. Note that watches spend a lot of time above 30C. There's not much point in calibrating relative to an atomic signal in a watch unless you're already thermocompensated.
It's arguable there's also no point unless you have hand correction tech (seen in some Casios and Citizens) too.
Particularly in Japan, this was compounded by having iron ore mostly as part of a sand-ore mixture (without magnets getting the pure ore out without mixing it with sand is close to impossible). As a result the Japanese came up with a very smart forging technioque to solve that problem. And the swords, at least the high end ones, are pieces of art. Not fielding full-plate armor like the Europeans did, cutting remained a desired quality for a soldiers side arm. So they stuck with it. Simultaniously, the Europeans developed spring steel and weapons developed in a totally different direction.
Recently a couple of people have had me cut knives from old circular saw blades from timber mills. It's a fairly hard wearing steel, and they got the old blades for free.
Just hobby knives, I think they do it mostly for the enjoyment of making their own knives, well fitting and shaping the handle, sharpening it. You'd still be able to say "I made that" to a much greater extend than a store bought one.
Their factory is pretty neat, it's much smaller than I would have expected given their volume. Happy to support a company that does all it's work in the US even if the prices are higher.
One of the thing that was interesting from the factory tour was that they were really just a high precision (at the time in the 80s) machine shop. Most of their work is pairing with an existing designer(Osbourne, Pardue, Williams, etc). It's an interesting business model compared to some of the other manufacturers out there.
Can someone link/name one of these super exotic alloys knifes?
It's not exactly the fanciest exotic alloy knife in the world, but my Global G-2 is an amazing workhorse of a knife. I've owned the knife for 8 years, and, while I take good care of it, I've never babied it — it's still in impeccable condition and remarkably sharp (I've never gotten around to resharpening it).
CPM154 and S30V are pretty special steels. Nearly impossible to home-heat treat without a lot of equipment, (molten salts pots, cryogenic equipment). When done right, though, they sure perform.
Some of these are arguably "more Damascus than Damascus", in a sense that they're also mixes, but on a much finer level. For example, S30V - a relatively affordable "super steel" - is one of those known as "powder steels" due to the way they're made, achieving extreme uniformity and purity of the alloy even at microscopic level:
https://www.knifeart.com/particlesteel.html
This lets knife makers create alloys that are outright impossible using traditional methods (because they wouldn't be able to make them uniform enough). It also means that they can formulate an alloy precisely to match the desired qualities, instead of approximating it by mixing steels in layers as Damascus does.
The kind of stuff we can do with modern technology and modern materials would be considered genuine magic back in the days where the quality of those blades was a life-or-death matter. It's kinda ironic that these days, we use it for EDC knives to avoid sharpening them more often than we'd like.
Here's a good example of how a modern knife made from one of the highest-end steels performs (scroll down to the "Performance" section):
There's some really interesting specialty metals out there like Boye Dendritic Cobalt[1]. I've got one of their sheepsfoot folders and it's a pretty neat for a specialty knife.
But it's all very subjective. I have some S30V and S35VN folders, too, and large 3V choppers (got a couple Fehrmans back in the day on a whim). They're all great blades, and if it comes to a zombie apocalypse, I'm definitely swinging a Fehrman. But until then... ~
I probably just need to spend some proper time to learn it as almost all my other stuff is either 30SV or 154CM.
I tried to find such a beast, but either they don't exist of my google failed me.
Also, it looks like these guys make them with S30V and S90V (it's not on the page, but look at the title!)
http://www.dunnknives.com/filletknives.html
Having said that... wouldn't a ceramic knife be better for this task? It's going to be more wear resistant than any steel, and I don't think you need to worry about brittleness or chipping in this application.
I've watched the artists on Man at Arms Reforged make wootz steel in a kiln from pig iron and wrought iron when recreating a Viking-era sword. It certainly isn't lost.
edit: video here if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EG34YoRHs8
If we collect enough of this, would you actually accept we had re-discovered the technique or would you nit-pick it to death? If for example, plunging the blade into the belly of a slave doesn't materially alter production, do we fail to make it the same way, if we don't do it?
Primo Levi writes about an industrial chemical plant adding sal volatile to a paint recipe because "thats how they do it" when he originated the technique to counter excessive acidty (or alkinility, I forget which) during post war conditions which no longer applied. I think this is worth bearing on, because it made absolutely NO difference to the paint, but persisted as a process. You think this didn't happen in Wootz manufacture?
" J.D Verhoeven and Alfred Pendray reconstructed methods of production, proved the role of impurities of ore in the pattern creation, and reproduced Wootz steel with patterns microscopically and visually identical to one of the ancient blade patterns. Reibold et al's analyses spoke of the presence of carbon nanotubes enclosing nanowires of cementite, with the trace elements/impurities of vanadium, molybdenum, chromium etc contributing to their creation, in cycles of heating/cooling/forging. This resulted in a hard high carbon steel that remained malleable [25]
There are other smiths who are now consistently producing Wootz steel blades visually identical to the old patterns.[26]"
I'm not sure what more you would want :)
IE the article claims " Anyone claiming to be making authentic Wootz/Damascus these days is delusional".
Regardless of technique, this is almost certainly wrong. The end result is almost certainly authentic wootz/damascus, even if the technique is different.
and the technique may not be different anyway. The point of that research in the first sentence was basically "it's unclear they did anything that special, it seems to mostly be due to local impurities" (A short summary is here: http://www.thetruthaboutknives.com/2017/06/knifemaking-legen...)
In particular, a very low percent of vanadium impurity produces the pattern (see https://insa.nic.in/writereaddata/UpLoadedFiles/IJHS/Vol42_4...) and the other properties are due to other historical impurities that would have been found in the area it was produced.
> "The art form has resurfaced, though, and in 1973 bladesmith William F. Moran unveiled his “Damascus knives” at the Knifemakers’ Guild Show."
I read this as In 1973 Moran unveiled knives with the look of Damascus steel through a process he developed. The scare quotes reinforce the fact that it's not the same as the original Damascus steel.
I think of damascus as an aesthetic element first. Some people really like it, others find it too flashy.
> The smiths that produced the high-quality blades would most likely have kept the process for making these blades a closely guarded secret to be passed on only to their apprentices. The smiths would be able to teach the apprentices the second and third points listed, but point one is something they would not have known. There is no difference in physical appearance between an ingot with the proper minor elements present and one without. Suppose that during several generations all of the ingots from India were coming from an ore body with the proper amount of minor elements present, and blades with good patterns were being produced. Then, after a few centuries, the ore source may have been exhausted or become inaccessible to the smithing community; therefore, the technique no longer worked. With time, the smiths who knew about the technique died out without passing it on to their apprentices (since it no longer worked), so even if a similar source was later found, the knowledge was no longer around to exploit it. The possible validity of this theory could be examined if data were available on the level of carbide-forming elements in the various ore deposits in India used to produce wootz steel.
http://www.thetruthaboutknives.com/2017/06/knifemaking-legen...
My favorite straight razors are my vintage ones, mostly because the steel is of lower quality....they take an edge real fast!
Damascus steel also makes products very expensive. I tend to lose straight razors and pocket knives, so it doesn't make sense to make such a large investment. The investment will extend to honing stones....you'll probably want a Belgian Coticule which run $100+.
Damascus steel looks super cool though. If I was a superstar sushi chef, I'd want Damasteel just for the brag points.
I don't think there is any truth to this. It's one of the myths listed here, and goes into detail: https://knifesteelnerds.com/2018/07/30/five-myths-about-dama...
In old steels -1077, 1084, and 1095, there are few carbides that aren’t iron-based. This makes sharpening much much easier, and also makes edges dull much faster. In a straight razor, I (like you) would rather optimize for easy sharpening/honing, but, for other purposes, more modern steels perform better.
The 'pattern-welded' Damascus is known from Europe (maybe as an attempt to replicate the 'wootz' style Damascus?) But it exists elsewhere as well.
> "Devin makes all-stainless Damascus steel, high contrast, double high carbon, and many, many exotic patterns."
Absolute hardest material for knife blades is ZrO2 (Zirconium dioxide == Ceramic).
It also the most brittle, but never rusts and holds sharpness for insane amount of time.
They do blunt, say after 6 months of use. Kyocera for one, provides a free sharpening service if you mail their knives in. Ceramic blade gets sharpened on diamond wheels, and they have to be mailed in.
Both are performing really well. If I'd buy Chinese made steel knife - it probably would get dull after cutting 3 sandwiches or so. Ceramic knife apparently performing extremely well and remains sharp as expected.
Also - i saw there are ceramic knife sharpeners available - so i plan to get one sometime.
Pattern welding was used in the West to try and emulate these blades, and has gotten the name "Damascus steel", but it is not classic Damascus / wootz steel.
> "First, let’s do a little freshening up on what exactly “Damascus steel” is. Damascus, Wootz, and patternweld are all names given to different types of steels and blades. Basically, the idea is that two or more steel alloys are forged/cast together through various methods to give the wavy artistic pattern that comes from such a layering process. Unfortunately, the technique for making both Damascus and Wootz steel has been lost to the centuries. Anyone claiming to be making authentic Wootz/Damascus these days is delusional. Or lying . . ."
...
> "The other type of pattern-welded steel is the so called “Damascus steel”. Originally used in middle eastern sword making, the method has been lost since about the 16th century. The art form has resurfaced, though, and in 1973 bladesmith William F. Moran unveiled his “Damascus knives” at the Knifemakers’ Guild Show. Ever since then modern pattern-welded steel blades have been called “Damascus knives”."
That's simply wrong. It wasn't pattern-welded. It appeared similar to pattern-welded steel, but was manufactured without any pattern-welding.
How do we know? I see this claimed a lot by those into the mystique of Damascus, but if we don't know how they were made as you claim, then how do you know they're not pattern welded?
In recent years, some people have been able to figure out the process, making use of impurities present in the original wootz, to create blades that chemically, structurally, and visually resemble the original wootz blade. The methods they have come up with are probably the same methods used to make original damascus blades; we just can't confirm that since the original process isn't documented well enough to know exact details.
>For instance Devin Thomas is a master Damascus steel maker. He forges every billet himself and has the process down to a science.
So which one is it?
> "The other type of pattern-welded steel is the so called “Damascus steel”. Originally used in middle eastern sword making, the method has been lost since about the 16th century. The art form has resurfaced, though, and in 1973 bladesmith William F. Moran unveiled his “Damascus knives” at the Knifemakers’ Guild Show. Ever since then modern pattern-welded steel blades have been called “Damascus knives”."