Anybody Actually Use Damascus

Yes !
One of my favorites is my Case Min Trapper :

Item No 31304 WR Case And Sons Cutlery Chestnut Damascus Mini Trapper​

I wound up buying two of them . Pretty pricy . Now that they are no longer in production I am pretty happy about having two .
Love looking at them and using them .
As with so many older Case factory Images the handles on mine look nothing like this . Though this was what they were trying to sell me on .
Remember Nestles Strawberry Flavored Quick drink mix ? Yeah . . . more like that . Took me a while to adjust to what I took out of the boxes.
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Two other users that I have are the Boker ;

BOKER PLUS Damascus Gent 1 Pocket Knife​

and

Gent 2​

Both are still in production and I bought those more than ten years ago .So nice . The pattern is made with layer(s) of nickel in the mix .The handles are solid ebony with liner locks . Nice thin blades 👍
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Im going to ask a question because I honestly dont know --- is there any advantages to the areas of use/performance of a damanscus blade, versus a knife steel it's often compared to?
 
VorpelSword said:
I have little direct experience with a pattern welded knife. This year, I acquired a smallish William Henry folder with a subtly patterned Damascus blade. I gave it to our adult son for suit-wear. It will never be used for much more than ribbon cutting at Christmas or opening mail.

With that said, my impression is that Damascus blades can perform as well as any knife. Yet, just because dissimilar steels are folded together does not, in and of itself, mean that the blade is superior or even above average.
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Questions growing from ignorance of, and inexperience with Damascus blades:

In videos, I see a good bit of polishing and prep before etching the pattern into prominent visibility. Does this mean that the visual appearanceof the pattern is fragile or easily damaged? In practical terms, would a Damascus blade need re-finishing or other non-sharpening attention after field dressing an Elk or two? What about long-term sheath wear from drawing and re-inserting?
 
I've read that well made Damascus can cut quite well as it inherently has a toothy edge given the different metals
 
J. Doyle said:
So says you. But in reality, it would depend on several factors including knife type, intended use, geometry and the material being cut/chopped.

You mentioned "performance" of magnacut and S90V I believe, among others. Let's compare those to pattern welded 1075 & 15n20....a VERY common mix (maybe the most common?).

If the "performance" is designated as wear resistance, would the Damascus out perform it?........no. How about if the "performance" was stain resistance?.....also no. But what if the "performance" was designated as toughness? Would the Damascus "outperform" those other steels?........yes, by a landslide.

If you can't see that there are different meanings of "performance" and different cutlery applications where those meanings might matter, I can't help you and this might not be the right place for you.
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I have to say, this answer feels a little like an exercise in semantics. A general understanding of performance for a knife should generally be "Will it cut, will it hold an edge". I'm old school, if I need toughness, a folding knife 99% of the time won't be in the discussion anyway. I mean, getting into specifics in order to try to find an element where Damascus will win out approaches grasping for straws. The answer for Damascus blades IN GENERAL (which I believe is the point) is that no, a Damascus blade will not hold an edge as long as a modern powder metallurgy steel. If my needs for a knife are straight cutting performance, a Damascus* bladed knife will not be the one I reach for out of all the knives in my collection. And if I'm being honest, if we're talking about a fixed blade where I need the knife to hold an edge and be tough? Yeah, Damascus isn't going to be the winner there either, unless you're aware of a commonly available (and in use!) Damascus that can outperform something like D3V or even normal 3V. If so, please share.




* Some super unicorn like a Damascus made from Magnacut and S90v or whatever, not withstanding. I have some excellent Damascus knives both custom and production, still won't be reaching for them first.
 
Quiet said:
I have to say, this answer feels a little like an exercise in semantics. A general understanding of performance for a knife should generally be "Will it cut, will it hold an edge". I'm old school, if I need toughness, a folding knife 99% of the time won't be in the discussion anyway. I mean, getting into specifics in order to try to find an element where Damascus will win out approaches grasping for straws. The answer for Damascus blades IN GENERAL (which I believe is the point) is that no, a Damascus blade will not hold an edge as long as a modern powder metallurgy steel. If my needs for a knife are straight cutting performance, a Damascus* bladed knife will not be the one I reach for out of all the knives in my collection. And if I'm being honest, if we're talking about a fixed blade where I need the knife to hold an edge and be tough? Yeah, Damascus isn't going to be the winner there either, unless you're aware of a commonly available (and in use!) Damascus that can outperform something like D3V or even normal 3V. If so, please share.




* Some super unicorn like a Damascus made from Magnacut and S90v or whatever, not withstanding. I have some excellent Damascus knives both custom and production, still won't be reaching for them first.
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Its a fair post and I can't really cite any disagreement.

I just prefer speaking in clearly defined terms when possible as it avoids confusion and terms in the knife world get used vaguely or interchangeably that shouldn't be, IMO.

"Performance" in steel can mean wear resistance, stain resistance, toughness or strength, none of which are the same (I realize that you already know this). Sometimes "edge holding/retention" gets used instead of wear resistance but that can be misleading because toughness and geometry can play a huge role in edge retention.

Is it semantics?......probably. But words and their proper definitions matter to me.

In this case, I assumed he probably was referring to wear resistance specifically and had he just said that after I elaborated, I wouldn't have gone on about it.

I don't care for vague, blanket statements with no context or clarification.
 
Medieval Peasant said:
Clearly has a core of some type of steel, which basically just makes it that type of steel and not damascus in use.
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It's 1075 and 15n20 Damascus over a core of 15n20.....which basically makes the entire blade 1075 with a small amount of nickel. It pretty much has a monosteel behavior except you can see pattern in the jacket.

Which was my point to begin with in this thread. If the entire blade was 1075 and 15n20 pattern welded, it would still behave exactly like 1075 or 15n20 (basically the same steel). And performance IN TERMS OF TOUGHNESS, would be significantly ahead of steels you mentioned.
 
J. Doyle said:
Its a fair post and I can't really cite any disagreement.

I just prefer speaking in clearly defined terms when possible as it avoids confusion and terms in the knife world get used vaguely or interchangeably that shouldn't be, IMO.

"Performance" in steel can mean wear resistance, stain resistance, toughness or strength, none of which are the same (I realize that you already know this). Sometimes "edge holding/retention" gets used instead of wear resistance but that can be misleading because toughness and geometry can play a huge role in edge retention.

Is it semantics?......probably. But words and their proper definitions matter to me.

In this case, I assumed he probably was referring to wear resistance specifically and had he just said that after I elaborated, I wouldn't have gone on about it.

I don't care for vague, blanket statements with no context or clarification.
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That's all fair enough. I don't know, or want to speak for M Medieval Peasant but felt that what he was trying to say was a generalization that (in my opinion and expertience) is upheld by many of the Damascus offerings out there, especially on the production side. I have owned Damascus blades from companies like Case, Spyderco, Boker, Lionsteel, and (completely honest here) others I'm forgetting at the moment. I've also owned and still own Damascus knives from folks like Brad Zinker, Les George, Wes Crawford, and a few others. All spectacularly beautiful knives, entirely without question. All of them, production and custom alike will do knife things just fine. But if my need case is to have a knife with me that can do knife stuff for a lengthy amount of time, I will ten times out of ten choose one of my knives made in something like CruWear, S90v, CTS-XHP, M4, or (these days) Magnacut.

I feel like it bears mentioning that I am sure there are Damascus knives out there made by a Mastersmith or someone on that level that could cut a car in half. So, I'm not referring to ALL Damascus with my generalizations above. I am concretely sure there are some high-end Damascus' made out there that can do anything you can think of, but I would imagine they are expensive, and on the rarer side.

Anyway, let's circle back to the fact that as soon as a Damascus is made out of MC and S90v, I will definitely be in that line. That would be the best of....well, all possible worlds, I'd think.
 
Quiet said:
This is a beautiful knife, can you share some details on it?
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Thanks. It's a design that was originally pitched to me by a camp chef of an elk camp in Colorado. He specifically wanted a large folder for mostly food prep but also some fire-making and general camp duties.

When I made the prototype, (a bit to my surprise) I liked it so well I made one for myself. I'm a part time professional river fishing guide so food prep, shore lunch and clearing/maintaining trails and riverside lunch spots are very much in my wheelhouse.

I appreciate carbon steels and I like toughness because I like super thin edges that slice very well but can take a beating and some abuse without deforming or chipping.

This is 1075/15n20 Damascus over a 15n20 core. Blade is 4 1/4" long with a modified cleaver/k-tip hybrid shape. The long handle allows an extended reach and the thin edge sails through small sticks and saplings with remarkable ease with snap cuts.

I've beat on this pretty hard keeping miles of river bank clear of prickly ash, poplar and willow and prepped countless fires and meals with zero failures. Clients are always impressed how much work and how big of a sappling that folder can cut down. Makes pretty short easy work of stuff up to 2 1/2" in diameter.

When new:
VideoCapture_20240318-110534.jpgVideoCapture_20240318-110503.jpgVideoCapture_20240912-100251.jpg
 
VorpelSword said:
Questions growing from ignorance of, and inexperience with Damascus blades:

In videos, I see a good bit of polishing and prep before etching the pattern into prominent visibility. Does this mean that the visual appearanceof the pattern is fragile or easily damaged? In practical terms, would a Damascus blade need re-finishing or other non-sharpening attention after field dressing an Elk or two? What about long-term sheath wear from drawing and re-inserting?
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The etching is the result of the acid reaction that contrasts the different metals. It etches deeper into one more than the other and is mostly superficial but you can feel it with your fingernail. Normal use doesn’t wear it off much at all but it can be polished with a scotch brite pad. I use cleaning my Damascus blade with a pad and it almost removed all the pattern. I used some viniger to recover the etched pattern to the way it was before then rinsed it with water, dried and oiled it. Like nothing ever happened.
 
J. Doyle said:
Thanks. It's a design that was originally pitched to me by a camp chef of an elk camp in Colorado. He specifically wanted a large folder for mostly food prep but also some fire-making and general camp duties.

When I made the prototype, (a bit to my surprise) I liked it so well I made one for myself. I'm a part time professional river fishing guide so food prep, shore lunch and clearing/maintaining trails and riverside lunch spots are very much in my wheelhouse.

I appreciate carbon steels and I like toughness because I like super thin edges that slice very well but can take a beating and some abuse without deforming or chipping.

This is 1075/15n20 Damascus over a 15n20 core. Blade is 4 1/4" long with a modified cleaver/k-tip hybrid shape. The long handle allows an extended reach and the thin edge sails through small sticks and saplings with remarkable ease with snap cuts.

I've beat on this pretty hard keeping miles of river bank clear of prickly ash, poplar and willow and prepped countless fires and meals with zero failures. Clients are always impressed how much work and how big of a sappling that folder can cut down. Makes pretty short easy work of stuff up to 2 1/2" in diameter.

When new:
View attachment 2915828View attachment 2915830View attachment 2915829
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That knife is tremendously pretty, and clearly entirely capable through your shared use experience. That is just outstanding, and I appreciate you sharing it.
 
A few more use shots since the OP said we get extra credit for pics!

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While we tend to think of dammy knives as "fancy" there is a thing in the Western world about using very fancy gear, particularly in the Californio/Vaquero/Buckaroo tradition. I've used this bit (here when new) for 15 years:

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Using handmade/handcrafted gear is a thing for us, knives included.

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Ciscocbc said:
I've read that well made Damascus can cut quite well as it inherently has a toothy edge given the different metals
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Larrin Larrin has found there is a boost in edge retention when comparing ladder pattern damascus to random pattern, and surmises this is due to the alternating layers forming a saw blade effect on the edge. However, this is not typically an advantage over monosteel, since even the ladder pattern damascus has edge retention in between the two component steels. On the other hand, the toughness of damascus is based on the lower toughness component steel (toughness is only as good as the steel's weakest link). So if you just use the higher edge retention steel, it should perform slightly better than damascus in almost all cases.

There is one exception: he found that 1095 and nickel ladder pattern increased edge retention over 1095 monosteel, probably because 1095 is a low edge retention steel and the nickel is so soft that the saw blade effect actually made a big difference.

Bottom line is that you need a pretty crappy steel to begin with and nickel for damascus to give an advantage. Otherwise, try to use steels with similar toughness and edge retention to limit the weakening effect of combining steels.
 
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