Damascus Knives From..Well You Know..Handled One Today..Thoughts?

fairhaven

fairhaven

Joined
May 22, 2013
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513
Today a friend came over to show me a Damascus knife he bought from that can't say site. The fit & finish is actually quite good. The blade is 512 layers of high carbon steel. Blade thickness at the spine is 4mm. Hardness is 56-60. Handle is bull horn with brass spacers, brass guard & butt cap. The sheath is a nice double stitched brown. The whole thing is actually very nice. Most likely it is from Pakistan. But this knife just does not look or feel like junk. Thoughts?
 
See how it sharpens up. If it's not 'junk', it should take and hold a decent edge. That's the biggest mystery with 'damascus' blades that don't actually specify what particular steel(s) go into the 'damascus', nor who made & heat-treated it. Cheap steels often will be very coarse-grained (won't take a fine edge in the first place), or soft (won't hold a fine edge), or both. I wouldn't put much faith in the 'hardness' spec by itself, until the blade proves it. The rest of the attributes of the knife, like the handle, guard & butt cap are essentially window dressing, and shouldn't matter much anyway.


David
 
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I agree, I can't tell the difference between a tin can damascus and a damascus done right. If you try and hit a damascus knife with the old pin-prick rockwell tester, you may get a 25 in one spot and a 60 in another. I just had some tested by some folks I trust about metals and heat treating and they used a "file set" to test it. My assumption was always that damascus was just for looks, but the expert told me that done right it is just as good as the base steels used in it; with beauty to boot.

But seems like all the blanks that are being imported are damascus which gives the good versions a black eye. I get 3-4 spam emails a week from folks in the middle east wanting me to contact them about their blades.
 
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