Damascus Knives?

K

KenHash

Joined
Sep 11, 2014
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A very basic question but do people actually "use" Damascus knives? I don't mean the kitchen knives.
I mean the damascus hunting/utility knives, which are probably my most expensive knife purchases.
I've read that damascus does really nothing for performance, amd I'm thinking that scratching one up
is pretty much impossible to fix. Anyone? Or is this like a "stupid" question? LOL
 
Not a stupid question. We've got a thread going over in the Chris Reeve forum about this same subject. I use mine just the same as I would my S35VN blades. Now there is different quality of Damascus. In a CRK knife its Devin Thomas Damascus and from what I understand he's "the guy" when it comes to this blade material.
In short, yes, I use my Damascus the same as I would any other blade. I've even used it to dress a cow before.
 
I remember doing a review on a Lone Wolf Damascus piece way back when. I'd cleaned a limit of razor clams, hacked up a bunch of other stuff... I remember the comments I got about using a knife that was that pretty for such stuff.

But I get knives to use them, I'm not a collector. Damascus or no, they're gonna cut up some stuff. Now my youngest son has a Damascus hunting knife. I hope he gets to use the hell out of it come hunting season this year.

Not a stupid question at all. You won't see me protest if you beat one up.
 
Same here, I use my damascus knives just like any other. My only real experience is with Devin Thomas Damascus though.

I have not found that they scratch very easily, in fact I've cut into sandbags, burlap and a few other things I was sure were going to scuff up the blade but did not at all. That being said, it is not too difficult to bring the pattern back out, a quick polish and re-etching is all that's needed and could even be done at home since ferric chloride is not hard to come bye.

In the case of CRK they can bring it back to 100% with a spa treatment.

Devin Thomas uses AEB-L and 304 in his stainless Damascus and I have found that it performs similarly to AEB-L, that is: Easy to get a very sharp edge, very easy to touch up, very good corrosion resistance, decent edge retention.

Just watch out for cheap damascus, which is usually just scrap metal and not even remotely usable.

Also, some (even high-end) damascus is made with some layers of nickel or copper which is very soft. 304 is a high nickel, high chrome, no carbon steel so it will not harden like most knife steels but is still considerable better than pure nickel, it's a nice middle ground for getting that high contrast without sacrificing too much usability.
 
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