Damascus steel.

[65535]

I know tons of custom knife makers and even some big mainstream manufactures sell knives with pattern weld "damascus" steel blades, but I distinctly remember reading about ancient damascus steel and it's amazing properties. What I read about was a steel alloy that has never been recreated but made a steel so strong that it could cut other swords. You could draw the steel when cold and form a blade rather than forge it. I think this was a national geographic article or other respected source years ago. It was supposed to be some amazing material being able to be stretched dozens of times more than normal steels.

Anyone no more about the ancient damascus steel, versus pattern weld steel? I know that pattern weld steel is definitely much more durable than most other steel alloys, but it's just not damascus.

Don't hurt me.

 

[M Wadel]

iirc that is not damascus, its wootz or something like that. i might be wrong.
anyway if you take a new good hightech steel i´m fairly certain whatever they had in the good old days won´t stand a chance.

 

[mete]

You might have the story a bit mixed up. There is pattern welded or folded steel. There is wootz steel.Stretched dozens of times ? There is superplasticity which is found in certain alloys but not steel that I know of. I've seen titanium alloy stretch 10X before breaking !!! There are some that have recreated the wootz steel which is made in small batches .It's very interesting stuff but don't expect miracles !

 

[enderwiggin]

There's actually a good article up on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel

 

[knarfeng]

Anyone no more about the ancient damascus steel, versus pattern weld steel? I know that pattern weld steel is definitely much more durable than most other steel alloys, but it's just not damascus.

Don't hurt me.

Howdy 6,
I got a couple of links for you. This one talks about wootz and pattern welded damascus steels:
http://damascus.free.fr/f_damas/quest.htm

This one talks about the mechanical properties of pattern welded (damascus) steel:
http://damascus.free.fr/f_damas/f_quest/steel.htm
look at their conclusion.

I believe these to be better source of information than Wikipedia. When looking at Wikipedia topics that are within my own area of professional expertise, I sometimes find inaccuracies in their articles. So I sometimes take their information with a grain of salt.

I have looked up info on damascus before. I scanned these articles and the info on this site is in agreement with other articles I have read. And this is a freebie site.
--------------------
I'm a materials engineer, not a metallurgist, so I can't claim expert status on wootz. But I don't think that the properties of wootz steel were that incredible. Wootz steel was far better than contemporary French or English steel of the 1400's. (That's what made its reputation.) But so are modern steels. I somehow doubt that the properties of wootz were better than those of the supersteels of today.

Here's a link to an article that lends credance to that thought:
http://damascus.free.fr/f_damas/f_quest/wsteel.htm

Perhaps mete has seen an article comparing the measured properties of wootz steel to modern steels. I've not.
Knarf

 

[65535]

Musta been wootz steel, I distinctly remember a yellow piece of what I thought was steel, probably gold looking back. But I do remember them saying it could be hammered cold and formed cold, meaning you didn't need to forge it as much.

 

[me2]

Gold has exceptional ductility and malleability(sp?). It can defininately be cold formed. Remember that cold is a relative term, and wootz was forged at a lower temperature than western steel of the time.

 

[ChuckB_III]

Damascus was different than wootz, Damascus was made in mid east and wootz was made in India, the two are very closely bound together by most sources and i don't no Y.