damascus vs. other steels

M

manassas dragon

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Dec 3, 2009
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does damascus steels of best quality have an advantage in usefullness
over more commonly used steels or is it just more eye appeal? i have no opinion-just wondering.
 
(Assuming you're comparing matching high carbon percentage steels, both Homogenus and Pattern Welded) It is eye appeal. Pattern welding does nothing for the steels itself. With enough folds, and element migration it would become a single homogenus piece anyway. but the lower layer count up to say 700 layers, is just pattern welding for the sake of aesthetics. and a higher price tag. (ALOT more work)

Jason
 
The layer count does not even have to be in the 700 range. For carbon migration to be complete IIRC it only takes 3 folds. Now that also depends on how hot the weld is done and the relative alloying content. There is no benefit that Damascus gives over modern mono steels. "IF" done correctly good quality Damascus (pattern welded steel) will perform just as well as the steels it is made from.
 
The key word is specialization. For slicing, sawing type draw cuts the edge can be more aggressive and perhaps an advantage, depending upon how you look at it. In super fine cleaving, wedge type push cutting the edge can be a liability, depending upon how you look at it. Virtually none of the long standing myths about damascus have much basis in fact and very few even address this one consideration accurately.

Aside from this damascus is steel, and the most commonly used knife steels at that, with the quality entirely dependent on the makers skills, with little difference in the properties of the parent metals...

But is sure is pretty!:thumbup:
 
Carbon migration happens really fast. If you think about a 120 layer billet, if the blade is 1/4 inch thick each layer is less than .003 thick. So in that layer the carbon only has to travel .0015". This is not including the migration that took place in the previous folds. so once you hit the 100 layer count carbon migration is pretty much complete. After that it is pattern manipulation. Now nickle and some other alloying elements can slow it down a bit depending on how much of it is in the steel. The main reason for the higher layer counts is for pattern development and removing impurities form the material as in the Japanese process for tamahagane. But like Kevin said it sure is purdy though.
 
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A C Richards said:
Carbon migration happens really fast. If you think about a 120 layer billet, if the blade is 1/4 inch thick each layer is less than .003 thick. So in that layer the carbon only has to travel .0015". This is not including the migration that took place in the previous folds. so once you hit the 100 layer count carbon migration is pretty much complete. After that it is pattern manipulation. Now nickle and some other alloying elements can slow it down a bit depending on how much of it is in the steel. The main reason for the higher layer counts is for pattern development and removing impurities form the material as in the Japanese process for tamahagane. But like Kevin said it sure is purdy though.
Click to expand...

Chuck is spot on with the carbon diffusion thing, and the way it really works dispels most of the myths about hard soft layers via carbon content. Damascus blades with high carbon layers mixed with low carbon steel are tougher because it is now all medium carbon steel.

The folding tamahagane thing hits home right now since Tim Zowada and I were on the phone last night for over 30 minutes comparing notes on the process as he worked his first bloom down into a bar yesterday. We are both working with bloomery material (Europe's version of tamahagane) made from magnetite sand gathered here in MI, and whenever I hear of a blade folded more than 10 times, although most people think that many folds means it must be really good stuff, I say "wow, that must have been some real cruddy stuff to begin with":D You see Chuck is also spot in about the refining and carbon redistribution via folding, and since every fold loses material back to iron oxides the refinement of bloomery material is a fine balancing act between making the stuff usable and not losing any more than you have to in the process of making it usable. The bad part is that the more widely varied the carbon concentrations and the more impurity's, the more folds will be necessary to make it behave like good steel. So if somebody shows you a blade of such material that was folded less than 10 times it was a really excellent bloom, but if it had to be folded more than 12 times it was really cruddy stuff and probably had to be built up from several chunks to compensate for the material loss.
 
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