Is Damascus any good?

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Either of these will outperform an ATS34 blade anyway, you'll just have a little maintenence to do on them. Just my 2 cents worth.
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Hi Jason. Youre saying, if i understand you correctly, that typical, average damascus, not the "best" out there, but good, solid quality, will outperform ATS-34, and im assuming 154CM as well?
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Only that...
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Damascus made by a qualified smith should be as trusted as one of his carbon knives, only it will look better Either of these will outperform...
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Straight carbon or carbon damascus will outperform an stainless that I have used. So far that includes ATS34, 440C, 154CM. The only thing is you'll have some upkeep with the carbon. Awesome tradeoff for me!
 
earth a forging process can have the blade, solid through and through, filled with complex patterns, sometimes wildly complex, with tiny little animals, starfish, detailed spirographs etc.??? The little figures on the blade's surface, i am under the impression that they are present INSIDE the blade as well, not just the blade's surface, so that if you were
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There are several ways to get the pattern on the blade. First is the accordian cut. A billet is made, like with the pictures you mentioned above. They are running through a billet 1"W x1"T x6"L. You make cuts on alternating sides of the billet and open the pattern up like an accordian. This puts the picture on the blade instead of inside. Another way is to cut tiles, or wafers, off the same 1x1x6 billet and scarf weld them onto a core of a straight carbon or laminate san mai style, only with tiles. Either produce decent results. You can also do a deep (grind in, press out) ladder pattern but results are not as distinct. With pictures, less distortion is better. The ain't no ugly damascus!
 
Jason - just checked out your website. Looks great! Good work that you do. Just thought I'd chime in.
 
I agree Jason, you have some beautiful knives on your site. Your damascus looks fantastic and that is the first time I have seen a knife with Aoudad Sheep horn handles. That stuff looks great.

I have found that well made damascus can do a fantastic job as a knife steel. I have a small Dunkerley in damascus and it cuts as well as any of my knives. I am pretty sure that the damascus used on this knife wasa made from 1084 and 15N20, a very popular combination.

My favorite damascus is wootz. No fancy pattern, but a great cutting steel that has a distinct but subtle pattern. In about a year or so I will have a nice little hunter from Al Pendray. I can hardly wait.

I am also a big fan of Jerry Rados Turkish damascus. Once again this steel tends to have not so bold patterns, but looks fantastic. It also has a reputation for cutting very well.

As far as looks go, I disagree about the statement that there no damascus is ugly. I have seen some damascus that I think is butt ugly. Of course this is all in the eye of the beholder and others might htink that this same damascus looked great.


Edited to make it easier to read.
 
Thanks Pendentive and Keith. Aoudad works about like sheep, a little more texture there though.

Ugly damascus is like that ugly mammoth ;)
 
Monosteels are much better than the best ancient damascus. Not surprisingly norse populations stopped making damascus blades when they could get enough steel of enough quality to build sword blades out of a single steel.
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Alarion, here are several things that are wrong. First, you are comparing appels to pears when you compare modern monosteels to ancient damascus. IF you want to compare, please do so in comparing modern monosteels to damascus made from modern steels. Things look a lot different then. If for example i make a flawless blade from a modern damascus, i can put a material mix into the blade that is not offered by the industry. This way i can achieve completely different properties. There is a name for doing so, and a whole new science that, strangely enough, nearly nobody is talking about in knife circles. It is called mechanical alloying.

Another thing is what you try to tell us about the norse bladesmiths. Even today most of the knives that are made in scandinavian countries have at least blades that are forged as a sandwich construction. This is no other thing than a very simple pattern welded steel. So why do they do it? That's easy. They just don't get the properties they want to have in monosteels. especially toughness and edge holding.


Wootz is another thing entirely.
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Why? It is a completely different process, yes. But the result is, much like pattern welding, a HETEROGENOUS steel with layers that have different properties. A soft matrix to keep it tough and very hard carbide clusters that make it a good cutting steel.


Modern stainless damascus blade eliminate the problem of maintenance, and modern powder steel damascus is obviously better than any traditional laminated wondersteel you can get (not powder monosteels, obviously). Grain is microscopic, uniform and such a knife holds an edge for much a longer time than any other type of blade.
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That is as much nonsens as i have ever heard. No blade, stainless or not, will ever eliminate the problem of maintenance. If you cut into something like meat, blood, cheese, bread, wood, whatever, you will have to clean your blade after that, stainless or not. Or do you put your blood covered stainless blade back into the sheath without cleaning it when you are done with skinning and gutting after a hunt? Yuc. So you clean it and wipe it dry, stainless or not. And even for the non stainless blades this is enough maintenance.

Then the stainless powder steels. I had the opportunity to make and use a lot of knives made from Damasteel because in the beginning i thought that this is a good material. And i could compare them to classic pattern welded steels. And i am (not) sorry to tell you that in every comparison except the stain resistance the pattern welded steels won hands down. Today i still have a stock of Damasteel round bar, but i don't use it except if a customer still asks for it after some good explanations.
The general problem with stainless steels is that if you want to make a stainless blade, you will have to put in a lot of chromium. This attracts the carbon in the steel a lot more than the iron. Well, what happens is that you will end up with chrome carbides only, powder metallurgy or not. But the carbide size is what will determine the size of the very edge of your knife. Now the size of a chrome carbide is around 30 microns. Compare this size to the size of an iron carbide which is between 0.3 and 0.5 microns and you have at least an explanation why you will never have as fine an edge on a stainless knife than on a carbon steel blade.

Achim
 
Different aspect of Damascus altogether...

Before the advent of modern liquid steels, gun barrels were made from damascus. I don't know what composition the steels were, but they worked very well for that pupose. When smokeless gunpowder came along, a number of guns blew up in the face of the owners, but this was not likely due to the inferiority of the damascus (possible in some cases), but rather because the owners charged the same amount of smokeless powder as they did black powder (big mistake).

A few years ago I read an article about a test that was done on the damascus barrels of an old Parker double shotgun. They slowly increased the powder charge and fired the gun until it failed (split open, in this case). A 12 gauge typically has a chamber pressure of about 10,000 psi. These barrels did not fail until about 30,000 psi. Quite impressive! Modern guns are proff tested to about 1.5 times the maximum chamber pressure that the gun will see from modern ammunition, but this was about twice the normal proof test.
 
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