First question: welded damascus or crucible melted damascus (wootz)?
Performance of blades made of welded damascus is a matter of what was put into the mix. In general i think it can be said that with the methods of steelmaking you have today it is possible to make a monosteel which is hard to beat in any performances with any (welded) damascus. I recommend reading something about it in the books of Jim Hrisoulas and (if you know german) Manfred Sachse. For wootz there is an interesting homepage of Al Pendray on the net, but i don't know the URL for the moment.
Damasteel is a product of the Damasteel AB in Soederfors, Sweden. It is a powdermetallurgic damascus steel made of two different steel powders. The first is RWL 34, which is in general the powdermetallurgic form of ATS 34 / 154CM. The second steel is PMC 27, the powder form of 12C27, which is a stainless steel normally used in very high quality kitchen cutlery. The steel powders are filled in up to 160 layers into stainless steel tubes which are then closed under vacuum. The tubes are then heated to welding (not melting!) heat and isostatic pressed with about 7000 psi. The tube is then removed and the content can be treated as any normal stainless knife steel i.e. hot rolled, forged, hardened. With the same methods, torsion, drilling, filing, etching etc. you can get the same designs as with normal, rusting damascus steel, except the blades are stainless. I have forged and heat treated about 20 blades of this steel in a normal coal forge and have had excellent results. There is a homepage of Damasteel AB on the net and they offer a small handbook, which is full of usefull information.
Achim
