Now as to the original thread topic, I feel I should now contribute something to that since I butted in, Mr. Schwagster, I would like to help out on the O1 question but I have to confess to not keeping up with the acronym of the day, what is a WSK? You did mention that you want a chopper, while I would be willing to say the O1 can be used in such a blade, I would also want to see it done by a guy with good equipment, skills, controls and knowledge of that steel. All alloys have their inherent strengths due to their chemistry, O1 was not designed for heavy impact and sudden loading but instead for long term slicing and slitting that poses more problems of wear.
Some people compare O1 to something like L6 and pronounce it “brittle” but that is like comparing steel to stone in order to call steel “soft”. O1 can be plenty tough for knife type applications, just there are steels that are tougher- 5160, 1075, 1080, L6, 15n20 etc… However if O1 is not heat treated just right it can indeed be quite brittle and would not be at all suitable for a large blade, but if one really botches things up on 5160 it will still be a pretty tough blade.
On the Damascus thing- I get around twice as much from a damascus blade as I would from my carbon steel ones, and that is based upon the doubled work, materials and hours that go into making it. As far as stronger or better, it is still just steel, it has all the same strengths and weaknesses as the parent steels that went into its making. If the smith is really good one can expect the Damascus to be as good as a mono steel, but there are a load of things that can go wrong. But just like the whole O1 thing, real knife type applications won’t really push the material to the point that most of us will ever notice these differences.
