Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/29/save-over-60-on-these-damascu.html
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I do believe we’ve hit peak Damascus Steel. For something so rare and wonderful if we are hawking Damascus steak knives on BoinbBoing I feel that it diminishes the skill, effort and time required to produce this rare type of steel. Obviously we have developed a way to make it industrially, which is sad.
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I would bet these are just laser engraved
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Patterned steel. Essentially mass produced.
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There’s nothing rare about modern Damascus. It’s pretty routine pattern welding and although it takes some skill to produce by hand there’s nothing really special about it and there have pretty much always been ways of industrially producing. Its just multiple steels folded together and acid etched to create a decorative pattern. Its common in higher end kitchen knives cause it looks cool.
Though the “Damascus” knives sold by the BB store apparently tend to be laser etched knock offs.
It shouldn’t be confused with the historical artifacts by the same name. The term has mostly referred to the patterning for a couple centuries.
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I agree.
It’s Valyrian steel, or nothing. (Or, in a pinch, Beskar steel.) But, otherwise, nothing.
Mithril or GTFO
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Still has to be “handmade” (the pattern welded stuff), but yeah, with large industrial presses and beautifully clean steel available nowadays, it’s pretty easy to make “damascus” steel in large quantities.
Wootz, has been rediscovered. It’s not “lost to the ages”. It’s a pain in the ass to make, and even more of a pain to work.
The problem with “damascus” nowadays is that since it’s pretty commonplace, you see everything from really nice super performing material, exquisitely patterned material, made with some pretty sweet alloys to absolute shit bulk crap pattern, crap alloy, with fun delaminations etc… garbage coming out of sweatshops in India.
And then there’s the fake laser etched crap coming mainly from China…
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From what I’ve seen when browsing around at one point looking for knife blanks, handmade Damascus is actually cheaper.
You can order the forged blades online from companies in India or Pakistan, which are reselling it from workshops there, which are likely paying their workers pennies an hour to forge it (many of them probably kids.) A lot of the disposable surgical tools used in Western hospitals come from the same kind of workshops.
Just google “damascus knife blanks” and poke around. I haven’t actually tried ordering any yet, so I have no idea of the quality but they look like the standard pattern-welded nickel steel/carbon steel combination.
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Yeah I don’t think that the sort of manufactures who are selling millions of pattern welded knives a year are making billets one at a time on a power hammer. So “hand made” in the sense that a human is operating machines to smack together pre-existing stock. You can’t exactly pour the stuff ready made from a smelter.
I think what you discovered there is that steel of any sort from India and Pakistan. Particularly the stuff out of sweat shops. Is cheaper than anything else.
I would not order any of that. Indian and Pakistani steel is renowned for it’s low quality. Plus sweat shops. Apparently quality steel, including tool steel exists from these places. But you aren’t finding it, and I’ve never seen it. Supposedly goes mostly to construction stuff. I beams and heavy equipment.
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While wootz steel (the blanks used in real Damascus blades) HAS been rediscovered, 97%+ of “Damascus” steel you see is actually damascened, instead. This includes laser etching, pattern-welding, and several other techniques. No wootz? Sorry, it’s not Damascus steel, period.
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Well no. The folks selling tons of blades are making billets one by one, but they’re really big billets made with magnificent machines. Then a whole bunch of blades get made from one billet. And almost all pattern weld is made from pre-existing stock. Well, except maybe tamahagane. And shear steel. Okay, so there’s a few that don’t use pre-existing stock, but almost all pattern weld is from other pre-made steel.
Unless wootz. Okay, not poured, but melted in crucible 
This. I’ve seen some nice hypereutectoid steel coming out of India in the form of cheapo files, but that’s about it. The pattern weld stuff is crap, and as noted above Sweat shop = slave labor really. Also unsafe working conditions almost guaranteed to involve kids at some point in the process.
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