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…
