Quote Originally Posted by kevint View Post
I usually ask a smith what works best for him- from which can he coax the highest performance- and then discuss which are the most important aspects to you.

Personally I would not consider nickel alloyed damascus to be high performance so it'd be off my list. ...
I think your first comment is well taken. The secret to gaining the best performance from any steel will lie in the heat treatment.

When you say nickel alloyed, what kind of stuff are you talking about? The steel du jour for making pattern welded steel is most commonly 15N20. That is a nickel alloy of 1075 that contains about 2% nickel, otherwise there isn't much contrast and the pattern doesn't look good to most folks. Pure nickel will never harden...makes for a very pretty contrast, but the non-hardening part is risky if not done well. Hmm, I see a PW experiment in the near future.