Thread: Why are Damascus steel razors so expensive?

Originally Posted by gssixgun

We were talking about this thread in chat,,,

Here was the question I asked,,,

To anyone that owns a Damascus razor, does it honestly shave 2-20 times better than your other razors...(based on costs)

What I was asking was, based purely on the shave quality alone, are they worth the money??????
Not anything else but where the steel meets the face.... Now be honest

I've got two TI's and two Livi Takeda's (not sure if Japanese Tamahagane is considered damascus, but it is folded and has damascene patterning). My best shaver isn't one of these though. The two Livi/Takedas are excellent shavers though, and the 5/8 TI is also. The 8/8 TI is merely ok, but is the most visually impressive of the four. The 5/8 TI has held an edge very well, but it hasn't yet demonstrated any superior qualities in this department. Maybe I'll switch from the Heljestrand #31 to the TI for 5 or 6 months and see how it compares (I'll have to check my records but I think the TI has about 40 shaves on it IIRC while the Heljestrand is now in the neighborhood of 180 shaves).

Originally Posted by LeeringCorpse

In the dark ages the art of Damascus blade forging was lost to the west because no one could afford it anymore. Even Kings at the time couldn't afford one blade for themselves let alone to outfit their men. The only peoples that could still make such blades at the time were the vikings and the Japanese.

Not that I'm aware of. There are two types of "Damascus" out there, the pattern-welded type and the Wootz type. The wootz type was indeed lost, but relatively recently (1700's), and this was not because of cost but because the sources of the ore that are critical to that process were mostly mined out, and the smiths making wootz damascus never really understood what they were doing in the first place, or at least didn't understand it enough to work out a substitute for the increasingly scarce wootz. The pattern-welded process, to my knowledge, was never lost. It stopped being used in swords because steelmaking improved to the point where conventional steel made a better product than the labor-intensive pattern welding, and then because swords' importance declined as guns took over. But pattern welding was still in use, among other things gun barrels were made using this process; my dad's old Parker shotgun had a pattern-welded barrel and I believe this was reasonably common for low-pressure barrels like shotguns through the 1930's. One might argue that such barrels don't exhibit damascening like modern damascus knives do - but this is an artistic argument, the pattern-welded shotgun barrels have a lovely barber-pole pattern instead. For that matter, the old pattern-welded migration-era swords didn't have damascening either, they tended to opt for banded or diamond (snake-like) patterns.

Originally Posted by LeeringCorpse

When the gun came into being armourers could make armours that could withstand rounds fired from a gun, but very few were ever made cuz even Kings from the superpowers at the time had trouble paying the bills for such armour

That, and they were too heavy to wear. Mostly because they were too heavy to wear. That wasn't solved until the discovery of Kevlar.

Originally Posted by LeeringCorpse

I feel your economic reasoning is a little to modern, more for mass produced goods that can be made by anyone anywhere. Many blade smiths spend years at the forge before they have the skill to forge weld with enough proficiency to keep from burning the metal or getting slag inclusions in the billet. And out of all of those smiths, even less will have the patients for the work. When you are dealing with a skilled craftsmen you pay what he asks for or you don't get it.

That's only true to the extent that he is able to convince potential buyers that what he asks for is reasonable. If he can't then he sells it at a loss, and adjusts his expectations (and labor costs) for the next one, until he arrives at the point where he can sell enough product at a sufficient price to pay his bills and whatever extra he likes.

If labor were truly what determines the price of a hand-crafted object then there would be no difference in profitability between spending 1000 hours on a single razor/knife/whatever, and spending 1000 hours making 100 razors/knives/whatever. Actually there would be more profit in the single hella-expensive razor because the fixed material cost would be lower.

Originally Posted by LeeringCorpse

If you want to only pay for half of what he is asking then that is what you will get, half of the smiths effort, or you go to wal-mart and pay even less and have it fall apart as you take it out of the box. If no one wants to pay for a smith's best work he is not going to pander to the masses and offer his best for less, he will just offer what you are willing to pay. If a smith pandered to the masses then blacksmiths and ornamental iron workers would still be main stream. the fact that they are not should tell you they are not willing to do the work for any less then what they feel their work is worth.

It tells me that they are not willing to do the work for what the product is actually worth. That some particular craftsman thinks it is worth more is fairly immaterial, there may well be other craftsmen who value it more consistently with the potential purchasers, though those craftmen may well be in China. And if the customer does not value durability of the product, then durability really doesn't have as much value as the craftsman would like to think. While this may be unfortunate to those who do value such attributes, they are free to pay the higher costs to the craftsman of their choice - they value the resulting product very differently, so this is completely rational. And if there are enough like-minded consumers within the sales range of this craftsman, then he will be able to make a good living at what he's doing. The rise of the internet has been a very good thing for the skilled artisan, precisely because it expands the pool of potential purchasers so that he can find that small percentage of the public who agree with his valuation of his product.

But it is not true that his product has an inherent value that is based in any way on his costs. Philadelph inadventently gave an example of this earlier:

Originally Posted by Philadelph

After I made those 2 billets (taught by someone who makes it regularly) I decided that I'd never want to make my own again rather than paying someone else to make it for me. It's really an intensive process that is sadly dismissed too often by those who have no idea.

But if the value of damascus is due to the labor involved, then his mighty labor would have made his two damascus billets even more valuable. Yet it doesn't, apparently not even to him, and he certainly realizes it doesn't to potential customers, as his decision to abandon pattern-welding indicates. So if labor doesn't give damascus its premium value then what does? The answer is deceptively simple. It has that premium value because enough people have been convinced that it has premium value, and sufficiently convinced to unbelt the wallet.

A craftsman can attempt to raise the value of his work by touting such things as labor cost, the skill involved, the quality of the materials, the level of detail and perfection (or slight imperfection) of the final product, as well as general aesthetic considerations as well as the relative uniqueness of the final product. He can invoke patriotic sentiments if his competition is foreign, or attempt to sway his purchasers in favor of his underdog status. But this is simply basic marketing, and the fact that he is a "craftsman" touting such things on a website or blog instead of in full-page color ads in the NYT doesn't change this. If his marketing efforts succeed then he will be able to charge an elevated price and still sell enough units to keep himself busy, maybe even enough to generate a backlog list secured by deposits, guaranteeing him some level of economic security. But this differentiates him from a large company only in scale; the fundamental economic principles still apply even to the small craftsman. Apple is an example of a large corporation making millions of identical products, that manages to pull off a similar marketing scheme, and accrues considerable benefits - as profit and goodwill - from the premium value that attaches to its products.

Originally Posted by Philadelph

I'm almost positive that Classic Shaving doesn't set the prices for Zowada razors... Tim Zowada does.

It really doesn't matter who sets the prices on Classic Shaving's website. Unless somebody actually buys the things, they don't have that value. In Zowada's case, clearly Classic Shaving is selling those razors at those prices, which clearly means that those razors do have the values being asked. Since they are always sold out of his razors, I'd argue that this means that they are selling his razors at less than their value. But it is not that such prices are asked that makes them that valuable, nor necessarily Tim's labor that makes them valuable, it is simply that such prices are actually paid for them.

I can make a razor from a billet of steel using a truckload of sandpaper and a tankful of elbow grease, and put a price on it that reflects my extensive labor, but that doesn't mean it's really that valuable unless I can convince someone to actually pay that price. I give this apparently absurd example because there is (or at least was, back in the 80's), a pipe-maker who made his pipes this way, by starting from a block of briar and sanding away everything and didn't look like a pipe, and he asked the exorbitant price, and got it - got it often enough that he made a decent living this way.

A damascus steel is not necessary for an straight razor. Without the aesthetic there is no advantage. But a good made damascus straight razor is also no worse than a carbon steel razor (I dont speak from the cheap trash damascus razors from the -bay). It is not more difficult to hone, if the heat treatment was correct made and the used steels are a good combination for the job. Also with carbon steel razors you can have differents in the honing. Some are easy to sharpen, others not.
You will not have a "micro saw" or softer and harder areas in the edge or other problems wit a right made damascus blade.
If you like the look, have the money and want a special razor - buy one. If you dont like the look, want save a lot of money and want a shave as good, as with the best razors out there, buy a cheap vintage razor and restore it

Originally Posted by Buddel

A damascus steel is not necessary for an straight razor. Without the aesthetic there is no advantage. But a good made damascus straight razor is also no worse than a carbon steel razor (I dont speak from the cheap trash damascus razors from the -bay). It is not more difficult to hone, if the heat treatment was correct made and the used steels are a good combination for the job. Also with carbon steel razors you can have differents in the honing. Some are easy to sharpen, others not.

I agree with this. Certainly there are plenty of non-damascus blades with reputations of being difficult to hone. TIs have long had this reputation, which has been reinforced with their new C135 steel. And the CS Filarmonicas have been noted as bears to hone. The TI damascus blades are much more difficult to hone than their regular razors, but that's because the heat treating left them harder, and they probably contain a higher concentration of hone-resistant iron carbide, and not because they were folded and welded during manufacture.

LeeringCorpse: gird up your loins. I have to dispel several myths that you've accumulated. Most of these have been addressed in multiple sites on the net. I would suggest that your study is not yet complete. Let me address a few things to help you along.

Originally Posted by LeeringCorpse

There are cheap Damascus looking blades, but they are fake. The pattern that is seen is etched onto the surface of the blade and will wear away in time.

This is true, historically, but only the most shysterous of salespersons would attempt to foist these off on what has become a pretty well educated market. This was an attempt at etching blades to look like pattern welded stuff back in the 80's when pattern welded steels were still uncommon and some factories were trying to cut a corner into the market. That stopped as PW steels became more readily available at good quality.

Where the current "weaker" pattern welded steels are showing up is Pakistan and China where labor costs are significantly less than elsewhere and where scrap metals that will weld together can be had for nothing. However, responsive to the market forces, these makers are learning to use higher quality steels and heat treatments and may not deserve the approbation they did even a couple years ago. Smiths generally are smarter than average people even though they smell like fire and brimstone....

The purpose of folding metal is to help impart carbon into the metal. Carbon will migrate from coal or charcoal into the metal.

Not so and yes so, to a small degree. It can be done that way, but that is not going to happen much because of the economic forces so thoroughly discussed here before. It costs too much in time and materials.

I make steels at home in the Japanese style and begin with a much higher carbon content than I intend to end up. Adding carbon in during forging is much more difficult due to the requirements of controlling that fire. Plus starting out with a very high carbon steel and mixing it with mild steel, even planning on carbon migration, is a waste of both materials. It's much better to use parent materials that are close to each other in carbon content. This is not because the carbon migration but because they will behave similarly under forging conditions and most especially during heat treatment where thermal coefficients of expansion and contraction are big forces.

It's much much easier to simply buy a bar of O-1 or 1095 "off the shelf" and make a blade. Adding carbon from coal or charcoal will require a master smith's skills because learning to control that sort of fire to the degree necessary needs significant time and experience. Carbon will migrate internally through out the bar of material easier than adding carbon from the fire. It is far more likely that carbon will be lost to the fire through scale than added.

But also the simple act of folding it will make it stronger.

No. The purpose of folding is two-fold. One, simply to clean a steel bloom of the crud left over from the bloomery process. There is sand, glass = slags, charcoal, empty spaces in blooms that need to be cleared up before a usable bar of steel is handy to make into a blade.

The second is to run up the layer count for aesthetic purposes. Nothing more than that.

The myth that hard and soft layers of material occurs is simply that, a myth. I know of maybe a dozen smiths who have the knowledge, and four or five with the necessary equipment to perform the technical exercise of making hard and less hard layers in a blade. None of us will likely do it except for being able to say so. It's simply not practical on a cost/time basis when perfectly serviceable materials perform better and are easier to make.

Strength comes from the base steel, it's alloying chemistry and, most importantly, the correct heat treatment for that material.

Even a forge weld isn't a perfect joining of metal. A hammer that has been forge welded after many years of hard use will start to come apart at the welds.

No. A forge weld is a 100% weld. If it's done right to begin with. Ask a stick, arc, TIG welder-person what that means. They can't do it without a lot of extra effort. The small liquidus layer between layers of the combined materials will diffuse between the non similar metals and when fused correctly during forging leaves no space to begin a delamination.

Poorly forge-welded materials will delaminate. In my shop, the materials are stressed during forging to make that occur so that particular bar never leaves the shop. This does not mean that every weld is perfect, sometimes during grinding a flaw will get discovered, but I doubt that would be big enough to reject the blade as a tool other than the desire for a nice looking appearance.

It is this flaw that makes a Damascus blade more durable then a standard blade.

Huh? A flaw that would cause a hammer to spall and send pieces flying around the shop is bad. People get hurt or stuff gets broken. I don't understand how you can criticize the material as being a problem on one hand and how the problem then becomes a desirable quantity?

Take for example a 1 inch thick strip of wood and another piece of wood the same dimensions, but made up of several strips of wood rather then just one. The piece composed of many pieced will be able to bend farther then the other piece of wood before breaking or taking a permanent bend. That is what makes a folded blade more durable then other blades and why the Japanese still use Damascus techniques to make their blades.

No. See my previous response about cleaning the material. Japanese blades bend before breaking because of the heat treatment, not because of any inherent quality, or lack thereof, of the steel.

Still, using the idea of plywood is a good example to explain why the layers show up on the surface of a blade. It doesn't have anything to do with strength in steel blades though.

The careful study of the body of information available is the basis for asking good questions. I'm happy to help you with your study, if that is your purpose. Saying things that are contradictory to propagate a futile argument is wasted space.

Originally Posted by LeeringCorpse

In the dark ages the art of Damascus blade forging was lost to the west because no one could afford it anymore. Even Kings at the time couldn't afford one blade for themselves let alone to outfit their men. The only peoples that could still make such blades at the time were the vikings and the Japanese.

Mparker has already provided a good portion of the correct answer. If you mean "lost to the west" as the USofA. Well the USA didn't exist in the dark ages, and the Europeans never really lost the techniques. There were several smiths in the USA about 35 years ago who are credited with rediscovering pattern welded stuff in the US, and they got famous from that, but it was never lost in the rest of the world. I've handled a pair of German calvalry sabers from the 1940's that were just dazzling work I could not hope to replicate. Holland and Holland has been making pattern welded shotgun barrells continuously up to the present day, but they started well after the dark ages.

Mparker and Buddel have answered this question as well. Let me take my particular stab at the answer too.

If you have a blade made of say 0.8% carbon mono-steel and one made of pattern welded material with a carbon content of 0.8% and you heat treat them both exactly the same, the performance as a cutting tool will be indistinguishable. The only remaining difference will be appearance or aesthetic or the cache of handmade, more difficult to make, or some factor that is highly subjective from the user's perspective. From the steel's perspective there is no difference if they are heat treated the same.

Originally Posted by Mike Blue

LeeringCorpse: gird up your loins. I have to dispel several myths that you've accumulated. Most of these have been addressed in multiple sites on the net. I would suggest that your study is not yet complete. Let me address a few things to help you along.



This is true, historically, but only the most shysterous of salespersons would attempt to foist these off on what has become a pretty well educated market. This was an attempt at etching blades to look like pattern welded stuff back in the 80's when pattern welded steels were still uncommon and some factories were trying to cut a corner into the market. That stopped as PW steels became more readily available at good quality.

Where the current "weaker" pattern welded steels are showing up is Pakistan and China where labor costs are significantly less than elsewhere and where scrap metals that will weld together can be had for nothing. However, responsive to the market forces, these makers are learning to use higher quality steels and heat treatments and may not deserve the approbation they did even a couple years ago. Smiths generally are smarter than average people even though they smell like fire and brimstone....



Not so and yes so, to a small degree. It can be done that way, but that is not going to happen much because of the economic forces so thoroughly discussed here before. It costs too much in time and materials.

I make steels at home in the Japanese style and begin with a much higher carbon content than I intend to end up. Adding carbon in during forging is much more difficult due to the requirements of controlling that fire. Plus starting out with a very high carbon steel and mixing it with mild steel, even planning on carbon migration, is a waste of both materials. It's much better to use parent materials that are close to each other in carbon content. This is not because the carbon migration but because they will behave similarly under forging conditions and most especially during heat treatment where thermal coefficients of expansion and contraction are big forces.

It's much much easier to simply buy a bar of O-1 or 1095 "off the shelf" and make a blade. Adding carbon from coal or charcoal will require a master smith's skills because learning to control that sort of fire to the degree necessary needs significant time and experience. Carbon will migrate internally through out the bar of material easier than adding carbon from the fire. It is far more likely that carbon will be lost to the fire through scale than added.



No. The purpose of folding is two-fold. One, simply to clean a steel bloom of the crud left over from the bloomery process. There is sand, glass = slags, charcoal, empty spaces in blooms that need to be cleared up before a usable bar of steel is handy to make into a blade.

The second is to run up the layer count for aesthetic purposes. Nothing more than that.

The myth that hard and soft layers of material occurs is simply that, a myth. I know of maybe a dozen smiths who have the knowledge, and four or five with the necessary equipment to perform the technical exercise of making hard and less hard layers in a blade. None of us will likely do it except for being able to say so. It's simply not practical on a cost/time basis when perfectly serviceable materials perform better and are easier to make.

Strength comes from the base steel, it's alloying chemistry and, most importantly, the correct heat treatment for that material.



No. A forge weld is a 100% weld. If it's done right to begin with. Ask a stick, arc, TIG welder-person what that means. They can't do it without a lot of extra effort. The small liquidus layer between layers of the combined materials will diffuse between the non similar metals and when fused correctly during forging leaves no space to begin a delamination.

Poorly forge-welded materials will delaminate. In my shop, the materials are stressed during forging to make that occur so that particular bar never leaves the shop. This does not mean that every weld is perfect, sometimes during grinding a flaw will get discovered, but I doubt that would be big enough to reject the blade as a tool other than the desire for a nice looking appearance.



Huh? A flaw that would cause a hammer to spall and send pieces flying around the shop is bad. People get hurt or stuff gets broken. I don't understand how you can criticize the material as being a problem on one hand and how the problem then becomes a desirable quantity?



No. See my previous response about cleaning the material. Japanese blades bend before breaking because of the heat treatment, not because of any inherent quality, or lack thereof, of the steel.

Still, using the idea of plywood is a good example to explain why the layers show up on the surface of a blade. It doesn't have anything to do with strength in steel blades though.

The careful study of the body of information available is the basis for asking good questions. I'm happy to help you with your study, if that is your purpose. Saying things that are contradictory to propagate a futile argument is wasted space.

Thank you very much for this superb explaination. My english is not good enought to do this in your language, but good enought to understand this. And this is also the consensus, that exist in the german knifemaking forums.

Originally Posted by Buddel

...My english is not good enought to do this in your language, but good enought to understand this. And this is also the consensus, that exist in the german knifemaking forums.

My German language skills are much weaker than your english. However, I do speak Hammer and Tool fluently. I've never had any difficulty understanding a German (or any other national) smith when his hammer is talking.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

To anyone that owns a Damascus razor, does it honestly shave 2-20 times better than your other razors...(based on costs)

No.

And I would leave it at that if I didn't need 10 characters for a post.
It looks good, but the pattern does not magically impart better shaving qualities.

It is an indisputable fact that people who shave with high quality Damascus steel razors are cool and they can kick your ass.