Thread: Why are Damascus steel razors so expensive?

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.