Thread: Why are Damascus steel razors so expensive?

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.