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Thank you.
There are some reasons. A blank for a pattern welted steel razor is much more expensive than a normal carbon steel blank. Here you can see at Dovo how a normal blank is made: YouTube - Dovo wmv
Such a blank will not cost more than some Euros. A damascus blank is only made for a few razors mostly by hand. If the damascus steel is self made by the blacksmith this process will take some hours. You have also every time the possibility, that the several layers in the steel will reopen and you made only grab. After that you have to forge the steel by hand in the shape. So you have to put much more time in a Damascus razor and you have a greater risk to destroy something in this process.
On a good forged Damascus blank you can see, that the grain of the steel on the shank is more dense than at the blade itself. That is the sign of a forged shank.
http://straightrazorpalace.com/attac...buddel14_1.jpg
If the grain at the whole razor is equal this is a sign for a stock removal made razor.
And not a least the Damascus steel made razors are more rare then the others. Also it is a point of the marketing.
Because people are willing to pay a lot of money for them.
Buddel's summary is a good one. There are so many things that can go wrong making it, that you are paying for the smith's education (and mistakes). When it goes right, it is beautiful.
Damascus blades take much more time and fuel to make then a standard billet and are a higher degree of difficulty so only blade smiths of good experience are best suited to making them.
The process for making on is to take 2 pieces of metal, one a high carbon and the other one will have a high nickle content or something similar to give the best contrast when the blade is submerged in the etching acid. Then to stack the two pieces alternating them and start to heat them up. The stack of metal will be heated to a semi molten state so when they are hammered they will fuse together. Once it has been fully fused the metal will then be drawn out and folded. This process of forge welding, drawing out and folding will be done until the desired number of layers is reached. In some cases the number of layers can be in the 100,000 or more range, then there are some that may only require 100 or so layers.
Also there are some patterns that will be ruined if they are ground to much, so on some instances the blade will need to be forged most of the way before one can start to grind it so the pattern isn't destroyed.
A lot of work, a lot of fuel and a lot of skill drive up the price.
And after all that, we try to do silly things, like play with the patterns. And hope they turn out looking good in the end.
This leads to a question I've wondered about for a long time. Why are Filarmonicas so expensive? Are they made from Damascus steele or is it something else?
That's actually a very poor, misinformed answer and I hope no member's take it as fact.
The truth is, as others have explained, that a LOT more goes into making the STEEL in itself than using a non-patterned steel. I have personally MADE damascus from scratch, and after allllll the hours, sweat, mistakes, and effort that went in it didn't even look that good. Once you have stood in front of the forge with the billet red-hot and then hammered and twisted the steel time after time (I'm leaving out a lot of steps here) you will TRULY understand why damascus is expensive. 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.
Filis are expensive not because they contain some magical quality, it's just because people will pay that much for them. Supply and demand.
Think of those Filis as a collector coin. A 1909s VDB penny is only worth a penny but folks pay thousands to attain one...why? Because 1)they want them and 2) there's only a limited supply.
They have attained the same mystique as the dubl duck Wonderedge, Lifetime (Reaper) and Goldedge. Like the fore mentioned ducks they are real good shavers 99 times out of 100 but bring far more as a collectible then they are worth simply as a shaver.
0n the damascus, I have a few and paid the freight. They are beautiful razors and great shavers. No better or worse than a high carbon necessarily but really cool to have if that is your thing.
I am always incredulous that the steel can be folded hundreds or even thousands of times as I frequently read. I would have thought that it would be ruined in the process ?
On the contrary, sir. Yours is a common economic misconception. All that you say is well and good, but misses the fundamental microeconomic point. The effort that the maker puts into the product - the labor, the skill, the quality of the materials - none of this directly determines its value in the marketplace. Only the customer can do that. If the seller can convince a potential customer to accept his own valuation of the razor's worth, then so much the better for him. Possibly the potential customer will base his valuation on other aspects entirely, such as the fact that it was made in a particular country (USA! USA! USA!), and assign an extra value that the seller does not consider (or the reverse, which was a point of contention about the Hart razor). But possibly the potential customer will value such things differently than the seller does, in which case the seller must adjust his own valuation to match. Possibly uncomfortably lower, possibly gloriously higher. But there is nonetheless only a very imperfect match between the labor, skill, and material that goes into a product, and the value attached to that product. We see this all the time with guys griping about the cost of razors on ebay, or the cost of gillette razors, or the cost of Penhaligons shaving soap. While this may be an uncomfortable thing for a proud craftsman to think about, it is nonetheless a fact. It is possible that the two cannot agree on a common valuation, and the craftsman gets to admire his work sitting on his mantlepiece, and comfort himself that it is at least being appreciated properly by someone who truly understands it. But that doesn't pay the bills, nor does it mean that his valuation is the "correct" one, merely that he values his pride more than paying the bills.
To the extent that the damascus makers have succeeded in convincing their customers to value the labor and skill involved, they can charge a premium for their razors that is not justified by the actual shaving qualities. But there are other reasons to value damascus highly (aesthetics), as well as reasons to devalue it (layer transitions at the edge, higher maintenance to preserve those aesthetics, etc) which have nothing to do with skill or labor, and I would guess that few of the people on this forum who have ponied up for a damascus razor have the sort of appreciation for what goes into making it that you do, which makes yours an inadequate description for what establishes the value of damascus razors.
Yep. The value of a Fili has very little to do with the cost to produce them, nor does the value of a dubl duck, nor the value of a Hart, or TI, or Dovo, or Livi. They are worth what they are, because people for a variety of reasons are willing to pay it. Rarity, coolness, investment potential, SRAD, whatever. But very little of it has anything to do with whatever went into the manufacture of those razors.
It isn't. It's folded only a relatively few times The number of layers doubles with each folding. Start with two layers forged together, then folding will produce 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096 etc layers in succession. You can get to some spectacular numbers in a hurry, even more if you start with 3 or more layers.
You obviously have your opinion and I have mine, but it IS a fact that the intensive labor that goes into making damascus also creates the cost. I understand that a buyer determines cost, but that is not THE reason damascus razors are expensive. In the custom knife world, whether the value is justified or not (which still lies in the mind of the buyer) cost DOES move in accordance with labor although there is no set scale as to what prices should be. You can argue all day that the buyer determines the cost but the labor issue is still there. If damascus didn't sell for high prices, it wouldn't be made. The labor wouldn't equal the return. We could argue the semantics of 'economics' or 'value' all day and still go in circles.
Or somebody would figure out a more cost-effective way to make it, or it would be valued the same way art is valued, purely on its aesthetic qualities with no real consideration for the labor involved; I suspect that it is already valued as art btw, and the reason labor is such an imperfect proxy for value is because labor is really a rough proxy for the artistic quality of the resulting steel, and because we have such a poor knowledge of the labor that goes into a razor - Zowada doesn't put the workbill next to the price tag on his razors on the Classic Shaving website; we're left to infer the labor and material inputs from the asking price, which is the complete reverse of your argument. What we do have pretty good knowledge about is the aesthetics of the razor - Classic Shaving may skip the workbills but they make sure to put up nice large photos of the razors, which implies that Classic believes that purchasing decisions are being made based on artistic considerations, *not* labor calculations, not even approximately based on labor calculations, though it is possible that Classic Shaving is wrong about this, and they could charge more for the razors if their customers really knew what it took to make that $2100 Zowada damascus razor versus that $700 TI damascus razor.
Edit: split into two sentences.
I'm almost positive that Classic Shaving doesn't set the prices for Zowada razors... Tim Zowada does. That's because he knows what went into them AS WELL AS what he can get out. Also, the price difference between a Zowada custom and a TI damascus is like comparing an original Van Gogh to a Thomas Kinkade lithograph... it has a LOT to do with the labor involved. I'm not saying that labor is the only determining factor or that art, aesthetics, and consumer demand play no part, but saying "because people are willing to pay a lot of money for them" as a be-all end-all answer is pretty ignorant. I didn't set out to give a breakdown as to the merits and drawbacks of damascus- that can't be argued to an end either.
What you've been describing is essentially COGS - Cost Of Goods Sold, basically "what does it take for me to make this". Because the manufacturers *do* know the labor and other expenses involved, they can make an accurate estimation of COGS, but COGS is by no means the same as value or else there would never be sales and outlet malls; when COGS < value, then the manufacturer gets to buy his kids braces and retire at a decent age, when COGS > value then he either improves his efficiency, lowers his standard of living, or solves the whole problem by outsourcing it to somebody in China.
There's also the problem of imperfect knowledge. I don't know if the labor differential between the TI and Zowada determines the price differential, because I don't know how much labor went into either of these razors. It's possible that the TI razor was hand forged from tiny ball bearings using a blowtorch and a tack hammer by the most skilled torch-and-tack-hammer craftsman in France (or China given today's manufacturing realities). Maybe Tim will chime in and fill us in on the details of what it took to make one specific razor example. But until we get such information from Zowada and TI we can't be using labor as a basis for our valuation; because we don't know what labor is involved in either razor, this is insufficient to explain the selling price (because both the TI and Zowada razors *are* selling after all). It's not even that we think we know how much labor is involved but may be wrong; we really have no idea at all!
"Because people are willing to pay a lot of money for them" may not be the answer you want to hear. But it is nonetheless the truth. You can put all the blood, sweat, and tears in to a razor that you want, and put a $30,000 price tag on it for your efforts, but until somebody ponies up the $30,000 for it then it isn't actually a $30,000 razor in any meaningful sense ($30,000 picked because there's a razor out there on the intertubes with that price tag on it, it's never sold in the three years or so that I've been aware of its existence).
I don't know all of the reasons why these razors sell for so much, which is why I hedged in my response. "because people are willing to pay a lot of money for them" is not a be-all-end-all answer, it is a carefully conservative answer, that implies that there may be a variety of answers that will vary from purchaser to purchaser, at least that was my intent. You have your preferred explanation for why people are willing to pay a lot of money for them. I disagree with your explanation, but neither your preferred explanation nor my preferred explanation invalidates my initial statement. You may not think "because people are willing to pay a lot of money for them" was a particularly useful answer, but it nonetheless has the advantages of being both correct and complete.
thanks everyone for their input. I was thinking of getting the TI damascus.
Not sure yet.
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.
The purpose of folding metal is to help impart carbon into the metal. Carbon will migrate from coal or charcoal into the metal. But also the simple act of folding it will make it stronger. 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. It is this flaw that makes a Damascus blade more durable then a standard blade. 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.
Actually how a craftsman values his work has a lot to do with the price.
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.
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
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. 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.
No, it shouldn't affect honing unless the types of metals used would affect the honing by themselves. Back to the wood example, the layered bit of wood would be just as easy to cut through with a saw as the single piece of wood, that is unless one was pine and the other oak.
There is some contestation whether a damascus blade will cut better then a none damascus and whether it will keep it's edge longer. There is something in saying that the imperfect layering in the blade will add to the microscopic serration on the blade, but then a razor sharp edge has such fine serrations on its edge that by the very nature of having a razor sharp blade would nullify any bonuses of the damascus constriction to add serrations to the blade. It, in my opinion, would benefit cutting ability on a knife or sword but probably not on a razor. Will it will hold a edge longer? Most likely not. Even if the blade absorbed more carbon allowing it to achieve a hardness beyond that of a standard blade during heat treating it would need to loose that extra hardness during the tempering process. If too much hardness is left in the blade it will chip to easily and be to fragile to use.
They are expensive, as I'm sure you already know, and they are a bear to hone. If you do get one unless you enjoy a challenge get it pre-honed by a pro. Read thebigspendur's review and that of another couple of guys who bought one and you''ll see their experience with honing it.
I happened to get a good deal on a used one but it wasn't shave ready and I had a job ahead of me getting it up to speed. Thanks to diamond plates, Shapton pro stones and the SRD felt in the process I enjoy shaving with it.
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 :)
this really doesn't make much sense in the current context. yes the two steels generally have slightly different carbon content and it gets evened out as far as i have read, but that's the most expensive and inexact way to control carbon content.
i don't understand this at all, isn't it the exact same process? how is welded blade more durable than a cast one?
are they glued together in some way? because if they are i don't see where the difference would come from, if they aren't well then the lack of bonding accounts for the difference, but at the same time makes the analogy with welded steel completely wrong.
please do explain better if you can, because none of this makes much sense to me.
btw, if you're thinking about work hardening that's a very different thing. and you can hammer without folding with much better result.
Damascus technique got it's rise from poor quality of steels back in the old days. Even smelting wrought iron through charcoal could not impart enough carbon into the metal to give what we would consider a high carbon steel today. The smiths only way to get a steel that was usable for blades was fold the metal. You are right though, steels are now manufactured with enough carbon in them so folding to achieve more carbon is not necessary. And most blade smiths now use propane or gas forges and gas will not migrate carbon into the blade.
In a liquid form two different metals will become one, but in a forge weld they stay two pieces. Think of forge welding as though it is Velcro, two pieces that stick together but are separate in the end, each piece keeping the properties it had before they were joined.
Sorry for my inability to type what I am thinking. Yes, I did mean the wood to be glued together. The glue being softer then the wood will allow the different pieces to move more freely then if they were one solid piece of wood. Some bowyers will use wood glued to their wood bows as a backing. The glue binding the two woods together, but allowing them to move more freely. The same in essence for a forge weld.
As for the durability, that depends on the type of durability one is talking about. If you want a durable hammer you want to forge one from a single piece of metal. But a blade is entirely different. A blade needs to bend, flex and absorb shocks when it has little mass to absorb shocks. As far as razors go it is pretty much a moot point, a razor will never be up the the rigorous uses that a knife or sword would. But a damascus sword will be more durable then a standard bladed sword. Why? because of those layers. By forge welding you are creating a structure within the blade itself making it stronger in a way. Take concrete, it is very fragile, but add a structure of metal to it and it can bend and absorb shocks in ways it could never have before.
No, I was not thinking about work hardening. After you make a blade you heat treat it by quenching in in oil, water or a brine. This will make that steel hard and brittle and in some cases it can make to steel so brittle that dropping it could break the knife or sword blade. So then you need to temper that hardness out of the metal so it can be usable, but of course you don't want to take so much hardness out that the blade is soft.
i don't think the forge welded joint has the properties of the glue you're describing. it's actually solid state diffusion, so there's no media with different elastic properties to enhance shock absorption.
but yeah i believe the consensus is that in the antiquity the process was to control carbon content, since the technology was really rudimentary.
anyways, as far as i understand it these days pattern weldging is for purely aesthetic purposes (i know companies like shun claim functional advantages, but these can be achieved much cheaper).
I wonder: how many of the layers in a damascus razor can be found at the edge, within the bevel area? Does it work like that? It just would seem to increase the change of forming artifacts between the different folds to the consistency of the edge.
And wouldn't a more tensile edge roll easier? Seeing the paper thin edges we need on a razor, wouldn't damascus be a bad option?
I like the looks of them and can see paying for the aesthetics, but I would like to know that it is a purely aesthetic characteristic that I'm paying for. I would rather spend the cash on a plain non-folded razor that is easier to hone than a fancy looking one that that I dread having to work back into shape.
I dunno. I think I'm starting to understand less about damascus than when I start reading this thread...
After reading the comment about carbon steel at the end of [1] I think I'll stay with it. Metal with a pattern (however it has been archived) can look really nice but I'm afraid there's more an aesthetic than a shaving value. In spite of that it would be nice to try one but not with that price.
[1] playground.sun.com/~vasya/Bulat-Achim-Stainless.html
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).
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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 ;)
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.
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.Quote:
The purpose of folding metal is to help impart carbon into the metal. Carbon will migrate from coal or charcoal into the metal.
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.Quote:
But also the simple act of folding it will make it stronger.
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.Quote:
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.
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?Quote:
It is this flaw that makes a Damascus blade more durable then a standard blade.
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.Quote:
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.
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.
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.
It is an indisputable fact that people who shave with high quality Damascus steel razors are cool and they can kick your ass. :roflmao