Thread: Why are Damascus steel razors so expensive?

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?

Originally Posted by mparker762

Because people are willing to pay a lot of money for them.

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.