Thread: Pakistan Damascus Blades Any Good?

Found this little Paskistan damascus blade on Ebay. Cheap. Should I run like heck or maybe purchase? Been straight shaving less than a year.

Larry

I would avoid anything made in pakistan. I'm pretty sure these won't take an edge.

Damascus and cheap aren't exactly something you find together in the same sentence...

Thats not entirely true, the Pak damascus blade i just bought off of ebay for a display piece was razor sharp and heavy duty. I was actually very surprised on how sharp it was, shaved my arm hairs clean, and the quality of the blade. The question I am wandering is will it hold the edge and for how long, whats the durability of the knife? I think in the end you get what you pay for and luck, I paid over 100.00 because I wanted a good looking "damascus" type knife to hang in my "war room" for display. I think If I would have only paid 25.00 then it would not have been such a nice knife...

Why Bother,,,

The link does not work for me, but...

I'd bet dollars to donuts that it is not Damascus but rather pattern welded steel that looks neat.

And looking neat is the ONLY thing that stuff coming out of Pakistan is good for (unless they changed something MAJOR in the last couple weeks).

There is a BIG market for pattern welded steels in all things cutlery right now. Some "Collectors" are fine with pieces they can stick in a shadow box and hang on the wall. Most users (and guys on this site) would not accept a so much as a letter opener made from this sort of steel.

True Damascus, and High Grade pattern welded steel can be fantastic stuff...but there are endless arguments as to weather it is worth the cost from a pure performance aspect compared to modern offerings.

Originally Posted by unit

...that it is not Damascus but rather pattern welded steel that looks neat.

I wish we could dispense with the confusion about the word "damascus". PW steel is the most proper term for laminated steels that show patterns. Wootz, a specific cast crucible steel, is the most proper term to substitute for "real damascus steel", or fulad or bulat or ukku.

Originally Posted by unit

And looking neat is the ONLY thing that stuff coming out of Pakistan is good for (unless they changed something MAJOR in the last couple weeks).

Over the last few years, the Pakistani smiths have proven themselves very adaptable to feedback about their products. There have been significant improvements in both the steels used in making their version of pattern welded material and the heat treatment of said steels. I would suspect that in not very long an interval, because of this thread, one of them or their representatives will show up on this site advertising a razor for sale and then doing a very good job of accepting the challenges offered to produce/test a razor. All that respond will do a fine job of teaching them about razors and their products will take another evolutionary leap.

If anyone is interested, I will PM a link to another forum where this activity went on for several weeks.

The steel mixtures in their PW have improved, the blades functioned much better than the accepted knowledge of the day and the product improved as the thread developed. The good in all that was that everyone learned something. The bad is that now there are good steels out there that will undercut anyone's ability to make the material at a fair price on their own home turf. And you still have the chance of buying from someone a world away you don't know very well with quality control that dissipates as the new knowledge passes from the first guy to his brother-in-law or cousin who may leave out one of the critical steps.

Caveat emptor.

Originally Posted by damienreconman

Thats not entirely true, the Pak damascus blade i just bought off of ebay for a display piece was razor sharp and heavy duty. I was actually very surprised on how sharp it was, shaved my arm hairs clean, and the quality of the blade. The question I am wandering is will it hold the edge and for how long, whats the durability of the knife? I think in the end you get what you pay for and luck, I paid over 100.00 because I wanted a good looking "damascus" type knife to hang in my "war room" for display. I think If I would have only paid 25.00 then it would not have been such a nice knife...

Yes, but all sorts of things, in a knife, will shave arm hair in a brief trial, which are no good at all for a razor. That is why razors are commonly tempered to such a hardness that they will break across or lose a large half-moon when dropped, and almost no use appropriate to a knife is permissible. That is mostly heat-treatment, but the same applies to the composition of the steel, and an angle of bevel quite inappropriate to a razor won't prevent a knife passing the arm-hair "test".

Almost all modern damascus blades use different steels in layers which could mean a hair encountering more than a hair's breadth of one alone in the cutting edge. If different hardness survives the welding, anything that isn't good enough for a razor on its own isn't good enough to be part of a damascus razor. In a knife for some applications, such as cutting meat, a microscopic saw-toothed effect may be very useful. but a razor is different.

For similar reasons, I don't believe acid etching is appropriate in a damascus razor. In the sort of microphotography which you sometimes see on this board, I believe it would look like teeth interpersed with areas of honeycomb.

Originally Posted by Caledonian

...Almost all modern damascus blades use different steels in layers which could mean a hair encountering more than a hair's breadth of one alone in the cutting edge. If different hardness survives the welding, anything that isn't good enough for a razor on its own isn't good enough to be part of a damascus razor. In a knife for some applications, such as cutting meat, a microscopic saw-toothed effect may be very useful. but a razor is different.

For similar reasons, I don't believe acid etching is appropriate in a damascus razor. In the sort of microphotography which you sometimes see on this board, I believe it would look like teeth interpersed with areas of honeycomb.

I entirely agree that the steels used in PW material should each be able to stand alone as a functional material. But you argue in manner suggestive that this is somehow a common occurrence amongst the majority of PW makers, or that PW steels by themselves are all suspect for this problem. On this point, I disagree. This thread began and ends with the concern that quality controls with Pakistani PW steels have generated reputational problems.

The hardening process is an entirely separate operation that occurs after the assembly of the billet. Briefly, the carbon content homogenizes (usually by the third or fourth welding pass) across all the different materials in the billet, except pure nickel - which will not harden regardless. Nothing about welding the steel affects the hardenability of those materials. There are other significant processes involved preparing the material welded for heat treatment later. By that point, with a microhardness tester, it should be shown that all layers have the same hardness, driven by the carbon content and not the minor alloying elements that produce the contrast in layers.

Microserrations are more likely from the grinding abrasives than a feature of the PW steel itself, especially if the myth of hard and soft layers dies the death it so richly deserves.

Any microserrations would also likely disappear in the honing and polishing of the edge before shaving with such a blade. Any pattern, etched, would also disappear during the establishment of the bevel and subsequent honing/polishing and preparation of the edge to shave.

A fair test would be to try several of the suspect steel mixtures, several well established "good" tool steel recipes, hone them up and see what happens, via photomicrographs, after a suitable interval of testing across several face types. I don't have access to a microhardness tester (capable of testing the hardness of individual carbide crystals) but would be very interested in adding this as a variable if it were possible.

Originally Posted by damienreconman

Thats not entirely true, the Pak damascus blade i just bought off of ebay for a display piece was razor sharp and heavy duty. I was actually very surprised on how sharp it was, shaved my arm hairs clean, and the quality of the blade. The question I am wandering is will it hold the edge and for how long, whats the durability of the knife? I think in the end you get what you pay for and luck, I paid over 100.00 because I wanted a good looking "damascus" type knife to hang in my "war room" for display. I think If I would have only paid 25.00 then it would not have been such a nice knife...

Don't take this the wrong way, but would you mind telling us what your experience is regarding razors?
how long have you been shaving with them, and have you honed your own razors and compared them with razors honed by other people?
the reason I ask is that you have 1 post and none of us knows you.

Shaving arm hairs literally means nothing and the term 'razor sharp' is equally meaningless if the person using it has no experience in shaving and honing straight razors.

Originally Posted by damienreconman

Thats not entirely true, the Pak damascus blade i just bought off of ebay for a display piece was razor sharp and heavy duty. I was actually very surprised on how sharp it was, shaved my arm hairs clean, and the quality of the blade. The question I am wandering is will it hold the edge and for how long, whats the durability of the knife? I think in the end you get what you pay for and luck, I paid over 100.00 because I wanted a good looking "damascus" type knife to hang in my "war room" for display. I think If I would have only paid 25.00 then it would not have been such a nice knife...

Originally Posted by Bruno

Don't take this the wrong way, but would you mind telling us what your experience is regarding razors?
how long have you been shaving with them, and have you honed your own razors and compared them with razors honed by other people?
the reason I ask is that you have 1 post and none of us knows you.

Shaving arm hairs literally means nothing and the term 'razor sharp' is equally meaningless if the person using it has no experience in shaving and honing straight razors.

Ahhhhh and there lies the irony of all these posts Bruno...

A 1 post wonder Necro-posts a thread with a Knife comment and everyone starts arguing about PW steel, which has ZERO NADA Nothing to do with these Pakistani razors.. A simple check of that Poster's history shows one visit one time never to return since...

Hmmmmmm Me Thinks we was duped