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Gentlemen
I am nor entirely certain that this question should be posted here but I am beginner so please have some patience with me.
Looking through some of the wonderful threads in this forum showing beautiful razors made from Damascus steel several questions comes to mind. One that I have been thinking about is how difficult is it to maintain a good edge on these ? Mixing different kinds of steel and forging them together could make the sharpening rather difficult.
It is no worries at all.
They perform just the way any other steel would do.
That is if they are made properly.
Hopefully, some of the makers will chime in on this subject.
My comments are made solely as a user who has a fair few Patterned steel razors:)
There are several good articles on Damascus/Woots/patterned steel around on SRP.
In addition, I seem to remember reading about it on Wikipedia as well.
Thank you !!!Quote:
Originally Posted by Birnando
Point taken I will check in the Wiki next time :aargh:
It's just like any razor. It depends on the hardness. Some are a little more difficult and some are very straight forward.
You just have to keep them oiled so they dont rust. I use a silicone gun rag and wipe my blade. Some makers use a sandwich. You have three layers of steel. Two damasks with a solid core. That way you avoid the inherent saw-tooth edge. That micro saw tooth edge is what makes damasks knives cut so nice but not necessary what you want in a shaving razor.
Most 'Damascus' steel in modern knives and razors is cosmetic. Once you go over a certain number of folds in the steel [snips long technical explanation] the steel is effectively homogeneous even though it has a nice wavy pattern to it.
You might get true Damascus/woost steel from a highly specialized custom maker, but you can bet a brick to London that anything from a factory involves the cosmetic look pretty stuff.
I think it is all cosmetic, in that it doesn't make a better razor than even the plain high-carbon steels which have been available for a very long time. How often (from the days when straight razors were a highly competitive big business) do we hear of a Victorian laminated razor?
Quality damascus steel, made from start to finish by a person or people who understand razors (not just knives), needn't be at any disadvantage to homogeneous carbon steel, in effectiveness, ease of maintenance etc. Others may be made from commercially available damascus billets by people who don't know or care what a good razor does.
Being on eBay is a discouraging sign, and even if they aren't, perhaps the material was. If I wanted to make a damascus knife, I would use an eBay Indian blank with some confidence. But not a razor.
As already stated above, care measures are no different than for any other steel razor.
Todays damascus steel razors (apart from those from highly specialised artisans) are just plain pattern-welded steel. The old damascus formulation was (from what is known about it) a type of wootz steel that depends on certain trace elements in the iron ore (which is why it 'disappeared' when the original wootz ore was changed to another source). It doesn't even have to be patterned - a lot of early examples have no discernible pattern (although a pattern can be revealed by treating the surface with acid - the revealed pattern can be polished away again).
There were quite a number of vintage and victorian razor makers using damascus steel, such as Isaac Walker, Wade & Butcher, Geo. Wostenholm, John Williams, William Revitt, etc, plus good number of post-Victorian makers. As to whether the steel used was true damascus steel or not is another question, though. Some examples seem to have had the pattern stamped or etched on, but some did use the real thing, albeit highly polished with no patterning visible.
Regards,
Neil
Some early Victorian razors may well have used the wootz steel which came from India (originally via Damascus, although I would guess that the land route was superseded by then.) I don't believe there was any practical reason for it to be laminated. I would suspect that it was far more common for "Damascus steel" or "India Fine Steel" to be stamped on blades of domestically produced steel.
I have "Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny 1857-59" by the former Sergeant William Forbes-Mitchell of the 93rd Highlanders, who formed the core of the British assault troops in the relief of Lucknow. He has an appendix on swords, which although not himself a swordsman, he had frequently seen used to terrible effect in desperate combat. He strongly condemns the Birmingham practice of making swords of spring steel, and tempered so that they can be bend hilt to tip. He considers them far inferior in cutting power, due to their bluntness and tendency to vibrate, to sharp swords of damascus steel, which he describes as being as rigid as cast-iron, or a razor.
But even writing in 1892, he describes the true damascus blade as something few have seen, and recounts conversations of the 1860s which suggest that the art was practically dead then. This is supported by the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wootz_steel . (That same article describes its carbon content as 1.5%, which is high, so perhaps lamination, possibly with other steels, would be required for shock resistance in a sword.) I would be sceptical of claims that there was a substantial trade in wootz/damascus steel to the west at that time.
That's very interesting, particularly about the swords. Wootz originated in India though, and was used in the far east - even an arab chronicler of the 12th century mentions that ‘the Hindus excelled in the manufacture of iron and it is impossible to find anything to surpass the edge from Hinduwani or Indian steel.’
I don't think anyone claimed that there was a substantial trade in it to the West??? Revitt, for example, cast his own in Sheffield.
Regards,
Neil
This is a myth. A honed, pattern welded, or wootz, blade will look the same at the edge as on a honed monosteel blade. All the pattern will have been abraded away leaving clean shiny polished steel. Any micro saw appearance is from too coarse a stone and the scratches left behind from that.Quote:
Originally Posted by cannonfodder
I don't have a camera microscope but this should be easy enough to validate for anyone who does.
Interesting. I can neither confirm or deny your claim, I am not a blacksmith but picked that tidbit up somewhere.
Pattern steel has become popular for kitchen knives the past few years but it is not Damascus. My grandfathers Genco is also marked Damascus but is really patterned steel. My pocket knife is Damascus, around 30 layers if I remember correctly, Kershaw. Cuts anything I ask it to. Livi still forges his own Damascus but uses a solid core and sandwiches the Damascus to it, which is what I have. I believe the above statement came from him, but could be mistaken. At any rate, the reason I got a Damascus razor was because I like the look of Damascus. I won’t say it shaves any better or worse than any other custom I have but it sure does stand out in the display case.
It's not a problem, merely a correction :) . That belief was based on some "advertising" of the day about thirty years ago, justifying why people should buy pattern welded knives or steel. There used to be discussion about hard and soft layers in pattern welded materials. Present day knowledge of metallurgical behavior has dispelled that myth as well. A good deal more is known about simple steel than before.Quote:
Originally Posted by cannonfodder
These are only beliefs, sometimes much harder to dispense with despite evidence, but easy to play into for the marketing crowd. It's often easier to sell something for irrational reasons. The marketeers hope that people will maintain a short attention span and spend their money on something they've heard rather than studied.
I'd be happy to donate some of my own patterned material to the cause if we could convince some of the microscope owning honemeisters to provide the objective evidence. I even have some Pendray wootz in a razor to evaluate. Randy and Ron do not live that far from me. This is do-able.
There a lot of good pattern welding being done these days. The Japanese have taken pattern welding to the modern industrial workshops and produce those fine kitchen knives. They are technically pattern welded but not handmade. Even in my shop there are power tools that make the work more efficient. There are a few who are getting the wootz material back into circulation, although admittedly not exactly true and original damascus wootz because of modern materials going into the crucibles.
But good steel nonetheless and very effective as a cutting material, but really surprising that it cuts so much better in the unhardened state. In my experience of handling old wootz blades, they are more often soft pearlite than hardened. I have access to many old blades as the Oakshotte Museum is very near where I live. Most of those old blades are not hardened to where I'd take a blade.
It'd be very interesting to see a truly rigid wootz blade made for war. I suspect it would be in several pieces. A rigid sword will fracture and not withstand the rigour of combat as well as a springy blade. Indeed this is the purpose of a differentially hardened blade. Even so there are a great many different opinions in print. Caveat emptor.