damascus

[chaos_customs]

what exactlay is damascus
victor
chaos custom knives

[Trenton Entwistle]

It's steel welded together to make a pattern. use the search key, (I have one in my signature) and use the word damascus. There will be a lot of info on it, and a whole lot of pictures of knives made with damascus as well. Also, try and find a knife mag like Blade or Tactical Knives. There ia a lot of info as those as well.

Trenton

Almost forgot about Knives Illustrated, that's a good one too.

T.

[TexasJack]

Originally it referred to a method of making quality steel. A smith would take thin sheets of iron, heating them in a charcoal fire, and hammering them together. Carbon would absorb into the outer layers of each sheet, making steel. The piece of layered steel would be folded and hammered out many times, welding the layers together, until a really strong and durable steel was produced. It's a long, slow, and very hard process. It was not unusual to have thousands of layers in a sword or knife. Crusaders encountered steels made this way and thus the name we use.

Today it also refers to using different steels together to make steel with attractive patterns. For example, pieces of nickel could be sandwiched between a "normal" knifemaking steel, like 1084, and hammered out. A knife made from this mixture can then be etched (mildly) using vinegar or ferric chloride and the layers of welded steel will show a pattern. If you look around a pics of some of the damascus knives on this site, you can see some true artistry in the way metals are stacked and welded.

The same metal can also be welded together as damascus. A piece of steel cable can be heated and welded together and will also show an attractive pattern, though not as distinct as completely different metals.

Damascus adds a very broad and interesting area to knifemaking.

[chaos_customs]

thanks ya i have seen it and was wondering if it was steel that some how just came out like that or if it was multipile piecies of steel put together personaly i dont care for it that much except on certian styles and with the right handle material but i drew this design that would look good made out of damascus so i had to do research on it thanks again

[AwP]

There's actually two catagories of damascus. The one the other people described is pattern welded damascus. The other kind is where the actual name damascus comes from, which is wootz steel. It was made in India and Persia and the city Damascus in the middle east (not sure what country it was in back then) was the main trade center where westerners got a glimps of it. It is a homogenous steel with large carbides in them that form patterns.

Making both pattern welded and wootz damascus are some of the more advanced parts of the blademakers arts, though a number of people sell billets of pattern welded damascus (wootz is much more rare) that you can make into knives without having to actually make the steel yourself.