Re:The companies that bring us knife steel
by Anon4Now on Thursday October 08, 2020 @02:04PM
(#24721905)
Having attended University of Forged in Fire for many years, I am now an overconfident internet authority on knife making. What you are referring to is call "san mai", not Damascus.
Re:The companies that bring us knife steel
by blacksmith_tb on Thursday October 08, 2020 @07:28PM
(#24725063)
I think you're both right - yes, the harder-steel-in-the-middle is what gets called 'san mai' (though smiths all over the world have forge-welded harder steel to softer iron for tools and in knives for a long time), and the parent was describing a knife with decorative 'damascus' patterns on the outer layers of a harder steel center. I have a similar Shun [1] I got from Williams-Sonoma years ago, which slices onions as usual, but looks good doing it.
Re:The companies that bring us knife steel
by JoeAltmaier on Thursday October 08, 2020 @01:25PM
(#24721451)
Odd. My son's steel ends up with 100-200 layers of alternating steel. Not 3?
I own a "Damascus" knife. Like many well-designed modern knives, it uses a core of hard steel in the middle (VG-10 in my case) clad between two layers of soft steel. This is a very good design, enabling one to always have a hard steel for the cutting edge while also having the durability of soft steel from the bulk of the knife matter.
Now a moment's thought shows that the "Damascus" part - which is on the outer cladding layers - has absolutely nothing to do with the cutting edge, and is therefore entirely superfluous from a functionality standpoint :)