Found my dream hunting knife at a knife show but it is made in damascus steel and i dont know diddly squat about damascus.Is it hard to sharpen?is it easy to rust over night in wet rainy conditions?What are positive and negatives of damascus for a knife?Also what is the price for a billet?That would make up a skinner knife with a 7in.blade?I really like the knife and design,I just would like to know a little about taking care of it.Will a arkansaw medium rock be ok to sharpen it on or do i need a diamond stone?
Thanks for the help in advance.

I would ask someone on the Custom Knife forums you will get a much better answer than I can provide. Depending on who makes it Damascus can be just about any metal. I have a Larry Davidson knife with Eggerling Damascus the 5" piece of damascus Larry used to make the blade was over 100$. But there is cheaper Damascus available.

Custom Knife Forums

Damscus Information

thanks ropes,great site!

Most damascus blades are made for their aesthetic's over function. As was mentioned, there are all sorts of damascous out there, including some stainless ones. Some material is sold by the inch, and you can put several hundred dollars into just the billet.

Traditional damascus was low and high carbon steel welded together in a meathod that creates a pattern. There are modern damascous blades that actually start as powered metals, that are sintered together to form a billet, kinda like casting, but not quite.

I would not choose a damascous blade for a rough service knife, as I'd likely mess up the pattern over time by exposure to various acids (fruit juices, etc), and by cleaning. I'd personal choose a stainless steel.

Most damascus blades are made with a high carbon and low carbon steel,and depending on how many times the billet is cut, the number of lines in the lamination.

Damascus, IMO is strictly for decoration and will not serve much use as a hard working functional field blade. The blade will be easy to sharpen, but will dull quickly with the mild (low carbon) steel.

Just my .02

Guys,

Damascus steels are really of four types:

1) Original damascus as made in ancient times with ores from Wootz, India. This material has a high vanadium content and the pattern is from the dentrites formed by heating/cooling and hammering the material. The secret was lost for many centuries and has only recently been replicated. Wootz steel is a highly desired by the collectors and is very, very costly.

The rest of the damascus tribe is actually "pattern welded" steel made from forge welding a stack of alternating layers of material and then working it by folding or cutting away material from the billet. The billet materials are usually of three types:

2) A high carbon material containing some coloring element like nickel or chromium, and a low carbon steel. This is the more decorative damascus and is not a great knifemaking material.

3) A high carbon steel alternated with a high carbon steel containing a coloring element (as mentioned above ... nickel, chromium, and vanadium). Two common mixes are 1084 (to 1095) and 15N20 or L6. The 1084/L6 mix can be heat treated to bainite which is the premier hard and flexible knifemaking material. Bainite blades can be bent cold to absurd angles (near 90 degrees) and they return to straight or near straight without chipping the edge. A hardness of RC 58-60 is possible and that is plenty hard for a working knife.

Bainite is prized and commands high prices.

Non-bainite 1084/15N20 damascus won't take the heavy bends, but make damned fine knives that hold terrific edges and is plenty strong for working knives.

4) The last group of materials are the exotic stainess or powder pattern welded materials. These are usually made by welding inside a sealed tube to exclude air during the process. Often expensive and usually less hardy than the category 2 and 3 materials.

Pattern welded materials are usually fashioned into blades, heat treated, and then the softer layers (high carbon but no coloring elements) are etched away with Ferric Chloride or a strong acid like sulfuric. The depth of the etch is a maker choice and can be quite deep.

The blade is often then blued (damned shame that molten blueing salt blues require too high a temperature for the heat treating), and the blade flat polished to expose the layers having coloring elements in them. This yields a bright line against a darker background.

As for care of a damascus blade, it is really no different than that required by carbon steel blade. Bee's wax or Johnson's Floor wax works best ;>

Damascus is pretty and functional, but requires a lot of work and will be expensive as a result.

quote:

Originally posted by blackbearhunter:
Found my dream hunting knife at a knife show but it is made in damascus steel and i dont know diddly squat about damascus.Is it hard to sharpen?is it easy to rust over night in wet rainy conditions?What are positive and negatives of damascus for a knife?Also what is the price for a billet?That would make up a skinner knife with a 7in.blade?I really like the knife and design,I just would like to know a little about taking care of it.Will a arkansaw medium rock be ok to sharpen it on or do i need a diamond stone?

It is not hard to sharpen. The low carbon component steel will sharpen easily.

It can rust if not taken care of. After sharpening a light coating of oil will do it fine.

I lot of knife makers are using chainsaw chains for their damascus. Without seeing the pattern, it is hard to determine the price of the raw steel.

The medium stone will be fine. Again, after sharpening or heavy use, a light coat of oil is all that is needed.

I have been trying to learn the different grades of hardness of knife steels.The steel that a sharade sharpfinger is made of,is it softer or harder than cheep damascus?All i know i can put a razor sharp edge on that kind of steel,but give me the case surgical or buck knife steel and i can never get them to sharpen by hand as sharp as the factory new in the box condition.I have no problem sharpening a working knife,but it is awful hard to do some of the super hard steels out there by hand.

As a rule of thumb, if the knife is hard to sharpen, ie takes a long time to get the edge back, then it is usually a good, durable tool steel. If it is easily honed, it is more likely a softer steel, that won't hold an edge very long under heavy use.

My personal knives are from ATS-34 Stainless. They take a while to get a good edge, but I can also process up to 5 deer before needing to put it back on the crock sticks. This includes using it to split the chest and cut through the pelvic bone.

Hey HL,I noticed that about the buck folders,i butchered 5 deer with mine like that and was very impressed.i gotta old sharade skinner that was my first knife for deer hunting that my dad gave me,its rare and i never see one like it,it looks like the skinner they made that had a imitation antler handle i think it was called a golden spike or something.Mine was way earlier than those,probley late 60s-early 70s?Anyway it has a leather stacked handle.i can get that knife so sharp its scary and it doesnt take much to do it,so i am a alittle parcial/big fan/ about the sharades and there steel.Ialways clean and resharpen my knifes anyway after butchering and allways keep them oiled up.I just have noticed alot of knife makers are really using the damascus steel on there knifes more and more-even high end stuff..........Iam going to give my new damascus skinner a work out over the next few years and see how she holds up...Cheers

I also have a Buck folder and have noticed the same thing regarding the edge holding power. I still use mine on occassion, but mostly use the knives I make. I like the look of natural wood handles and the ATS34 tool steel seems to hold a better edge than my buck knife.

Also, having all the shapening equipment, grinders, buffing wheels, etc. it is easy to keep the knives surgically sharp.

ms starling had some good comments about damascus. A lot of knife makers use a piece of steel cable,forge it and them make "damascus" blades it looks pretty. True damascus blades should be forged, not shaped by stock removal. When you look at Japanese knives with the hard steel core sandwiched between softer or stainless slabs you realize that that is a better idea than damascus that is made only for beauty. The samurai blades were legendary and made up of around 1500 layers of folded steel, they didn't try to enhance the look of the layers, they were out for performance. Seems knife makers do what sells, and who can blame them? A classically made damascus blade should be well over a thousand bucks due to the work and skill that goes into it.

the chef

Actually, there is a good reason for my comments to have some at least interesting content ... I am a knifemaker and I make damascus as you can see on the website given below.

Japanese swords are interesting. You have to remember that the material they were working with drove the techniques they developed. The stuff they started with isn't the quality that we begin with today. The initial forming of the lump and the folding of it in a high carbon heating environment was done to provide a material of sufficient consistency, cleanliness and carbon content to be about equal to 1050.

The use of even finer (more heavily folded) steels as centers was done to minimize the amount of very high carbon steel they had to make while giving the blade the flexibility and impact resistance resulting from material that is not so hard.

The constuction of the blade worked out well in that the resulting product had the mechanical properties needed in a weapon of war. Sharp at the edge, flexible, and relatively impact resistant.

There are other ways to get those same qualities ... and modern materials can, arguably, yeild a product equal to or better than that made by the Japanese. Usually though, it will not have the beauty of the crystal structure resulting from the Japanese method (the hamon).

Beautiful swords are to be prized and many Japanese weapons are very, very beautiful. There are some modern makers outside of Japan that do a right fine job too.

All that aside, a good pattern welded steel blade will last a life time of real use if properly cared for. And they can be very pretty!