wire rope damascus made in china

Item Specification: Spearhead Material:Stainless steel;Diameter:4.3 inch/11 cm;Rope:4M;Weight :3.17oz/0.09 kg(approximately)Chinese kung fu training equipment.Condition:Brand Ne…

I start with new "Improved Plowshare" wire-rope (similar to 1084). I "fuse" both ends with my TIG (heat, but no filler) to keep the strands from separating, then firmly weld it to a piece of re-rod. This particular piece of cable was 1.25". (this was shiny and clean, but the TIG will catches the oil on fire, thus the sooty appearance)

Damascus steel knives have long been considered ideal hunting knives. Originating from near eastern civilizations, these knives were manufactured to be resilient and tough. Each Damascus knife is hand forged using premium materials - ensuring each knife is a unique piece of art. However, the blade is the most prominent feature of these knives, as they are very sharp and highlight distinct and intricate patterns.

Additionally, Damascus steel knives are very expansive and highly versatile. These knives come in many different forms - fixed blades, bowies, swords, kukris, pocket knives, etc. The fixed blade Damascus knives emphasize functionality and are great for a variety of tasks, including skinning game, chopping wood, slicing fruit, cutting rope, and much more. The Damascus pocket knives are capable of performing similar tasks, with the increased emphasis on portability and maneuverability. Damascus knives also incorporate a variety of premium materials, such as - stag, micarta wood, bone, ram horn, walnut, tiger leather, etc.

These qualities make Damascus steel knives highly sought after for their functionality, versatility, quality, and ornate designs. Yet, you will find Damascus steel knives are offered at extensive price ranges - some are very cheap while others are exorbitant. Therefore, a common question many individuals find themselves asking once they get their hands on a damascus blade is - is my damascus steel knife real or fake?

This question is a very important one to ask, as there are many fake Damascus knives being offered. Although it is not the most easiest question to answer - there are many telltale signs which can help the user recognize whether their Damascus blade is real or fake. Before outlining some of these signs, it is important to distinguish between the different methods employed to make damascus steel knives.

Forging Wootz Steel - Wootz steel is smelted from primarily iron and steel, as well as miscellaneous materials - including sand and glass. This process involved smelting pieces of iron and steel with wooden chips. Subsequently, the wooden chips would become carbon, which would then be absorbed by the melted iron. The heat, pressure, controlled cooling, and repeated forging process would continue until a carbon content of 1% was achieved - however, impurities would be present within the blades. Following these steps resulted in longer layers of concentrated precipitates running through the steel, which gives the blade the famous wavy pattern (i.e., Damascus folds). Although the blade would naturally present Damascus folds, they were subtle and less prominent. As a result, the blades would undergo acid etching following polishing to make the pattern more visible.

This procedure was the historic method used to manufacture authentic Damascus knives. Therefore, Damascus knives made using wootz steel is considered authentic Damascus steel.

Pattern Welding - Pattern welding is a modern technique which involves layering multiple sheets of iron and steel, and applying excessive heat treatments with repeated forging. Specifically, two layers of iron and steel are combined, heated, and hammered until the two sheets are melded together to form a billet or bar. The bar is subsequently folded, heated, and hammered again. This process continues until several layers are formed. Typical pattern welded blades contain approximately 40 layers. The blades are finished off with applying acid etching following polishing to make the Damascus folds more visible - making the famous wavy and twist patterns more prominent.

Although pattern welded Damascus blades contain less than 1% carbon content, they are superior compared to their historic wootz steel counterparts, as they contain far less impurities and are made with homogenous layers. This pattern welding procedure is the main method utilized in modern day to construct Damascus steel knives.

Exclusive Acid Etching - We"ve seen both pattern welding and forging wootz steel employ application of acid etching to the Damascus blades to bring out the water and twist patterns. However, some manufacturers fake pattern welding by applying acid etching or laser etching to carbon steel or stainless steel blades. These are considered fake damascus steel blades, as they are primarily made with the intention of aesthetically imprinting Damascus looking patterns on cheaper blades. As a result, they are not characterized by the inherent qualities of a Damascus steel blade.

It is difficult to differentiate whether your Damascus knife is a real Damascus steel knife or a fake solely by examining the knife with your naked eye. To determine the authenticity of a Damascus steel blade - you need to polish a fragment of the blade down until the pattern is no longer visible. Then, you immerse the blade in an acid solution. In wootz Damascus steel or pattern welded steel, the original pattern will reemerge following submersion of the blade in the acid solution. In a fake Damascus knife, the edge will be uniform, leaving a randomly marked surface.

Authentic historic methods of constructing Damascus steel knives with wootz steel is a lost art. Within the modern day, pattern welding is the most common method utilized to create Damascus steel knives. Therefore, if you have a pattern welded Damascus steel knife with acid etching, it is a legitimate and real Damascus steel knife.

Additionally, as previously stated, pattern welded Damascus steel knives are stronger than their historic counterpart, as they contain less impurities and are made with homogenous layers.

There are many telltale signs which you can use to determine if your Damascus knife is real or fake. First and foremost, if the Damascus knife highlights highly elaborate, detailed, and unnatural designs (not the general watery, folded, ladder, wavy, twist, raindrop, or feather patterns) it is most likely not legitimate.

Additionally, by simply examining the consistency of the patterns on your knife, you can tell whether or not it is a genuine Damascus knife. A real Damascus steel knife will highlight uniform folds and patterns across the blade, blade"s cutting edge, blade"s spine, knife bolster, and knife"s tang. Also, folds present on the knife"s butt is a sign the blade is true damascus steel.

However, at times, the bolster, tang, and knife"s spine (within the handle portion of the knife) are polished, which removes the folds on the handle. Therefore, if the pattern is not present on the knife"s spine or parts of the handle, this doesn"t necessarily mean the knife is not a genuine Damascus steel knife.

One common misconception is - if the knife"s spine does not present the Damascus pattern folds, it is not real. This statement is circumstantial, as Damascus folds can be polished out, and is often done to make the knife more aesthetically pleasing. In some cases, the knife"s bolster and butt are polished with brass, while the spine is polished and subsequently undergoes treatment to incorporate decorative filework. Therefore, it is important to look at other signs in conjunction to determine the validity of the knife (such as looking at the consistency of the folds).

Another common misconception is - Damascus knives which have undergone acid etching treatment are not real Damascus steel knives. This is not true, as both authentic wootz steel and real pattern welded Damascus steel blades undergo acid etching treatment after polishing to make the Damascus folds and patterns more visible. However, only when acid etching or laser etching is done exclusively on cheaper blades, such as stainless steel or carbon steel, without the layering or smelting of steel, is the Damascus knife considered fake.

Damascus steel knives come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and prices. They have long been considered premium hunting knives due to their implementation of premium materials, excessive forge welding, and ability to perform a variety of tasks. Due to their increased functionality, versatility, and high demand, these knives are easily replicated using ingenuine techniques. Thus, the question naturally arises - is my Damascus knife a real or fake Damascus steel knife?

Here"s the answer - both wootz steel and pattern welded Damascus knives are real Damascus steel knives. Wootz steel was used to construct Damascus knives within historic times, however this process is a lost art. In modern times, pattern welding is the primary process used to construct Damascus steel knives. The pattern welded blades are just as strong, if not stronger, than their historic wootz steel counterparts. On the other hand, carbon steel or stainless steel blades which have undergone acid etching or laser etching treatment exclusively in order to fabricate the famous Damascus steel patterns are considered fake Damascus knives.

Additionally, some telltale signs to ascertain the authenticity of your Damascus steel knife include consistent folds across the blade, cutting edge, spine, and handle. However, it is also a common practice to polish out the damascus folds on the knife"s spine, brass bolster, and butt of the knife - therefore this strategy is not a comprehensive method for determining the authenticity of your Damascus steel blade.

Damascus steel is tie dye for knives. That’s the heart of the matter, and if that feels like enough for you then you can happily go read about some Damascus steel knife we’ve reviewed. I promise that article is more to the point than this one will be, because this article is mostly about indulging my own nerdy compulsions.

The problem is that there’s more history and science behind the term “Damascus steel” than any other knife steel in existence. So when you try to find anything specific about it, you end up in a sea of confused misinformation, generally propagated by idiot bloggers like myself who know more about how to manipulate an internet search algorithm than what actually goes into making a knife.

John Verhoeven and the work he did alongside bladesmith Al Pendray is possibly the most thorough and successful scientific endeavor to recreate genuine Wootz Damascus steel.

Update:Blade Magazine wrote a good piece on Damascus steel in 2022 called “Who Made the First Damascus” that has a pretty good discussion of the history of pattern welded steel and wootz Damascus. It’s pretty concise (although I’d argue with less damn personality), and they talk to blade smiths who have some great insight, but it still doesn’t quite give enough context or detail about history and steel composition to have satisfied my curiosity when I was first working on this haphazard blog. It’s still a good article that’s worth checking out, and probably provides as much information as most people would care to have on this topic.

One of the first things you’re likely to realize if you know nothing about this at all is that the term “Damascus steel” can refer to two different steels:A pattern welded steel where two or more different steels have been forge welded and twisted together to create a distinctive pattern (Modern Damascus steel),

A crucible steel forged from a single ingot from south India that develops a surface “water” pattern after being forged and thermal cycled (generally called Wootz Damascus).

That’s a rough rewording of the definitions that Larrin Thomas gives in his “5 Myths About Damascus Steel” article (which is a great primer on its own). In that he also refers to modern Damascus steel as “pattern welded steel” and to the crucible version as “Wootz steel”, which seems to be the standard way to distinguish between the two for the competent people who write about this kind of thing.

That word “wootz” has a whole history of its own that I’ll touch on later, but right now we’re just concerned with the question of “which is the real Damascus steel”:

If you’re talking to an especially prickly historian, the answer is that crucible Wootz steel is the real Damascus. That’s the one that started the craze and got everyone trying to make water-patterned blades (unless you’re talking to an even more prickly historian who tells you other countries might have been making similar crucible steels around the same time, but we’ll talk about Anne Feuerbach later).

The real answer, though, is that if you ask a knife maker today for a Damascus steel knife he’s going to make you a pattern-welded steel blade. The best proof of that is probably on Bob Kramer’s site, where he explains what Damascus steel is by calling it pattern-welded steel, then giving a pleasantly concise description of making and drawing out a billet.

When you want a crucible Damascus blade with the more natural looking “water” pattern, there are actually a few custom knife makers like Peter Burt capable of making one every now and then. Whenever I see those knives pop up, though, I see them referred to specifically as wootz Damascus.

Fulad steel hasn’t gotten anywhere near the same kind of attention, and it doesn’t do much here to deepen our understanding of what Damascus steel is, because I’m not even going to attempt to synthesize her work into the discussion as a whole. But it’s worth knowing that the process was apparently more widespread than most people think.

You can thank Dr. Ann Feuerbach’s dissertation Crucible Steel in Central Asia: Production, Use, and Origins for adding this complication (or, for a shorter read, her paper Damascus Steel and Crucible Steel in Central Asia).

That was mostly a matter of good marketing and convenient geography. I think. I really don’t have the expertise to make a new claim about this, though, so I’ll just paraphrase what Ann Feuerbach said about it in her dissertation (and what has since been referenced by a handful of people who have actually read about this, like Larrin Thomas):The word for water in Arabic is “damas” and Damascus blades are often described as having a water pattern on their surface.

What they don’t do is suggest at all that the term started with Crusaders coming back to Europe, which seems to have become one of the big modern assumptions. The term was being used before even the first Crusade happened, and even longer before legends like the sword of Saladin cutting a piece of silk floating in the air in a competition with Richard the Lionheart started circulating.

Without getting too tied up in dates, though, the important thing here is legends like that did spread, and became overblown enough that Damascus weapons developed enough of a reputation that the surface water pattern became a sign of quality.

There’s an excellent documentary by Mike Loades called The Secrets of Wootz Damascus Steel that follows Al Pendray and John Verhoeven trying to develop a consistent method for creating and forging a crucible steel that produces this swirling grain formation.

Thanks mostly to those two, the claim that the “secret to making true Damascus steel has been lost” is mostly false now. While the exact method for making that pattern show up consistently is still up in the air, there are now people like Rick Furrer and Niels Provos who have worked in the past to reproduce Wootz steel with a water surface pattern with various degrees of success.

I don’t know if that means we’ll see Wootz steel in mass production at some point in the future. There are a few groups actively trying to bring the process into the laser age, but for the time being, crucible Damascus steel remains in the territory of historians, metallurgists, and tenacious smiths.

Pattern welding is a pretty old technique in bladesmithing, especially between iron and steel, but it wasn’t always done to copy the Damascus water pattern.

There was apparently a process for it in place on the Iberian peninsula in pre-Roman times based on some of the Falcata swords that have been found there. There’s also evidence that Celtic and Germanic tribes developed a pattern welding method, and the discovery of the Ulfberht swords shows that Europeans were doing this at least as far back as the 9th century.

It would be really easy to say that European blacksmiths saw people going crazy over these water-patterned Syrian weapons and tried to copy the pattern so they could sell their blades at a higher price. It would even make a bit of sense. But I just can’t seem to find enough reliable sources to support that claim, so I’ll jump ahead a few hundred years to the claim that can be backed up.

Moran got knife makers back into forging knife blades and creating their own alloys at a time when the mass production of stamped blades seemed to be pushing that art out of existence, and along with that he brought back the popularity of the word “Damascus”.

Gun manufacturers had been making Damascus gun barrels (sometimes called “twist-steel” barrels) since the 19th century at the latest. There’s a bit of confusion even here about exactly who first started calling pattern welded steel “Damascus steel”, but the idea popped back up during England’s occupation of India, and people started bringing cakes of Wootz steel to the Isles.

The pattern got popular again, and soon smiths and metallurgists started playing around with it. In the early 1800’s, a man named J. Jones got a patent for creating a Damascus gun barrel in a way that would later be called the Crolle Damascus Pattern. Guns like this continued to be made in Britain until about the 1930’s.

People kept writing about the stuff even after Damascus gun barrels stopped being made, but it really wasn’t until Moran dropped into the scene with this Damascus knife in 1973 that the term became truly relevant to everyone again.

When you’re looking at a modern Damascus steel knife that doesn’t have the steel composition in the description, it’s usually safe to say that it’s those two, with the possible variations of 1050 or 1095 traded in as the tool steel.

People jump to the idea that because the process for making Wootz steel is an ancient, lost technique that it must be better, because all old and lost things are better, or that pattern welded steel is better because it’s complicated to make. The truth is that most claims about any kind of Damascus steel being harder or sharper or more wear resistant are unfounded.

Not a lot of experiments have been done in this area, but Verhoven did do a CATRA test to compare the edge on a Wootz Damascus blade to 1086 and 52100 tool steels and AEB-L stainless steel.

Ultimately he concluded that at high hardness both 1086 and 52100 cut better than true Damascus and both have better edge retention, and the Uddeholm AEB-L stainless steel, in broad terms, outperformed all of them at high hardness. Wootz steel did seem to start doing significantly better at a softer hardness, though.

Meanwhile, the Thomas family did their own CATRA test of a pattern-welded Damascus steel made up of AEB-L and 154CM against an edge on a solid piece of each of those steels (detailed at the end of Larrin’s 5 Myths article).

Shockingly, they found that the pattern-welded Damascus performed pretty much right in the middle of each of the steels it was made of: It had a higher edge retention than the softer AEB-L edge, and a lower edge retention than the harder 154CM edge, with an initial slicing ability that was equally centered.

It’s not really fair to say absolutely that Wootz steel is worse than all modern steels and a pattern-welded steel can never perform better than the sum of its parts. These were single experiments done with a small range of materials. But this should give us an educated skepticism of any manufacturer’s claims that their knives perform better because of their Damascus steel.

For what it’s worth, Verhoeven also mentions in his report of the Wootz Damascus CATRA testing that the true Damascus steel blades “from antiquity” likely were better than what was being used by European Crusaders.

It’s possible that European blades were only being hardened to about 40 HRC (which is where Verhoeven said Wootz started to excel) because of the ore and techniques they were using. Pure steel could be tough to come by in the medieval era, especially on a massive enough scale to equip an army, so the ability to make Wootz ingots would have been an incredibly useful technology.

Just for context, the criteria for becoming a Master Bladesmith set by the the American Bladesmith Society are to forge a pattern welded knife with 300 layers that can slice a one-inch rope in half with one cut, chop all the way through a 2×4 without chipping, keep a sharp enough edge through all that to shave hair, and then get bent 90 degrees without cracking.

There are a few basic patterns you tend to see in Damascus blades. You can get a pretty good sense of the possibilities fromthe patterns that Damasteel makes. But the sky’s the limit with highly skilled smiths. Once you start getting into mosaic patterns, Damascus becomes another show altogether. You don’t generally see that in mass produced knives, though.

Master Bladesmith Rick Dunkerley wrote a great article for Blade Mag on some of the different Damascus variations you can make back in 2011. Here’s a rundown of the basic ones he covered:Random: this is where the layers remain flat and a flowing, organic pattern forms during patterning (you’ll see this in a lot of the higher end Japanese kitchen knives).

In most cases you don’t need to take any more care with a Damascus blade than you would with any of your other knives: keep it clean and dry, and maybe put a coat of oil on it every now and then.

Since most Damascus blades are made with a high carbon steel and a high nickel, it makes sense to treat the blade as if it was just a high carbon steel. Chris Reeve’s site actually has a good blog on maintaining Damascus steel knives (even though they don’t seem to make Damascus knives any more), so these tips are adapted from them:Wipe the blade as soon as possible after cutting anything acidic like fruit. Even your finger oils can pose a long term risk if you keep touching the blade without wiping it off.

In that vein, I’d highly recommend getting Larrin Thomas’ book, “Knife Engineering: Steel, Heat Treating, and Geometry” for a great, detailed primer on learning the science behind knife making. Besides the massive drop of comprehensive knife making information, he has a great section on Damascus steel in there.

John Verhoven also wrote a book about his experience trying to create Wootz steel with Al Pendray called “Damascus Steel Swords: Solving the Mystery of How to Make them”, which has a nice mix of science and history tied in with the story of his friendship with Pendray (Verhoeven wrote a bunch of other books on metallurgy that are probably worth reading, but are also crazy expensive).

There are probably hundreds of books on forging pattern welded Damascus, and since I’m not a blade smith myself I can’t say with much certainty which is a good source, but I’ve heard Jim Hrisoulas referenced by actual bladesmiths. He’s done a lot of work in historical weapon making, and written a lot on the topic, so it might be worth checking out his books like “Damascus Steel: Theory and Practice” or “The Pattern Welded Blade: Artistry in Iron” if you want to start learning how to do this stuff.

Sword generally consists of three components:blade,sheath and accessories.The main body, blade,is mostly iron,steel,copper.Sheath is made by wood. In order to avoid getting rusted,it should not be stored in damp place nor contact with sour, salty substances. Hand touch should also be avoided in case the surface got corroded by sweat.Oil shoul be applied on surface for maintainance for medium carbon steel,high carbon steel,pattern-welded steel(Damascus steel)material stainless steel blade.Share

Sword generally consists of three components:blade,sheath and accessories.The main body, blade,is mostly iron,steel,copper.Sheath is made by wood. In order to avoid getting rusted,it should not be stored in damp place nor contact with sour, salty substances. Hand touch should also be avoided in case the surface got corroded by sweat.Oil shoul be applied on surface for maintainance for medium carbon steel,high carbon steel,pattern-welded steel(Damascus steel)material stainless steel blade.Share

Damascus steel is tie dye for knives. That’s the heart of the matter, and if that feels like enough for you then you can happily go read about some Damascus steel knife we’ve reviewed. I promise that article is more to the point than this one will be, because this article is mostly about indulging my own nerdy compulsions.

The problem is that there’s more history and science behind the term “Damascus steel” than any other knife steel in existence. So when you try to find anything specific about it, you end up in a sea of confused misinformation, generally propagated by idiot bloggers like myself who know more about how to manipulate an internet search algorithm than what actually goes into making a knife.

John Verhoeven and the work he did alongside bladesmith Al Pendray is possibly the most thorough and successful scientific endeavor to recreate genuine Wootz Damascus steel.

Update:Blade Magazine wrote a good piece on Damascus steel in 2022 called “Who Made the First Damascus” that has a pretty good discussion of the history of pattern welded steel and wootz Damascus. It’s pretty concise (although I’d argue with less damn personality), and they talk to blade smiths who have some great insight, but it still doesn’t quite give enough context or detail about history and steel composition to have satisfied my curiosity when I was first working on this haphazard blog. It’s still a good article that’s worth checking out, and probably provides as much information as most people would care to have on this topic.

One of the first things you’re likely to realize if you know nothing about this at all is that the term “Damascus steel” can refer to two different steels:A pattern welded steel where two or more different steels have been forge welded and twisted together to create a distinctive pattern (Modern Damascus steel),

A crucible steel forged from a single ingot from south India that develops a surface “water” pattern after being forged and thermal cycled (generally called Wootz Damascus).

That’s a rough rewording of the definitions that Larrin Thomas gives in his “5 Myths About Damascus Steel” article (which is a great primer on its own). In that he also refers to modern Damascus steel as “pattern welded steel” and to the crucible version as “Wootz steel”, which seems to be the standard way to distinguish between the two for the competent people who write about this kind of thing.

That word “wootz” has a whole history of its own that I’ll touch on later, but right now we’re just concerned with the question of “which is the real Damascus steel”:

If you’re talking to an especially prickly historian, the answer is that crucible Wootz steel is the real Damascus. That’s the one that started the craze and got everyone trying to make water-patterned blades (unless you’re talking to an even more prickly historian who tells you other countries might have been making similar crucible steels around the same time, but we’ll talk about Anne Feuerbach later).

The real answer, though, is that if you ask a knife maker today for a Damascus steel knife he’s going to make you a pattern-welded steel blade. The best proof of that is probably on Bob Kramer’s site, where he explains what Damascus steel is by calling it pattern-welded steel, then giving a pleasantly concise description of making and drawing out a billet.

When you want a crucible Damascus blade with the more natural looking “water” pattern, there are actually a few custom knife makers like Peter Burt capable of making one every now and then. Whenever I see those knives pop up, though, I see them referred to specifically as wootz Damascus.

Fulad steel hasn’t gotten anywhere near the same kind of attention, and it doesn’t do much here to deepen our understanding of what Damascus steel is, because I’m not even going to attempt to synthesize her work into the discussion as a whole. But it’s worth knowing that the process was apparently more widespread than most people think.

You can thank Dr. Ann Feuerbach’s dissertation Crucible Steel in Central Asia: Production, Use, and Origins for adding this complication (or, for a shorter read, her paper Damascus Steel and Crucible Steel in Central Asia).

That was mostly a matter of good marketing and convenient geography. I think. I really don’t have the expertise to make a new claim about this, though, so I’ll just paraphrase what Ann Feuerbach said about it in her dissertation (and what has since been referenced by a handful of people who have actually read about this, like Larrin Thomas):The word for water in Arabic is “damas” and Damascus blades are often described as having a water pattern on their surface.

What they don’t do is suggest at all that the term started with Crusaders coming back to Europe, which seems to have become one of the big modern assumptions. The term was being used before even the first Crusade happened, and even longer before legends like the sword of Saladin cutting a piece of silk floating in the air in a competition with Richard the Lionheart started circulating.

Without getting too tied up in dates, though, the important thing here is legends like that did spread, and became overblown enough that Damascus weapons developed enough of a reputation that the surface water pattern became a sign of quality.

There’s an excellent documentary by Mike Loades called The Secrets of Wootz Damascus Steel that follows Al Pendray and John Verhoeven trying to develop a consistent method for creating and forging a crucible steel that produces this swirling grain formation.

Thanks mostly to those two, the claim that the “secret to making true Damascus steel has been lost” is mostly false now. While the exact method for making that pattern show up consistently is still up in the air, there are now people like Rick Furrer and Niels Provos who have worked in the past to reproduce Wootz steel with a water surface pattern with various degrees of success.

I don’t know if that means we’ll see Wootz steel in mass production at some point in the future. There are a few groups actively trying to bring the process into the laser age, but for the time being, crucible Damascus steel remains in the territory of historians, metallurgists, and tenacious smiths.

Pattern welding is a pretty old technique in bladesmithing, especially between iron and steel, but it wasn’t always done to copy the Damascus water pattern.

There was apparently a process for it in place on the Iberian peninsula in pre-Roman times based on some of the Falcata swords that have been found there. There’s also evidence that Celtic and Germanic tribes developed a pattern welding method, and the discovery of the Ulfberht swords shows that Europeans were doing this at least as far back as the 9th century.

It would be really easy to say that European blacksmiths saw people going crazy over these water-patterned Syrian weapons and tried to copy the pattern so they could sell their blades at a higher price. It would even make a bit of sense. But I just can’t seem to find enough reliable sources to support that claim, so I’ll jump ahead a few hundred years to the claim that can be backed up.

Moran got knife makers back into forging knife blades and creating their own alloys at a time when the mass production of stamped blades seemed to be pushing that art out of existence, and along with that he brought back the popularity of the word “Damascus”.

Gun manufacturers had been making Damascus gun barrels (sometimes called “twist-steel” barrels) since the 19th century at the latest. There’s a bit of confusion even here about exactly who first started calling pattern welded steel “Damascus steel”, but the idea popped back up during England’s occupation of India, and people started bringing cakes of Wootz steel to the Isles.

The pattern got popular again, and soon smiths and metallurgists started playing around with it. In the early 1800’s, a man named J. Jones got a patent for creating a Damascus gun barrel in a way that would later be called the Crolle Damascus Pattern. Guns like this continued to be made in Britain until about the 1930’s.

People kept writing about the stuff even after Damascus gun barrels stopped being made, but it really wasn’t until Moran dropped into the scene with this Damascus knife in 1973 that the term became truly relevant to everyone again.

When you’re looking at a modern Damascus steel knife that doesn’t have the steel composition in the description, it’s usually safe to say that it’s those two, with the possible variations of 1050 or 1095 traded in as the tool steel.

People jump to the idea that because the process for making Wootz steel is an ancient, lost technique that it must be better, because all old and lost things are better, or that pattern welded steel is better because it’s complicated to make. The truth is that most claims about any kind of Damascus steel being harder or sharper or more wear resistant are unfounded.

Not a lot of experiments have been done in this area, but Verhoven did do a CATRA test to compare the edge on a Wootz Damascus blade to 1086 and 52100 tool steels and AEB-L stainless steel.

Ultimately he concluded that at high hardness both 1086 and 52100 cut better than true Damascus and both have better edge retention, and the Uddeholm AEB-L stainless steel, in broad terms, outperformed all of them at high hardness. Wootz steel did seem to start doing significantly better at a softer hardness, though.

Meanwhile, the Thomas family did their own CATRA test of a pattern-welded Damascus steel made up of AEB-L and 154CM against an edge on a solid piece of each of those steels (detailed at the end of Larrin’s 5 Myths article).

Shockingly, they found that the pattern-welded Damascus performed pretty much right in the middle of each of the steels it was made of: It had a higher edge retention than the softer AEB-L edge, and a lower edge retention than the harder 154CM edge, with an initial slicing ability that was equally centered.

It’s not really fair to say absolutely that Wootz steel is worse than all modern steels and a pattern-welded steel can never perform better than the sum of its parts. These were single experiments done with a small range of materials. But this should give us an educated skepticism of any manufacturer’s claims that their knives perform better because of their Damascus steel.

For what it’s worth, Verhoeven also mentions in his report of the Wootz Damascus CATRA testing that the true Damascus steel blades “from antiquity” likely were better than what was being used by European Crusaders.

It’s possible that European blades were only being hardened to about 40 HRC (which is where Verhoeven said Wootz started to excel) because of the ore and techniques they were using. Pure steel could be tough to come by in the medieval era, especially on a massive enough scale to equip an army, so the ability to make Wootz ingots would have been an incredibly useful technology.

Just for context, the criteria for becoming a Master Bladesmith set by the the American Bladesmith Society are to forge a pattern welded knife with 300 layers that can slice a one-inch rope in half with one cut, chop all the way through a 2×4 without chipping, keep a sharp enough edge through all that to shave hair, and then get bent 90 degrees without cracking.

There are a few basic patterns you tend to see in Damascus blades. You can get a pretty good sense of the possibilities fromthe patterns that Damasteel makes. But the sky’s the limit with highly skilled smiths. Once you start getting into mosaic patterns, Damascus becomes another show altogether. You don’t generally see that in mass produced knives, though.

Master Bladesmith Rick Dunkerley wrote a great article for Blade Mag on some of the different Damascus variations you can make back in 2011. Here’s a rundown of the basic ones he covered:Random: this is where the layers remain flat and a flowing, organic pattern forms during patterning (you’ll see this in a lot of the higher end Japanese kitchen knives).

In most cases you don’t need to take any more care with a Damascus blade than you would with any of your other knives: keep it clean and dry, and maybe put a coat of oil on it every now and then.

Since most Damascus blades are made with a high carbon steel and a high nickel, it makes sense to treat the blade as if it was just a high carbon steel. Chris Reeve’s site actually has a good blog on maintaining Damascus steel knives (even though they don’t seem to make Damascus knives any more), so these tips are adapted from them:Wipe the blade as soon as possible after cutting anything acidic like fruit. Even your finger oils can pose a long term risk if you keep touching the blade without wiping it off.

In that vein, I’d highly recommend getting Larrin Thomas’ book, “Knife Engineering: Steel, Heat Treating, and Geometry” for a great, detailed primer on learning the science behind knife making. Besides the massive drop of comprehensive knife making information, he has a great section on Damascus steel in there.

John Verhoven also wrote a book about his experience trying to create Wootz steel with Al Pendray called “Damascus Steel Swords: Solving the Mystery of How to Make them”, which has a nice mix of science and history tied in with the story of his friendship with Pendray (Verhoeven wrote a bunch of other books on metallurgy that are probably worth reading, but are also crazy expensive).

There are probably hundreds of books on forging pattern welded Damascus, and since I’m not a blade smith myself I can’t say with much certainty which is a good source, but I’ve heard Jim Hrisoulas referenced by actual bladesmiths. He’s done a lot of work in historical weapon making, and written a lot on the topic, so it might be worth checking out his books like “Damascus Steel: Theory and Practice” or “The Pattern Welded Blade: Artistry in Iron” if you want to start learning how to do this stuff.

I start with 1" high carbon wire rope that I buy straight from the manufacturer. The reason I do this, as opposed to using scrapped cables is because I have no idea the sort of stresses it may have been under and there is no easy method of determining carbon content for hardening. Each knife is forge welded into a solid blade, fully hardened and tempered.

In stricter senses, the term wire rope refers to a diameter larger than 9.5 mm (3⁄8 in), with smaller gauges designated cable or cords.wrought iron wires were used, but today steel is the main material used for wire ropes.

Historically, wire rope evolved from wrought iron chains, which had a record of mechanical failure. While flaws in chain links or solid steel bars can lead to catastrophic failure, flaws in the wires making up a steel cable are less critical as the other wires easily take up the load. While friction between the individual wires and strands causes wear over the life of the rope, it also helps to compensate for minor failures in the short run.

Wire ropes were developed starting with mining hoist applications in the 1830s. Wire ropes are used dynamically for lifting and hoisting in cranes and elevators, and for transmission of mechanical power. Wire rope is also used to transmit force in mechanisms, such as a Bowden cable or the control surfaces of an airplane connected to levers and pedals in the cockpit. Only aircraft cables have WSC (wire strand core). Also, aircraft cables are available in smaller diameters than wire rope. For example, aircraft cables are available in 1.2 mm (3⁄64 in) diameter while most wire ropes begin at a 6.4 mm (1⁄4 in) diameter.suspension bridges or as guy wires to support towers. An aerial tramway relies on wire rope to support and move cargo overhead.

Modern wire rope was invented by the German mining engineer Wilhelm Albert in the years between 1831 and 1834 for use in mining in the Harz Mountains in Clausthal, Lower Saxony, Germany.chains, such as had been used before.

Wilhelm Albert"s first ropes consisted of three strands consisting of four wires each. In 1840, Scotsman Robert Stirling Newall improved the process further.John A. Roebling, starting in 1841suspension bridge building. Roebling introduced a number of innovations in the design, materials and manufacture of wire rope. Ever with an ear to technology developments in mining and railroading, Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, principal ownersLehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N Co.) — as they had with the first blast furnaces in the Lehigh Valley — built a Wire Rope factory in Mauch Chunk,Pennsylvania in 1848, which provided lift cables for the Ashley Planes project, then the back track planes of the Summit Hill & Mauch Chunk Railroad, improving its attractiveness as a premier tourism destination, and vastly improving the throughput of the coal capacity since return of cars dropped from nearly four hours to less than 20 minutes. The decades were witness to a burgeoning increase in deep shaft mining in both Europe and North America as surface mineral deposits were exhausted and miners had to chase layers along inclined layers. The era was early in railroad development and steam engines lacked sufficient tractive effort to climb steep slopes, so incline plane railways were common. This pushed development of cable hoists rapidly in the United States as surface deposits in the Anthracite Coal Region north and south dove deeper every year, and even the rich deposits in the Panther Creek Valley required LC&N Co. to drive their first shafts into lower slopes beginning Lansford and its Schuylkill County twin-town Coaldale.

The German engineering firm of Adolf Bleichert & Co. was founded in 1874 and began to build bicable aerial tramways for mining in the Ruhr Valley. With important patents, and dozens of working systems in Europe, Bleichert dominated the global industry, later licensing its designs and manufacturing techniques to Trenton Iron Works, New Jersey, USA which built systems across America. Adolf Bleichert & Co. went on to build hundreds of aerial tramways around the world: from Alaska to Argentina, Australia and Spitsbergen. The Bleichert company also built hundreds of aerial tramways for both the Imperial German Army and the Wehrmacht.

In the last half of the 19th century, wire rope systems were used as a means of transmitting mechanical powercable cars. Wire rope systems cost one-tenth as much and had lower friction losses than line shafts. Because of these advantages, wire rope systems were used to transmit power for a distance of a few miles or kilometers.

Steel wires for wire ropes are normally made of non-alloy carbon steel with a carbon content of 0.4 to 0.95%. The very high strength of the rope wires enables wire ropes to support large tensile forces and to run over sheaves with relatively small diameters.

In the mostly used parallel lay strands, the lay length of all the wire layers is equal and the wires of any two superimposed layers are parallel, resulting in linear contact. The wire of the outer layer is supported by two wires of the inner layer. These wires are neighbors along the whole length of the strand. Parallel lay strands are made in one operation. The endurance of wire ropes with this kind of strand is always much greater than of those (seldom used) with cross lay strands. Parallel lay strands with two wire layers have the construction Filler, Seale or Warrington.

In principle, spiral ropes are round strands as they have an assembly of layers of wires laid helically over a centre with at least one layer of wires being laid in the opposite direction to that of the outer layer. Spiral ropes can be dimensioned in such a way that they are non-rotating which means that under tension the rope torque is nearly zero. The open spiral rope consists only of round wires. The half-locked coil rope and the full-locked coil rope always have a centre made of round wires. The locked coil ropes have one or more outer layers of profile wires. They have the advantage that their construction prevents the penetration of dirt and water to a greater extent and it also protects them from loss of lubricant. In addition, they have one further very important advantage as the ends of a broken outer wire cannot leave the rope if it has the proper dimensions.

Stranded ropes are an assembly of several strands laid helically in one or more layers around a core. This core can be one of three types. The first is a fiber core, made up of synthetic material or natural fibers like sisal. Synthetic fibers are stronger and more uniform but cannot absorb much lubricant. Natural fibers can absorb up to 15% of their weight in lubricant and so protect the inner wires much better from corrosion than synthetic fibers do. Fiber cores are the most flexible and elastic, but have the downside of getting crushed easily. The second type, wire strand core, is made up of one additional strand of wire, and is typically used for suspension. The third type is independent wire rope core (IWRC), which is the most durable in all types of environments.ordinary lay rope if the lay direction of the wires in the outer strands is in the opposite direction to the lay of the outer strands themselves. If both the wires in the outer strands and the outer strands themselves have the same lay direction, the rope is called a lang lay rope (from Dutch langslag contrary to kruisslag,Regular lay means the individual wires were wrapped around the centers in one direction and the strands were wrapped around the core in the opposite direction.

Multi-strand ropes are all more or less resistant to rotation and have at least two layers of strands laid helically around a centre. The direction of the outer strands is opposite to that of the underlying strand layers. Ropes with three strand layers can be nearly non-rotating. Ropes with two strand layers are mostly only low-rotating.

Stationary ropes, stay ropes (spiral ropes, mostly full-locked) have to carry tensile forces and are therefore mainly loaded by static and fluctuating tensile stresses. Ropes used for suspension are often called cables.

Track ropes (full locked ropes) have to act as rails for the rollers of cabins or other loads in aerial ropeways and cable cranes. In contrast to running ropes, track ropes do not take on the curvature of the rollers. Under the roller force, a so-called free bending radius of the rope occurs. This radius increases (and the bending stresses decrease) with the tensile force and decreases with the roller force.

Wire rope slings (stranded ropes) are used to harness various kinds of goods. These slings are stressed by the tensile forces but first of all by bending stresses when bent over the more or less sharp edges of the goods.

Technical regulations apply to the design of rope drives for cranes, elevators, rope ways and mining installations. Factors that are considered in design include:

Donandt force (yielding tensile force for a given bending diameter ratio D/d) - strict limit. The nominal rope tensile force S must be smaller than the Donandt force SD1.

The wire ropes are stressed by fluctuating forces, by wear, by corrosion and in seldom cases by extreme forces. The rope life is finite and the safety is only ensured by inspection for the detection of wire breaks on a reference rope length, of cross-section loss, as well as other failures so that the wire rope can be replaced before a dangerous situation occurs. Installations should be designed to facilitate the inspection of the wire ropes.

Lifting installations for passenger transportation require that a combination of several methods should be used to prevent a car from plunging downwards. Elevators must have redundant bearing ropes and a safety gear. Ropeways and mine hoistings must be permanently supervised by a responsible manager and the rope must be inspected by a magnetic method capable of detecting inner wire breaks.

The end of a wire rope tends to fray readily, and cannot be easily connected to plant and equipment. There are different ways of securing the ends of wire ropes to prevent fraying. The common and useful type of end fitting for a wire rope is to turn the end back to form a loop. The loose end is then fixed back on the wire rope. Termination efficiencies vary from about 70% for a Flemish eye alone; to nearly 90% for a Flemish eye and splice; to 100% for potted ends and swagings.

When the wire rope is terminated with a loop, there is a risk that it will bend too tightly, especially when the loop is connected to a device that concentrates the load on a relatively small area. A thimble can be installed inside the loop to preserve the natural shape of the loop, and protect the cable from pinching and abrading on the inside of the loop. The use of thimbles in loops is industry best practice. The thimble prevents the load from coming into direct contact with the wires.

A wire rope clip, sometimes called a clamp, is used to fix the loose end of the loop back to the wire rope. It usually consists of a U-bolt, a forged saddle, and two nuts. The two layers of wire rope are placed in the U-bolt. The saddle is then fitted to the bolt over the ropes (the saddle includes two holes to fit to the U-bolt). The nuts secure the arrangement in place. Two or more clips are usually used to terminate a wire rope depending on the diameter. As many as eight may be needed for a 2 in (50.8 mm) diameter rope.

The mnemonic "never saddle a dead horse" means that when installing clips, the saddle portion of the assembly is placed on the load-bearing or "live" side, not on the non-load-bearing or "dead" side of the cable. This is to protect the live or stress-bearing end of the rope against crushing and abuse. The flat bearing seat and extended prongs of the body are designed to protect the rope and are always placed against the live end.

An eye splice may be used to terminate the loose end of a wire rope when forming a loop. The strands of the end of a wire rope are unwound a certain distance, then bent around so that the end of the unwrapped length forms an eye. The unwrapped strands are then plaited back into the wire rope, forming the loop, or an eye, called an eye splice.

A Flemish eye, or Dutch Splice, involves unwrapping three strands (the strands need to be next to each other, not alternates) of the wire and keeping them off to one side. The remaining strands are bent around, until the end of the wire meets the "V" where the unwrapping finished, to form the eye. The strands kept to one side are now re-wrapped by wrapping from the end of the wire back to the "V" of the eye. These strands are effectively rewrapped along the wire in the opposite direction to their original lay. When this type of rope splice is used specifically on wire rope, it is called a "Molly Hogan", and, by some, a "Dutch" eye instead of a "Flemish" eye.

Swaging is a method of wire rope termination that refers to the installation technique. The purpose of swaging wire rope fittings is to connect two wire rope ends together, or to otherwise terminate one end of wire rope to something else. A mechanical or hydraulic swager is used to compress and deform the fitting, creating a permanent connection. Threaded studs, ferrules, sockets, and sleeves are examples of different swaged terminations.

A wedge socket termination is useful when the fitting needs to be replaced frequently. For example, if the end of a wire rope is in a high-wear region, the rope may be periodically trimmed, requiring the termination hardware to be removed and reapplied. An example of this is on the ends of the drag ropes on a dragline. The end loop of the wire rope enters a tapered opening in the socket, wrapped around a separate component called the wedge. The arrangement is knocked in place, and load gradually eased onto the rope. As the load increases on the wire rope, the wedge become more secure, gripping the rope tighter.

Poured sockets are used to make a high strength, permanent termination; they are created by inserting the wire rope into the narrow end of a conical cavity which is oriented in-line with the intended direction of strain. The individual wires are splayed out inside the cone or "capel", and the cone is then filled with molten lead-antimony-tin (Pb80Sb15Sn5) solder or "white metal capping",zincpolyester resin compound.

Donald Sayenga. "Modern History of Wire Rope". History of the Atlantic Cable & Submarine Telegraphy (atlantic-cable.com). Archived from the original on 3 February 2014. Retrieved 9 April 2014.

As this is a labor intensive process, a good knife made from Damascus steel may cost in excess of 1,000 dollars. The making of such a knife is the ultimate challenge in a blacksmith’s ability to work metal.Several theories on the origins of the term “Damascus steel” exist, but none of them may be confirmed definitively.

The swords forged in Damascus. For instance, al-Kindi, refers to swords made in Damascus as Damascene. This word has often been employed as an epithet in Eastern European legends (Sabya Damaskinya or Sablja Dimiskija meaning “Damascene saber”), including the Serbian and Bulgarian legends of Prince Marko, a historical figure of the late 14th century in what is currently the Republic of Macedonia.

Historians such as Hobson, Sinopoli, and Juleff state that the material used to produce the original damascus was ingots of Wootz steel, which originated in India and Sri Lanka and later spread to Persia. From the 3rd century to the 17th century, India was shipping steel ingots to the Middle East for use in Damascus steel. Today, the term is used to describe steel that mimics the appearance and performance of Damascus steel, usually that which is produced by either crucible forging or pattern welding.

The original method of producing Damascus steel is not known. Whatever the lost methods of making Damascus steel, of ore refinement and forging, they harnessed impurities and changes at the molecular level. Although modern steel outperforms these swords[citation needed], the microscopic chemical reactions may have made the blades extraordinary for their time. The process was lost to metalsmiths after production of the patterned swords gradually declined and eventually ceased circa 1750. The raw material for producing the original Damascus steel is believed to be wootz imported from India.

The discovery of carbon nanotubes in the Damascus steel’s composition supports this hypothesis, since the precipitation of carbon nanotubes likely resulted from a specific process that may be difficult to replicate should the production technique or raw materials used be significantly altered. Since pattern welding was a prominent technique used for swords and knives, and produced surface patterns similar to those found on Damascus blades, a belief existed that Damascus blades were made using a pattern welding technique.

Pattern-welded steel has been referred to as “Damascus steel”, since 1973 when Bladesmith William F. Moran unveiled his “Damascus knives” at the Knifemakers’ Guild Show. This “Modern Damascus” is made from several types of steel and iron slices, which are then welded together to form a billet. The belief that Damascus steel was pattern welded was challenged in the 1990s when J. D. Verhoeven and A. H. Pendray published an article on their experiments on reproducing the elemental, structural, and visual characteristics of Damascus steel.

Experimental archaeology is a means which has attempted to recreate Damascus steel. Verhoeven and Pendray started with a cake of steel that matched the properties of the original wootz steel from India, which also matched a number of original Damascus swords to which Verhoeven and Pendray had access. Verhoeven and Pendray had already determined that the grains on the surface of the steel were grains of iron carbide, so their question was how to reproduce the iron carbide patterns they saw in the Damascus blades from the grains in the wootz.

Although such material could be worked at low temperatures to produce the striated Damascene pattern of intermixed ferrite and cementite bands in a manner identical to pattern-welded Damascus steel, any heat treatment sufficient to dissolve the carbides would destroy the pattern permanently. However, Verhoeven and Pendray discovered that in samples of true Damascus steel, the Damascene pattern could be recovered by aging at a moderate temperature.

Most modern steels intended to mimic the appearance of original Damascus are a lamination of folded steels selected with cosmetic qualities, with grinding and polishing specifically to expose the layers. A limited amount of steel makers attempt to recreate the original Damascus steel by using ingots produced through wootz methods.

Several steelmaking techniques, other than the original wootz steel (such as Damascened steel and sometimes watered steel), can result in patterned surfaces, though not for the same reasons, and have been sold as Damascus steel. Historically authentic Damascus steel is processed from wootz steel or equivalent. Modern materials intended to mimic the appearance of Damascus steel are usually made by pattern welding two tool steels, one with high nickel content, appearing bright, the other appearing more grey so that alternating steels produce light-dark stripes.

Treating or pickling the steel with dilute acid after polishing enhances the pattern by darkening one of the steels more than the other. Folding and twisting while hammer forging the steel controls the striped pattern, and the method used is often trademarked. Experienced bladesmiths can manipulate the layered patterns to mimic the designs found in the surface of the medieval Damascus steel.

Carbon nanotubes and nanowires were found in a sample of a 17th century sword forged from Damascus steel. Peter Paufler, a member of the Dresden team, says that these nanostructures are a result of the forging process.Prior to the early 20th century, all shotgun barrels were forged by heating narrow strips of iron and steel and shaping them around a mandrel. Because of the appearance to Damascus steel, higher-end barrels were made by Belgian and British gun makers. Current gun manufacturers such as Caspian Arms make slide assemblies and small parts such as triggers and safeties for Colt M1911 pistols from powdered Swedish steel resulting in a swirling two-toned effect; these parts are often referred to as “Stainless Damascus”.

For a start, the blade is Master Smith forged Windsteel (also known as feathersteel) made from 1095 carbon steel using a unique and specialized method of folding to produce a subtle windswept feather like pattern that ripples across the surface of the blade like water. To compliment it, each steel component is made from folded Damascus steel - with an austere silver and black theme achieved by the silk cord handle wrap and imported Brazilian Black ebony wood.

Alibaba.com offers 367 damascus steel custom made products. such as non-changeable, slide open, and quick-change. You can also choose from plastic, wood, and aluminum. As well as from stainless steel, high carbon steel. And whether damascus steel custom made is 3 years.

If you love cooking and love a good knife, why not make it Damascus? One of the most beautiful and varied methods of creation, using different steels forge welded together and manipulated in different configurations to give you an endless variety of individual patterns. While we can make to order, please keep in mind that as we hand make our own Damascus billets here onsite, they are all unique and no 2 knives will ever be the same.

Our first Damascus cleaver. This is a Cai Dao, which is a Chinese syle cleaver, made for vegetables and meat. IT IS NOT a heavy bone cutting cleaver. The blade is a San Mai and twist pattern Damascus in approx 100 layers. It has a stainless steel collar and a stabilised she oak timber handle.

This extra large sized chef"s knife has a beautifully intricate mosaic Damascus blade in a weave pattern. All hand forged by Iain from his own Damascus, it has a very deep 60mm blade. The handle is a premium, highly patterned lace oak timber, with the pattern looking like it has grown into the blade. It also has a stainless steel collar. A truly unique, beautiful and practical knife.

This carving knife knife is one of only 4 knives with this high contrast, rope pattern mosaic-Damascus, all made by Iain. It has a beautiful hairy oak timber handle chosen so that the grain pattern mimics the blade pattern. It has an upswept curved blade to help with slicing and to further show off the pattern. A stainless steel collar completes the handle.

This extra large chef"s knife is one of only 4 knives with this high contrast, rope pattern mosaic-Damascus, all made by Iain. It has a beautiful 2 tone ebony handle chosen so that the grain pattern mimics the blade pattern. It has a stainless steel collar, a deep blade, a very comfortable handle and at less than 250g, a great practical but beautiful work horse for your culinary life.

A showpiece carving set made from 100 layer twist Damascus in an integral style. Knife is reminiscent of an old school butcher style, but has the extra length n