wire rope damascus supplier

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.

The modern connotation of Damascus steel is different from the original Damascus of the past. Historic Damascus steel referred to as crucible stee,l which had a very high carbon content and had a visible surface pattern because of its crystalline structure.Tthis Damascus steel, or Wootz steel, ended up being called Damascus steel because the crusader,s on their way down to the Holy Lan,d would purchase new blades of this superior steel (superior to medieval European steel) in cities like Damascus. The modern connotation, however, is instead different kinds of steels that have been pattern-welded and that display a similar surface pattern when acid etched. The Damascus you will see made here is is of the latter definition. Cable Damascus is perhaps one of the easiest ways to create Damascus steel with a complex pattern. Unlike other techniques, this method requires no folding and essentially comes in its own ready to forge shape.

Like they always say, safety first! Seeing as how this whole process involves forging, grinding and dipping metal into chemicals, it is important to use the proper safety equipment. For the forge welding stage, many people who do any kind of smithing, know the basic safety equipment: gloves, apron, closed toed shoes, etc. Howeve,r one piece of equipment sometimes goes overlooked. Everyone knows that eye protection is important but for this kind of work you need a special kind of eye protection. The above and only picture in this section is of a pair of dydidium glasses. The reason that it is the only picture up there is because just about everybody who works with metal knows the safety basics but rarely do I see people point out this kind of eye protection. Normal goggles are usually fine for most crafts but not for forge welding. The heat required for forge welding puts out a bit of radiation that over the long term can cause vision loss. Dydidium however will block most of the radiation and save your eyes. One final point, dydidium glasses are not the same as welding masks or sunglasses. If you use either of these while forge welding, your pupils will dilate and your eyes will get even more of the radiation.

Before you can forge out your section of cable you have to set it all up. Before it goes in the fire you first have to cut off your section like in the first image. I cut off 3, 12 in sections of 1 inch cable at the time with a chop saw. You can use whatever method you like to cut the cable just be sure that the cable that you use is all steel with no plastic involved and that it is not galvanized as the heat reacting with the plating will produce gas that can make you very sick or even kill you. So keep that in mind when getting cable. Also, if this is your first time attempting cable Damascus you might not want to jump right in to the the larger diameter cable and instead start out with a piece of half inch. You wont be able to make anything more than a toothpick with the results but its a good way to practice without wasting bigger and more expensive cable.

After the cutting, be sure to wrap the ends of the cable with steel wire. This is to keep the section from unwinding during the first parts of the process. Be sure to only use plain steel wire because other wires that are coated or are made of other can melt or react with the heat and just mess everything up.

Everybody who makes Damascus has their own list of steps or additives that seem to make the whole process work for them. I encourage you to go, do some research and discover one that works for you. For me, I spray my cold metal with WD40 until it is just completely soaked and then coat the whole thing with regular borax before putting the sections in the fire. Both the borax and WD40 act to prevent oxidation which can make forge welding impossible. The borax won"t typically stick to metal unless its hot or wet and the WD40 will burn off in the forge so getting the section wet with WD40 and using that to stick the borax on seems to make everything work for me.

Damascus steel when ground down should look just like one solid piece of metal. In order to get the pattern, you need to etch the steel with an acid. There are several options as far as acids go but personally I use ferric chloride. If you only want a very superficial etch, like the one in the cover image, you only need to dip the metal in the acid for about 20 min. I wanted a very deep etch that could actually be felt so I dipped mine for 7 hours. Once you are done with the etch, you need to clean it and neutralize the acid. One of the easiest ways to do that is just to spray Windex on the etched piece after it has been rinsed off. Don"t forget to wear gloves and eye protection for all this. If you want to add some color to the piece, like the last two images in the title, just heat the piece up a bit after the etch until the desired color has been reached.

The piece I made here didn"t require any quenching or heat treating because it is a decorative piece. If you choose to make a blade out of cable Damascus one thing to keep in mind is that when quenched, the steel has a tendency to warp in the direction of the cable twist. If you want a functional piece, make it thick, otherwise you might start with a knife and end up with a corkscrew.

Hi Armeria. Thanks for your informative instructable.I think the warping is caused because the wires of the cable are nearly aligned in one direction and after quenching, the contraction force is also exerted unequally in one direction to cause the warp. Don"t you think folding the cable several times during the forge welding can obviate the problem?

I think that you might be confusing the revealed pattern with having gaps in the steel. Proper forge welding will create a homogeneous billet. The pattern that is shown is the result of acid reacting to the different carbon contents of the former wires that experienced carbon migration before being welded. I hope that this helps!0

No worries about wrecking the forge. It"s Mike"s, my shop mates. It"s a "Lego" forge. Build with fire bricks to suit the size of the job. One "cap" with a single burner and one with a double for bigger set ups. Not as efficient as a proper one, but nice to having it flexible. If I get into it more, I"ll build a "proper" one.

Wire rope manufacturers produce their products in order to provide a high load capacity, versatile alternative to weaker ropes like manila rope or hemp rope. Wire rope products are used for a wide variety of motion transmission applications, among them: lifting, baling, tie down, hoisting, hauling, towing, mooring, anchoring, rigging, cargo control, guidance and counterbalance. They can also be used as railing, fencing and guardrailing.

Wire rope is a must-have for many heavy duty industrial applications. From mining to forestry to marine and beyond, there’s wire rope for almost every job. Some of the many industries in which wire rope is popular include: construction, agriculture, marine, industrial manufacturing, fitness, sports and recreation (plastic coated cables for outdoor playground equipment and sports equipment), electronics, theater (black powder coated cables for stage rigging), mining, gas and oil, transportation, security, healthcare and consumer goods.

Wire rope as we know it was invented just under 200 years ago, between 1831 and 1834. At that time, the goal was to create a rope strong enough to support work in the mines of the Harz Mountains. Invented by Wilhelm Albert, a German mining engineer, this wire rope consisted on four three-stranded wires. It was much stronger than older rope varieties, such as manila rope, hemp rope and metal chain rope.

While studying at Freiburg School of Mines, a man named L.D.B. Gordon visited the mines in the Harz Mountains, where he met Albert. After he left, Gordon wrote to his friend Robert Stirling Newall, urging him to create a machine for manufacturing wire ropes. Newall, of Dundee, Scotland, did just that, designing a wire rope machine that made wire ropes with four strands, consisting of four wires each. After Gordon returned to Dundee, he and Newall, along with Charles Liddell, formed R.S. Newall and Company. In 1840, Newall received a patent for “certain improvements in wire rope and the machinery for making such rope.”

In 1841, an American manufacturer named John A. Roebling began producing wire rope for suspension bridges. Soon after, another set of Americans, Josiah White and Erskine Hazard, started incorporating wire rope into coal mining and railroad projects, forming Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company (LC&N Co.). In 1848, wire rope from their wire rope factory in Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania provided the lift cables needed to complete the Ashley Planes Project. This project sought to improve the performance and appearance of the freight railroad that ran through Ashley, Pennsylvania, by adding lift cables. This increased tourism and increased the railroad’s coal capacity. Before, cars took almost four hours to return; after, they took less than 20 minutes.

Wire rope likewise changed the landscape (again) in Germany, in 1874, when an engineering firm called Adolf Bleichert & Co. used wire rope to build Bi-cable aerial tramways. These allowed them to mine the Ruhr Valley. Several years later, they also used wire rope to build tramways for the German Imperial Army and the Wehrmacht. These tramways were wildly successful, opening up roads in Germany and all over Europe and the USA.

Since the 1800s, manufacturers and engineers have found ways to improve wire rope, through stronger materials and material treatments, such as galvanization, and different rope configurations. Today, wire rope makes possible many heavy industrial processes. It has become a necessity of the modern world.

Strands are made by tightly twisting or braiding individual wire together. One strand could have anywhere between two and several dozen wire filaments depending on the necessary strength, flexibility, and weight capacity.

One of the most dynamic elements of wire cables is the inner core. The strands are wrapped around the core, and it can be made of different metals, fibers, or even impregnated fiber materials. For heavy applications, cores are often made of a different strand of wire called an independent wire rope core (IWRC). An IWRC has a considerable amount of flexibility and it is still very strong. In fact, at least 7.5% of the strength increase in a wire rope can be attributed to an IWRC.

While they sometimes use other metals, like aluminum, nickel, copper, titanium, and even bronze for some applications, manufacturers primarily produce wire rope from steel. This is because steel is very strong and stretchable. Among the most common types they use are: galvanized wire, bright wire, stainless steel and cold drawn steel.

Of the wire rope steels, cold drawn carbon steel wire is most popular, although stainless steel wire rope is sometimes employed as well. Stainless steel rope is most popular for its anti-corrosive properties. Bright wire rope, a type of ungalvanized steel wire rope, is also popular. For added strength and durability, galvanized steel wire rope/galvanized steel cables are a very popular choice. Galvanized aircraft cable, for example, is always a must in aerospace.

When choosing or designing a custom wire rope for your application, suppliers consider factors such as: the environment in which the rope will function, required rust resistance, required flexibility, temperature resistance, required breaking strength and wire rope diameter. To accommodate your needs, manufacturers can do special things like: make your rope rotation resistant, color code your rope, or add a corrosion resistant coating. For instance, sometimes they specially treat and coat a cable with plastic or some other compound for added protection. This is particularly important to prevent fraying if the wire rope is often in motion on a pulley.

Manufacturers and distributors identify the differences in wire cable by listing the number of strands and the amount of wires per strand so that anyone that orders understand the strength of the cable. Sometimes they are also categorized by their length or pitch. Common examples of this include: 6 x 19, 6 x 25, 19 x 7, 7 x 19, 7 x 7, 6 x 26 and 6 x 36.

More complex wire rope identification codes connote information like core type, weight limit and more. Any additional hardware like connectors, fasteners, pulleys and fittings are usually listed in the same area to show varying strengths and degrees of fray prevention.

Cable wire rope is a heavy-duty wire rope. To give it its high strength, manufacturers construct it using several individual filaments that are twisted in strands and helically wrapped around the core. A very common example of cable wire rope is steel cable.

Spiral rope is made up an assemblage of wires with round or curved strands. The assemblage features at least one outer layer cord pointed in the opposite direction of the wire. The big advantage of spiral ropes is the fact that they block moisture, water and pollutants from entering the interior of the rope.

Similarly, stranded rope steel wire is made up of an assemblage of spirally wound strands. Unlike spiral rope, though, its wire patterns have crisscrossing layers. These layers create an exceptionally strong rope. Stranded rope may have one of three core material types: wire rope, wire strand or fiber.

Wire rope chain, like all chains, is made up of a series of links. Because it is not solid, wire rope chain is quite flexible. At the same time, it is prone to mechanical failure.

Wire rope slings are made from improved plow wire steel, a strong steel wire that offers superior return loop slings and better security. The plow wire steel also shields rope at its connection points, which extends its working life. Wire rope slings, in general, provide their applications with increased safety, capacity and performance. Wire rope sling is a rope category that encompasses a wide range of sub-products, such as permaloc rope sling, permaloc bridle slings and endless slings. These and other wire rope slings may be accompanied by a wide variety of sling terminations, such as thimbles, chokers and hooks.

Wire rope offers its user many advantages. First, design of even distribution of weight among strands makes it ideal for lifting extremely heavy loads. Second, wire rope is extremely durable and, when matched properly to the application, can withstand great stress and elements like corrosion and abrasion. In addition, it is very versatile. Its many iterations and the ways in which the rope can treated means that users can get rope custom fit for virtually any application.

Depending on the type of wire rope with which you are working and your application, you may want to invest in different accessories. Among these accessories are: wire rope clips, steel carabiners, fittings, fasteners and connections.

To ensure that your wire rope quality remains high, you must regularly inspect them for wear and degradation. The right wire rope should be selected for a particular use. Watch out for performance-impacting damage like: rust, fraying and kinks. To make sure that they stay in tip-top shape, you should also clean and lubricate them as needed. Check for this need as a part of your regular inspection.

Rope care is about more than inspection. It’s also about making an effort to use and store them properly every time you use them. For example, never exceed your rope’s rated load and breaking strength. Doing so will not only cause the weakening of your cable, but it may even cause immediate breakage. In addition, always store your wire rope cable in a dry and warm area, away from those elements that could cause premature rusting or other damage. Finally, always carefully wind your wire rope when you’re done with it, so as to avoid kinks. If you follow all these tips and treat your wire rope assemblies well, they will reward you with a long and productive service life.

Always make sure that you purchase wire rope that matches your industry and regional standards. Some of the most widely referenced standards organizations for wire rope include: ISO, ASTM International and OSHA. Talk over your specifications and application with your wire rope supplier to figure out what’s best for you.

If you’re in the market for a wire rope or a wire rope assembly, the best way to know you’re getting something that will both perform well and be safe if by working with a vetted professional. Find one among the list we’ve provided on this page. Check out their profiles to get an idea of the services and products they offer. Pick out three or four to whom you’d like to speak, and reach out. Talk to them about your specifications, standard requirements and budget. Ask about lead times and delivery options. Once you’ve spoken with all of them, compare and contrast their answers. You’ll know you’ve found the one when you talk to a wire rope company that is willing to go above and beyond for your satisfaction.

I think all carbon wire comes in grease to keep it from rusting... I have always just burned it out with a torch.... something that should be done outside and away from the shop... Another thing I just remembered is there is a product called "compact swage" wire that is a bit easier to weld.... What it is ... well its compacted wire.. When the nets got bigger on the fishing boats they needed stronger cable on the winches.. but a lot of the winches have grooved drums so if they are made for 7/8 cable, you have to use 7/8 cable.... so what they did was take 1" cable and run it through a rolling press and swaged it down to 7/8... basically taking all the extra space out... not quite as flexible but since its as strong as 1" cable.... since its a tighter wire it is a bit easier to weld.. not much but everything helps.... It helps what ever wire you use to do a "tighten up" twist at heat before trying to weld it...

When using cable..... it"s a very big "Give-n-Take" situation. The larger the individual wires in the cable....the more functional blade it will produce. The downside is that the pattern/eye appeal isn"t anything to shout about.

Flip side..... cable with smaller diameter individual wires produce a striking pattern, but because the wire are small, they decarb significantly, and sometimes entirely........ and the end product is usually only mid to low 40s Rc as hardened (before any tempering). That"s the best I"ve been able to determine....because trying to Rc test a cable billets is like herding cats.....all over the place because of all the decarb lines.

I"ve made a ton of cable blades in my career, and can tell you this..... if you want high quality FUNCTION, use XXX improved plow share, with the largest individual wires you can find. If you want eye appeal, then look for the same thing with smaller diameter individual wires.

The pattern in cable comes from decarb of each individual wire.... and decarb can be anywhere from .002" if your welding technique is near perfect, but expect closer to .008-.010" or more. That means that if the individual wires in the cable are .010", and you get say .005" decarb (that"s from all sides of the wire).... you"ve basically got mild steel, or a low medium carbon steel in the end product.

Conventional pattern-welded Damascus steel uses alternating layers of steel which will etch at different rates to provide contrast between the two different types. Layer counts can be modified by using thin stock, taller billets, or by cutting, stacking, and re-welding the billet.

I previously wrote about the history of pattern-welded Damascus steel in this article about Damascus steel myths. I did not provide a full history of pattern-welded Damascus steel in that article nor can I do so in this one. For convenience I will refer to “pattern-welded Damascus steel” simply as Damascus steel for the rest of this article. Damascus steel was produced anciently and production of it continued into the early 20th century especially in rifles. It was popularized in the USA as a knife material by Bill Moran starting in 1973. In the 1970’s and 1980’s there was a steady evolution of different patterning techniques in Damascus to make different types and looks of the final steel. One of the patterning techniques explored was the use of specific images in the steel, recognizable pictures, words, etc. Gun barrels were produced in the 19th and early 20th centuries with the name of the gun manufacturer forged into the Damascus [2]. Daryl Meier was able to use a similar technique in 1978 to produce Damascus steel that had his last name in it:

The knife was produced from “multi-bar” Damascus which you can see with the different sections, the bottom being a twist pattern, above that the “USA” section, then the flags, and finally another twist Damascus bar. Below you can see a closeup of one of the flags in the knife.

Both the stars in the flag produced by Meier and the hunter scene produced by Schwarzer used wire EDM blocks to produce the images. This requires two large blocks of steel in contrasting materials where a male and female block are produced so that once mated they can be forged to the final solid piece. Once etched the two different materials will be different colors so that the image is visible. Wire EDM and large blocks of steel are very expensive so this method has never had particularly widespread use.

In the mid-1980’s, Steve Schwarzer was presenting on Damascus steel at a Jim Batson hammer-in. Gary Runyon was working for Allegheny Technology and had access to nickel powder. Runyon was attempting to get nickel powder to stick to cable to produce a nickel-infused cable Damascus. Schwarzer suggested that he put it in a piece of pipe so that the powder could not escape. In the early 90’s Schwarzer had his signature cut out with wire EDM and was attempting to stuff thin nickel sheet around the signature but it was not working. He contacted Runyon to acquire nickel powder and poured that around the wire-cut signature instead.

Pelle Billgren was the CEO of Söderfors [7], a division of Erasteel, a producer of powder metallurgy steel. I wrote about the history of powder metallurgy steel in this article. Billgren visited bladesmith Kay Embretsen who produced Damascus steel using traditional methods. They decided together to develop a method using the powder metallurgy steel to produce a Damascus steel product. This method relies on “hot isostatic pressing” of two or more steel powders to produce relatively large billets in different patterns. They submitted a patent application in Sweden in the beginning of 1994 [8]. This product was branded as Damasteel and is still sold today.

Hank Knickmeyer is another USA bladesmith that started using powder in the early 1990’s. Knickmeyer had heard about the use of powder from Steve Schwarzer and Daryl Meier. Knickmeyer credits Daryl Meier for teaching him many patterning techniques when he got started with Damascus steel. Knickmeyer was aware of the wire EDM work being done by Meier and Schwarzer but felt it was too expensive to be worth it. Knickmeyer had been experimenting with the use of different steel shapes and odd pieces in canister Damascus but needed a filler in between the pieces. He started with steel “sandblasting grit” to fill in the pieces. Hank says that he is most proud of the way that he used “distortion” of the bars of steel as he forged them to make unique and interesting patterns. Hank told me that he presented the use of this powder method at the 1994 ABANA conference in St. Louis. He suggested that I attempt to find a list of presenters from that conference to check his dates. The summary of the 1994 conference did not list Knickmeyer’s name though it was a summary of the highlights, not a full list of presenters. So if powder Damascus was presented there it apparently wasn’t a highlight (Ha!). I did find, however, that Knickmeyer presented at the 1995 conference of the Florida chapter of ABANA where he discussed mosaic Damascus.

Ed Schempp was experimenting with different powder metals around 1996 where he tried some unusual combinations like canister Damascus with solids and powder nickel. He also later attempted some stainless steel powder mixed with tungsten carbide. Sources for powder steel were rare at this time. The first iron-based powder he purchased was “reduced iron” which is produced for fortifying breakfast cereal and other foods. It was purchased in a 750 pound drum so it was split between Ed Schempp, Devin Thomas, and a few others. Because this was iron it had insufficient carbon for good hardness and contrast after etching in acid. So they were adding graphite to increase the carbon content of the iron. The graphite was lighter than the iron so it tended to float to the top. Schempp added WD-40 to the graphite so it would stick to the iron and better mix through. Schempp also made a competition chopping knife using 1084 and 3V powders along with 15N20 and roller chain. He successfully cut 7 pieces of free hanging rope with the knife.

Devin Thomas used long pieces of nickel sheet to form different shapes and then fill them with powder. This provided a cheaper method than the use of wire EDM blocks for producing images. Relatively intricate designs can be produced this way without expensive wire EDM.

A Knife produced by William Henry Knives (circa 2000) which was one of four pieces commissioned by Billy F. Gibbons of ZZ Top. The Damascus steel was produced by Devin Thomas using nickel sheet and steel powder which has the letters “ZZ TOP” forwards and backwards.

Devin made a piece of Damascus with a fish in it using his nickel sheet and powder method and showed it at Rick Dunkerley’s hammer-in in 1997. Dunkerley is one of the original members of the “Montana Mafia” which included Shane Taylor, Barry Gallagher, and Wade Colter. The four had been producing a range of different mosaic Damascus steel patterns and the use of powder offered new possibilities. At Dunkerley’s 1998 hammer-in he presented how to produce mosaic Damascus using nickel sheet and powder. Rick Dunkerley produced a knife for the 1999 Blade show using powder steel and nickel sheet for the Damascus. At that time Dunkerley only knew of one other person who had produced a knife using powder (Schwarzer). So despite the use of powder by Schwarzer and Knickmeyer in the early to mid-90’s, it hadn’t really begun to build in popularity until about 1998 or 1999.

Another powder Damascus knife produced by Dunkerley. The inset piece in the handle is fish Damascus produced by Devin Thomas described earlier in the article. Image provided by Eric Eggly of PointSeven Studios.

Before the mid-90’s, there were a variety of steels being used in Damascus such as W1, 1095, 5160, 52100, A203e, and others. There was no wide agreement about the appropriate steels to use, and forge welding could be difficult with all of those different steels with varying compatibility. Rick Dunkerley tells me that Devin Thomas began encouraging people to switch to 1084 and 15N20 because they were easier to forge weld and very compatible for forging and heat treating. 15N20 has a similar carbon content to 1084 but with a 2% nickel addition to provide contrast after etching. When stock for Damascus steel became regularly supplied by people like Jeff Carlisle of Swains Spring Service, 1084 and 15N20 became the standard choices.

After learning about powder Damascus from Rick Dunkerley, Jeff Carlisle acquired 1084 and 4600e powders to sell to any Damascus makers that wanted to use it. 4600e was similar to 15N20 so it was easy to use for Damascus steel makers that were using 1084 and 15N20 sheet of plate in their Damascus. Bob Kramer found the source for 4600e that Carlisle began purchasing for sale to Damascus steel makers. Because of the ubiquity of 1084 and 15N20, 1084 and 4600e were easy choices as alternatives to the prior sheet and bar stock. Somewhat later Kelly Cupples also became a popular supplier of powder and sheet for Damascus steel.

Many of those I interviewed expressed how much of a collaborative atmosphere there was at this time in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. There were many small discoveries related to Damascus steel patterning techniques and who offered each one is a bit difficult to track down now. There were several hammer-ins at the shops of different people like Ed Schempp, Rick Dunkerley, Shane Taylor, Jim Batson, and John Davis. There was a lot of sharing between Damascus steel makers at that time leading to rapid growth of different techniques. I obtained a copy of “Hammer Doodles” by Joe Olson (thanks John Davis) where Joe illustrated demonstrations from several different Damascus steel makers between 1997 and 1999, which you can see here: Hammer Doodles. His illustrations included humor and some good information on making steel, to boot.

Many other Damascus steel makers at this time began experimenting with powder and offering their own tweaks to the process, people such as John Davis, Gary House, and Robert Eggerling along with those mentioned so far. John Davis sent me a photo of a knife he made in 2000 where he made a lion using nickel sheet and it won “Best Damascus” at the 2000 Oregon Knife Collectors Association show. So it was pretty shortly after Dunkerley’s knife that others were making their own.

With teaching of powder techniques being more widespread and easy availability of powders to use, the number of Damascus makers using powder and nickel sheet grew rapidly. One of the most impressive users of nickel sheet and powder for “picture Damascus” is Cliff Parker, which you can see an example of below:

Matt Diskin saw a presentation of powder Damascus produced with powder and thin sheets and first tried using a similar method. However, Diskin had learned CAD in college and was familiar with laser cutting and waterjet methods. He used laser cutting to cut shapes out of sheet steel and then stacked them on top of each other and then filled that with powder. Matt tells me that he first produced steel using an elephant that he cut out. Because of the much lower cost of this method when compared with wire EDM other makers were interested like Steve Schwarzer and Shane Taylor. Diskin produced plates for several of those makers. Diskin’s favorite was Shane Taylor who did interesting and unique images like dragons which you can see below:

Powder isn’t only used for the creation of images. Perhaps its most common use is as filler material when making Damascus with bicycle chain or ball bearings. While images were an exciting new possible use for patterning in Damascus, powder offers other more subtle patterning techniques. The use of powder continues in a range of different Damascus pieces. Powder is applicable in any situation where it is difficult or impossible to fill steel in between other types of “solid” steel stock.

Damascus steel has greatly grown within the knifemaking community since the 1970’s when it first gained popularity. Patterning techniques have evolved to where a large range of possibilities are available, from simple random to complex mosaic patterns. The use of powder is a fun one to cover for my site since I like to discuss different material types and creative uses of steel for knives. There are many people who contributed to the level of mastery we see today among the greatest Damascus steel makers. Understanding the development of these processes and the methods that are used in making more complex pieces means that future Damascus steel producers will be able to take Damascus to further heights. And buyers will have a greater appreciation of the knives that they purchase and the work that the maker put into it.

I made a cable Damascus blade for the first time this weekend and I couldn"t get it to quench without taking a warp. It"s an old 1/2 inch steel cable, I believe 7 large strands. I forged it down into a flat and then folded it and welded it back together to start with a thicker billet. When I forge welded the cable I lightly tapped it into the corner of my anvil horn so I can set it without it splaying. I also tack weld the ends before welding so they stay together.

Also if you have any tips on cleaning the cable out before weld, I"d love to hear it. I tacked the ends together and loosened the cable on a vice and cleaned it out the best I could with flux and wire brushing.

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”.

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.