Damascus: What Gets Sold Under That Word

Damascus steel is not in fact a type of steel. It is a method of manufacture and, in the overwhelming majority of cases on a kitchen shop shelf, a method of decoration. The word sells, though, and there are more and more kitchen knives carrying it.

How the pattern is made

Damascus steel usually consists of two different types of steel with different carbon content. The two types are forge-welded onto each other in turn, layer by layer. After forging, the blade is etched: the high-carbon steel darkens, the low-carbon steel stays light. The result is a good contrast in which all the layers are clearly visible.

That is all. There is nothing in the process that by itself makes a blade sharper, harder or stronger. The pattern is a consequence of two different materials lying next to each other, and etching brings it out.

The historical name has little to do with any of this. The steel that made the word legendary in the first place was crucible steel, and the pattern in it came from the structure of the metal itself, not from welding different grades together. Modern “damascus” is a forge-welded billet. The name is inherited, the technology is different.

Where the cutting edge is in such a knife

The key question about any patterned kitchen knife: what is the part that does the cutting made of.

The standard construction is a multi-layer billet with a hard steel core and soft cladding on the sides. This is exactly the steel shipped in bulk from Japan — usually multi-layer, with VG-10 at the core — and turned into chef’s knives locally. The cladding provides the pattern, the core provides the cut. Hardness, edge retention and corrosion resistance are determined by the core, and by the core alone.

Hence a practical conclusion. The word “damascus” on a price tag tells you nothing about how the knife will cut. What tells you that is the grade of the core and its hardness. If the grade is not stated and all you get is damascus and a layer count, you are being sold an appearance.

The number of layers, incidentally, is not a specification either. It tells you how many times the billet was folded, and nothing more.

What comes under the word

• A genuine forge-welded billet with cladding and an honestly stated core. A sound construction; what to look at is the core and its hardness.
• A billet with no core stated. It could be anything, including a soft stainless that will need touching up after every use.
• A pattern applied to a homogeneous blade — by stencil etching or laser. Nothing to do with damascus at all, but convincing enough in a catalogue photo.

Telling the second from the third on the shelf is hard, and from a picture in an online shop it is generally impossible.

Why it works

Expensive knives are in general made with a great deal of attention to design and appearance, and sometimes it reaches absurdity. A knife made from expensive Japanese steel with a normal European handle and none of the secondary flourishes — the deliberately rough spine and other decorations added for “authenticity” — is practically impossible to find. The damascus pattern belongs to the same family: it is addressed to the eye, not the hand, and it works without fail.

Price is a separate story. Multi-layer Japanese steel has long been turned into chef’s knives at cheap factories in China, and the price comes out very attractive. Unfortunately the finish, the polish and the handle material often leave much to be desired, and quality is inconsistent. But something else matters more: because the forging technology is poorly understood, such blades are frequently hardened incorrectly and ground on stones without water cooling. The steel overheats and the Rockwell hardness drops. VG-10 in a Japanese knife gives 60–61 HRC. In a Chinese one it can turn out much lower — and then the patterned knife is no harder than an ordinary one at half the money.

Who it is for

For anyone who likes how it looks. That is a legitimate reason, and it needs neither justification nor camouflage in talk of ancient technology and special sharpness.

Only one thing is bad: paying for the pattern in the belief that you are paying for the cut. The cut is paid for separately — with the grade of steel in the core and decent heat treatment. Damascus adds nothing to that sum except its own cost.