Damascus Steel Isn't What You Think! Asian Crucible Steel in Medieval Europe 

I find it wonderfully weird that making knockoffs has an ancient history.

The Norse process of filtering iron sand out of the bog honestly astounds me just as much as more complex smithing processes. Like yes the iron wasn’t the best quality but it was previously sand!

Can I say how much I love the imagery you used to convey just how primitive the Viking metalworking was, at the time people in India are producing this amazingly strong and beautiful steel.

My partner just got me an amazing pattern welded cleaver. He's gotten rather cautious when I'm butchering chickens, tho. Apparently yelling "Hassan chop!" when I'm dismembering carcasses is alarming.

Damascus Steel would be a good name for a cyberpunk detective

Yay! A topic I can help with some specialized information in the form of a mile long comment! So, to start off: everything Jimmy presented in this is roughly accurate. Unfortunately it misses out on a bit of the nuance that's involved in modern blade industry nomenclature. The confusion regarding what is damascus steel is actually goes back to European gun barrel makers. High end gun barrels (mostly shotguns) were made by pattern welding steels of different carbon contents together and manipulating them to create visual interest. These have been called "Damascus" in the firearms industry for much longer than what we have seen in the cutlery industry. The current issue is a result of a smith named Bill Moran. Moran was one of the founding members of the American Bladesmithing Society, one of the world's preeminent organization for qualifying bladesmiths. In the late 1970s Moran was seeking to replicate the APPEARANCE of damascus steel, and clearly knew about the connection between pattern welding steel and the "damascus" term used to refer to gun barrels. Moran's big contribution to the confusion was that when he developed a method of pattern welding using a high nickel steel to allow for much more dramatic pattern contrast, he called it "the NEW damascus". The technique was adopted into the ABS curriculum as a demonstration of forging skill and, unsurprisingly, the "new" part was quickly dropped. As the ABS has a HUGE influence on trends and publicity in the bladesmithing world, their use of the term "damascus" is essentially now a piece of trade jargon. To try and avoid it, a lot of smiths avoid using the term at all; instead we'll use "pattern welded" for it, and "wootz" for modern reproductions of the original crucible steel.

Just to be clear about something Jimmy said: a patterns welded blade is not inherently better or worse than any other modern mono-steel... But it is VERY labour intensive. If someone is offering a pattern welded sword for sale, expect it to be several times the price of a comparable plain steel sword. With pattern welded "damascus" you absolutely will get what you pay for.

I think it also matters because it goes to show that progress is not a linear accumulation of knowledge: we lose many precious techniques along the way, and they are far harder to re-find than we tend to imagine.

In one of the near SCA baronys, we have a blacksmith, who specializes in pattern weld blades. His work is beautiful. Pattern welding is amazing. He is a "Forged in Fire" winner, season 4 episode 2, where he makes a pattern welded weapon for the final.

I'm loving how Jimmy is practically calling out Foraged in Fire.

This video allowed me to finally figure out why I love this and so many other history channels on RU-vid. These videos are like the days where my profs in uni got to lecture on one of the topics they really loved, as opposed to had to cover for the curriculum. And I don't even have to write an essay twice a semester 😊.

The dragon gets cooler every single time 😊

This is interesting, not just because I'm a history nerd too, but because I have a firend who studied for fifteen years to learn ancient - modern mosaic techniques. He's a master mosaic artist. His pieces sell in the thousands and tens of thousands because each piece of glass or tile was handmade first before being cut. I also know someone who works in fashion, and we think those expensive gowns are just flashy clothes, but there's technique involved down to the weaving of the cloth that's been passed on by cultures for generations that go into each of those fancy dresses. Sometimes these art forms keep our history alive! So those techniques aren't lost to time.

You know how in early 2000s it was discovered that true Damascus steel has carbon nano-tubes in it? Well a few weeks ago I was checking up on the reserch into how this could have been achieved. Mind you, I did not see onee reference to anyone involved being a master smith. Just a load of physics. Apparently they are now well on their way to declaring that it was made either with ore or additives that no longer exist. You know, because they cannot recreate the technique, so it had to rely on things they can't get anymore, can't be they just can't figure out the very specific sequence of actions the ancient masters.

It's a happy day when u upload 😊

Came here because I keep seeing the articles about the bronze age sword uncovered in modern day Germany and I just needed to come to your channel to hear you chat about history. Found this new upload and SERENDIPITY RULES THE DAY!

I wonder if You could make a video on bronze age weapons and how amazingly they have preserved.

Notes: Hard and tough are two different qualities when talking about steel. Tough means resistant to breaking and hard means, well hard. Hard steels hold an edge better, but tend to be more brittle.* There are different techniques to try to get a blade with both qualities. Damascus was one, as are heat treating, lamination, and pattern-welding. A note on pattern welding, aka modern Damascus. There are varying qualities as well as fakes. The number of layers means higher price and supposedly a better end product. The types of steel used makes a difference in quality as well. *This is a simplification, but it gives the general idea.

So this is definitely the inspiration for Valyrian steel in the GRR Martin books, yeah? I love spotting all of the actual history-inspired things in those books :)

I do like some nice pattern welding too honestly but this is fascinating 👀

Also worth mentioning that while pattern-weld is *not* Damascus, it *is* historically accurate to the Viking age/migration era, as there are plenty of examples of spears and swords from that time which had pattern-welded blades, even some exhibiting complex, expressive patterns that suggest that this was an art form in its own right

I've always wanted a seax made of wootz. I think it might be a cool hypothetically historically plausible piece

Interesting! I’ve been hearing that term for about 60 years now and while I got the message that it was special,I had no idea how special…and beautiful it was/ is. Thank you as ever Jimmy. Hope the PhD studies are going well. Xx

Thank you. I had the joy and the misfortune of teaching English Literature and Art History. It was a great job as it allowed endless opportunities for research and the delight of sharing the results with students who often actually cared. YOU often are the person who shows me the flaws in my scholarship - through my own errors and deficiencies or those of the sources I believed. One would think that this would be soul-crushing, but I find it wonderful. Many of the things I was taught in classrooms were presented by believers who believed (as I sometimes did) in faulty information. As long as I can still enjoy the digging - I live. Thank you. (P.S. Would you consider giving some information on sourcing an actually good sword. I have been led to believe that a U S Naval dress sword is a really fine weapon - as well as quite pretty. How do I know if this is true?)

First! 😁 A morning with a new Welsh Viking video is a good morning!

I was so confused when I visited Damasus as a kid and saw a bunch of Damascus steel shops, when I knew it was a lost technique! But its a great selling point, to be fair

Every time you say Damascus steel with such conviction, it makes me so happy. I just love your passion in sharing history. I only discovered your channel fairly recently and I am binging. I absolutely love your videos. It also helps to have a sexy history teacher to make everything more exciting. 😉

I blame Red from Overly Sarcastic for getting me interested, HOWEVER I took it upon myself to learn how modern Damascus is by no means comparable

He is alive!!❤❤❤❤❤ The day Jimmy uploads video is always a great day! Thank you Jimmy!!!

i watched a documentary on a guy that was recreating an Ulfbert sword and there was a point where he said "i don't need a sword but i have to make them, not because i can't make anything else, but because i CANT make anything else", thats all i just love that quote and it never leaves me and i thought i'd share it

Interesting topic. It's crazy to think of the number of skills that were extremely important at one time that have simply been forgotten because they were no longer popular or marketable. Some skills like Dhaka muslin were even deliberately forced out by competing groups so only their way would be used. It pays to be skeptical of anything you read especially when someone is trying to sell you something. I'm off to watch the other videos. Thanks.

FINALLY, OMFG THANK YOU!!! I'm so sick of seeing people claiming that what they are making is "Damascus" when all they have is pattern weld

I noticed recently I couldn't remember the historical details of Damascus steel, so thank you for this excellent refresher on this charming mott

I have been saying this for years. And the number of times people have said I am a fool or worse lol.

This whole damascus vs pattern welded thing is a bit tricky in terms of nomenclature .. Because i get the feeling that as the 18th and 19thcentury wore on, the term damascus became maybe a catchall term for any patterned steel We have, for example, 'damascus gun barrels' as a term where rifle, shotgun and musket barrels were made of 2 or 3 bands or iron wrapped in a helix around a mandrel then welded This had a variety of names but was sometimes known as twist damascus barrels in the 19th century and even earlier One article alleges( key word) that some 17th century gunsmiths were even trying to directly imitate the crucible steel blades of various ottoman and other eastern troops

Hello to York ! Such interesting information as always - thank you Jimmy ❣️

Here in the states doing 18th century reenactment and we have long rifles and knifes being called Damascus steel as well, great channel I’m glad I ran across you

I bought myself a beautiful Szechuan pattern-welded knife as a treat, as chefs are known to do, and apparently the mordern practice and method of pattern-welding makes it very pretty but very very brittle. Removalists decided it was perfectly fine to use my beautiful knife to undo the screws on my bed frame prior to packing it into the truck and snapped the end clean off. I'm still very sad about it. I cant even look at it anymore.

I actually have several modern pattern welded blades, including a sword, an axe, a Seax, a "Talon" blade, a small hatchet-like blade, and several knives, including a folding knife. They are very sharp and I love the patterns in the steel, which makes them look quite magical - the small hatchet is a pattern of spots and rings resembling "eyes", the pattern in the Seax looks like a series of large fingerprints along the blade, the sword almost resembles the patterns of a topographical map of a series of hills or large mounds, the rest are various styles of wavy water-like patterns. I love them all (16 total currently, the lowest cost was $45USD for the folding knife, the highest was $225USD for the sword) and I have no illusions of them being anything but modern pattern welded blades (and good quality ones too). I'm currently in the process of creating a series of leather sheaths and scabbards for them all, some of them built into a cross-body shoulder bag made from a silver fox pelt (loosely based on a badger pelt black powder "possibles bag" and a similar muskrat pelt shoulder bag my mother made in the mid 1970's), some built into a kind of backpack made from a coyote pelt, some made to attach to a belt or baldric (the folding knife is going into a cleavage sheath 😆). Fun times.

interestingly, my first introduction to the idea of pattern welded steel came in the 90's when i was exploring polymer clay techniques. there is a technique used to create many layers of different clay colors (sometimes including translucent) and running them through a pasta machine to press them thinner. manipulating the resulting stack with impressed patterns resulted in a wood grain or watermark design. the technique was called Mokume-Gane and traced back to Japanese/Asian metalworking practices of the same name. about 10 years later, i had my second exposure to pattern welded steel in the form of a video about the search for the lost techniques of Damascus steel. there they gave a similar (though less researched) assertion that pattern welded steel was not the traditional Damascus steel.... long before the internet was covered in options to buy. in defense of the sellers labeling their work as Damascus steel nowadays, in all likelihood, the don't have much choice. SEO driven traffic controls a lot of commercial success online nowadays and it has changed the way terms are used based on what attracts views. i notice this a lot with wool. if you are looking to buy wool for spinning, almost all prepared wool will be called roving, for example, even though the majority of what is available is combed top. people who are new to the craft have a hard time learning the difference because of the ubiquitousness of the term, and so the term is used more often in what becomes a feedback loop. those who know better can't avoid it without losing traffic.

I remember my disappointment when I saw that smithing RU-vid channel do a pattern weld by making a steel box and just willy nilly tossing different grades of steel into it. The results was pretty, but as an apprentice blacksmith I feel cheated and a bit of professional... disappointment with them. Like, one the blade is now extremely brittle and two they kept calling it Damascus steel.

About time someone brought this up!

So I love your video, so amazing~ and I looked into this on my own years ago because it cropped up in a piece of fiction I was reading. So it is really awesome to see you dive into this with your level of education!

I think what people REALLY need to realize is that old Damascus steel is now called wootz, and Damascus steel is now the trade term for pattern welding. Language marches on. In America, you don't spot flutterbyes and coneys in the field. You get coneys at Sonic before you watch the butterflies.

Can you *please* come to my homeplace and sit down for a few minutes? Just so some rain is dripping down? The water shortage is getting serious

Another interesting video. Thank you so much.

There's nothing like modern industrial grade steel, but some people can't get it.

Damasc-aint? Da-scam-us? This has been a major pet peeve of mine for years lol

The last time I googled Damascus I was looking for information on my Damascus treadle sewing machine. ❤ Informative video 👍🏻 always good stuff to know😊

The pattern plate welding does give more surfaces for impurities to remain in the metal. This as a baseline is probably a good area to begin trying to add manganese or other metal ore, in attempts to recreate it

Excellent video

Catching up after being away for awhile. This really quite interesting! It’s really funny how people tend to latch onto “Named” things like Damascus steel. Thank you for sharing. (Quietly dying because it’s over 90 degrees F and our AC isn’t working 😅)

That opening is still kick ass. And I had no idea they could achieve patterns like that with the metal. So cool!

very nice video!! I had read somewhere once that the technique was lost and then found some stuff on etsy that made me veeeery confused. So thanks for clearing this up :)

Damascus steel comes originally from the area of Damas and then suddenly ppl are calling it damascus steel, but many sites have been found all over the area of Damas. But what ppl see all over the internet is cheap made, even crudely made with alot of imperfections in it. Pattern welded steel is what the vikings used etc. I am glad you mentioned Damas and the misconception that ppl think it is damascus steel. Tack från Sverige.

A'reyt Jimmy. Welcome to Yorkshire. This was like a crystallography lecture at university crossed with my readings on Vikings to play Ancients wargames for the university team. I am here thanks to Brandon. I had originally been a Napoleonic wargamer, but shifted to get a game. I remember at university thinking it was likely such skills that got my ancestors their name, though the skill with horses was the one that was passed on right to my dad's generation. I gave up on Vikings as a competition army as the lack of horses made it impossible to score points, as I have mentioned to fellow Viking fans in comments on History With Hilbert and Scotland History Tours before, but being from Yorkshire they would always be first choice.

Valyrian Steel most likely. The missing ingredient is dragons

Thank you for the video! I also think it's worth being a bit careful w the differences because sometimes we can be kind of misled into the rather disappointing idea that people historically were overawed by things that *don't stand up* anymore. Not to lessen the awesomeness of pattern welding, because frankly that looks insanely cool even knowing that it isn't a supersteel of some sort, but they are nonetheless different things. Thank you for the video!

9:07 Thank you for leaving this in the final cut! 😆

Thank you for clearing this up.

I saw a nice looking Damascus steel knife at a show. In tiny letters was printed “made in China”

Ah yes, the conversation we need!

Thanks for the great explanation.

So interesting, thank you!

Check out also LK Chen's attempts at making Chinese "Fried Steel", which is what the Han were doing 2000 years ago. Similar idea, bordering on blast furnace from my understanding, but definitely no longer bloomery.

What an awesome video, historical metallurgy is so cool. Who knew "true" damascus had such a drastically different process to pattern-weld, I always thought they were more similar. It should also be noted that pattern-welded steel is also historical to the Viking period and before (I believe the Sutton Hoo sword was pattern welded), and like damascus, can also be stronger than the sum of the steels used (if good steels are used, you can also just forge weld pure iron and weld steel together and as long as they have different carbon contents/ trace metals in them, they will make a pretty pattern. The result will be pretty, but weak). It is not as strong as damascus was purported to be, but pattern welded blades were still considered high-status weapons due to the extra time and skill involved, and they were probably more common in Scandinavia than true damascus because the materials could be sourced much closer to home. All this to reinforce Jimmy's point of if you want a pattern welded blade because you can't find true damascus, go for it, just make sure the steel is actually two different steels as opposed to a cheap monosteel that's been laser-engraved or, heaven forbid, painted.

Neat new intro

Shout out to Jimmy's pretty camera-hoverfly!

Wootz is still around and there's a few people that will make it, its essentially a high carbon content of about 1.2 to 1.8% with some vanadium in there for hardness, some trace chromium and the rest is a crucible process. What got lost over the years was the ores to make it, most of the mines in India and Syria were depleted some time ago a bit after the 18th century. Its quite a difficult material to use in the sense that its a bespoke melt when you get the end product that isn't going to react exactly the same as the material in a similar melt that's done roughly the same time and that comes back to how its processed and ultimately heat treated. You can't really give it very high temperatures during the refining process or it burns out all the carbon and generally the hardening and tempering process is about as variable. There is even some apocrypha that in some steels where not even hardened and hammer-forged out almost completely cold in some sort of age-hardening process that I'm kind of so-so on taking for what its worth but I'm hardly an expert and this video just popped up in my list on youtube (but I am a full time cutler) Needless to say, wootz is a completely rubbish material for industrialised processes and really the other reason that people threw it in the too hard bucket, no ones rolling up to your merchant to order 30,000 munition grade bayonets, sabres and other pokey objects from your foreign sources- they went to England, Germany, Spain, France and Italy when they wanted a lot of metal objects to fit out the vast armies of the time. Leaving the bespoke manufacturers of such things to just local demand from whoever. Its why you see 'trade blades' from about the 16th century onward show up in everywhere from central Africa with a Solingen proof or in the Americas from the Brits, French and Spanish. So even while they 'could' make their bespoke crucible steels, even the people who could, wanted more and the European processes was BETTER in the sense you have more blokes in the field with a sharp object that was functional than the other guy and the real killing began. Add to that, swords really only had a use up until blackpowder was being phased out as your 'better than nothing' alternative in a gun fight and the gun itself was probably the greatest equaliser in terms of warfare over time that further diminished the importance of edged weaponry. In terms of wootz today versus modern metals, there's no comparison really. Our modern metallurgy has left it in the dust long ago to the point something like our basic UK or US produced 1084 steels would outperform anything made in the per-industrial era by a very large margin. Plus when you buy it by the bulk in an order, every tonne you have will heat treat exactly the same as the last sheet you cut up and will be perfectly serviceable. That's just basic 1084, the newbie starter steel you give the up and coming knife makers to use, practice on and can make a blade better than some master in the 17th century in terms of shock resistance, hardness and edge holding and its 'barely' a high carbon steel at 0.8% carbon content. Then look at the high alloy, modern tool steels- these are many generations better than anything else, they're super fine grained, insanely tough, have edge holding for days and essentially makes the modern world what it is by those properties alone for machining tools. Somewhere if you want something that will put up with a 500kw, 12000nm of torque shredding machine that eats car bodies and engine blocks for breakfast it'll have teeth and blades made out of something like S7 or A8Mod and that's commonly available to anyone with the cash who wants to make a knife out of it. (I do sometimes and its absolutely bonkers!) So wootz had its time, but its more or less an artisan hobby and has been for about the last 3-400 years as industrialisation wiped it out, its pretty cool, you can still make it. Actually making anything out of it takes a lot of work though so its hardly economically viable to do those melts for people without some kind of extra funding to do it.

So off topic, I remember seeing a Bollywood movie Baahubali and there was this scene where they were testing swords. And none of them were good enough for the protagonist 😂😂😂. It's interesting that real history supports that ridiculous amazing epic film.

Great video! Thank you for explaining why modern Damascus steel isn't the legendary damascus steel. This was interesting just as someone mildly interested in blacksmithing. But, what is a hoverfly? is that like a dragonfly? A Canadian wants to know.

A friend of mine told me that modern items sold as Damascus steel are often made from Ex Cold War tank armour.

Say Hyper Utectoid again for me. Because thats some Sci Fi stuff right there

Antti’s dragon is sooo cool!

I think it's cool to think about having experiences in common with historical people about mundane things like trying to buy something and finding out it wasn't what you thought it was. It's cool how much historical metalworking is relative to what materials and tools are available concurrently. I don't think it's surprising that most modern smiths aren't replicating ancient techniques! The technique seems unlikely to be suited for the materials and equipment that modern smiths can find

So, considering the material is so much more superior than the local steel used at the time in Europe during the Viking period, I wonder if swords made from Damascus steel contribute to legendary swords that are described in folklore. Also, Damascus steel was used to make blades like swords and knives. However, is there any record or evidence of Damascus steel being used to make other weapons, such as axes, spears, or arrowheads?

So, was the steel made as a raw material & then smithed into a sword afterwards, or did it have to be made into its final (or near final) form during the initial process?

Growing up in Wales my mum would joke that the song was actually "saucepan bach" :D

I recently saw a piece about someone finding a deposit of iron near damascus that has the right combination of mineral impurities to be used in "damascus" steel.

Hi hello i love metallurgy and i love Jimmy videos so this is ideal! :)

Shocked we didn't get a Allo' Allo' soundbite for "Collaborator!" XD

Very cool :)

"**doing** 'ooOh!'" -The Lord of The Rings

I don't know anything about metalwork, but this is nice to know.

As a blacksmith I am aware the modern use of Damascus is referring to different alloys of steel welded together (mostly involving some manipulation like twisting to get more complex patterns), nonetheless this is an actual historical thing to do there are hundreds of the pattern welded blades/spears/axes/guns and what not throughout history from Roman swords to Ottoman guns and the patterns can go insanely complex and they really knew what pattern they wanted and how to get them. As mentioned iron quality wasn't the best and folding and welding is a way to get impurity's out and one theory is that the patterns occurred to demonstrate the blade smiths skills because you can spot flaws and the more complex the better the smith so you knew it was high quality and wouldn't snap the first blow you hit. Different alloy occur naturally depending where the ore originated from so iron from Germany might be harder, hold edge better but is slightly more brittle then iron from England but combined they make a better sword then alone you can actually pattern weld the same steel as the carbon is drawn towards the weld, different alloys just make it pop more (like nickel gives a more silver line) every time you heat a piece you lose some quality so pattern welded steel can never be better then modern steel all this just to say modern Damascus isn't historically inaccurate it just didn't go by that name, pattern welding is insanely hard especially if you want to recreate the same pattern as every thing you do differently impacts the final results and you can say about ancient Damascus what you want but we can't be certain as we still haven't figured it out. anyway love the video keep up the good work btw for those whose patterned blades are fading: soaking it in used coffee grind should bring it back at it is slightly acidic but doesn't eat the blade like more aggressive acids... unless you have been scammed and the pattern is just etched in :o

I must say (as a guy who has done some blacksmithing and made my steel from sand and carbon) that much of this is linguistics. "Damascus" in modern usage IS pattern welded steel. It isn't a scam, its just how the word is used. Well educated smiths will make a distinction. But in a world where people call everything runes and can't tell elder futhark from younger do you really think they can speak to the structure in iron alloys? Language changes. You know. As an engineer i perked up when you mentioned wootz and crucible ateel because in discussions of "Damascus" these terms come up often as do terms like Austenite and Martensite and occasionally tamahagane. It is complicated and i do appreciate the video.

My dedication and expenses for historical re-enactment limit me to swords constructed of cardboard and aluminum foil.

Yay a video i know stuff about. Maybe I can contribute some knowledge..........nope..... That pretty much covers it ^^

Excellent and interesting vid,Jimmy,should have done a more obvious in-depth colloborative tie-in with 'The Shogunate' channel,as the Japanese (samural) swordsmiths,then and now,are 2nd to none ! 👌👍

This is really interesting! Are there times where a pattern welded blade might be more historically accurate for a reenactment than one made from crucible steel? My understanding was that a lot of early Viking swords (not the Ulfberht ones) had pattern welded blades, not "Damascus"/crucible steel ones.

Does the damask fabric have that name for the same reason, the patterning? I think I've heard it called watered silk.

Just a note on scandinavian iron at 10:30 - Scandinavian bog ore and the iron/steel you get out of it is actually of very good quality (swedish steel was incredibly sought after up until like 1980 :)). Sure, the iron age bloomeries are incredibly resource consuming and only yields a few kg's of iron compared to the medieval blastfurnaces, but the quality was 🤌

3:35 Ahh. so it was the Panama hat of steel in a way ;)

Rewatching!

Weird thing is pattern welded swords (at least of certain types) are more historically accurate than wootz I'd go further, if someone is selling something called Damascus steel it's pattern weld. The few smiths trying recreate accurate Damascus use the name Wootz

0:20 Yeah, sorry about that.

Someone tell me how I can grow a beard as glorious as Jimmy

Thank you Jimmy, I was ignorant to what was real Damascus steel! Although why is it that we can not rediscover these lost methods,,, I once knew an old school genuine metalogist (hope the spelling holds up) Any I once knew this guy, a Yorkshire man (who incidentally destroyed my wooden sword, with his, whilst doing the swordy fighty bit in a mummers play) Back to my point,,,, he would often tell me of old steels that out performed modern steels, but again how they made these metals no one knows the secret craft was lost and never passed on Such a secretive bunch, that guarded their ways so closely, it would appear that modern metalogist give up too easily "o it's a lost art" Surely it would be easier for the mods to rediscover, then the labour's the original inventors! 🤪

My ancient brain has the memory of being told (or it was a movie) that ... Samurai sword were made with steel folded 100x over. Which I thought was like Damascus steel. Thats why you shouldn't get your history from movies. Or tv. Or books. Not all books. It get complicated.

So my old shotgun (father's, father's and so on scenario) has what are called damascus barrels, but they are really pattern welded steel? Doesn't sound anywhere near as romantic.