100%. This video represents many many hours of work and we really appreciate it. There's no way I could get this information, presented so well, elsewhere - thank you!
The results with 1095/nickel ladder pattern were surprising. I never would have guessed that there was any cutting advantage to using Damascus let alone Damascus with pure nickel.
Yeah, that was a cool tidbit to learn. Slicing better than 1095 alone! It's like when you blend different varieties of tea, it supposedly has a greater antiangiogenic effect than either tea alone rather than the weaker diluting the stronger.
A bar of wootz 1095 and pure nickel would be very interesting. I’ve been wanting to dabble in some wootz but I’m going to fail many times. I don’t like to fail so I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place.
@@-Craptastic- I completely agree with what your saying. I’m usually really good at figuring things out and making things work with a high success rate. But making steel is a whole different ballgame. I can’t predict an outcome or see what happening until a bar is made. Then followed by multiple test to find out if the mixture and procedure is right or needs tweaking. There so much that goes into making steel from scratch. Tons of different variables, not to mention figuring out the right heat treatment. Almost makes my head spin thinking about it🤦♂️.
@@-Craptastic- lol thanks man, yeah it’s a deep rabbit hole and can get quite expensive. If I can get a recipe and procedure to get me started I might give it a go. It would be pretty awesome to produce my own steel.
When I start to show interest in a particular topic, I make it my mission to find the person of the particular subject, who pretty much know a lot more than everyone else in the subject. I don't like people that water down the information, like they are talking to a bunch laymen. I appreciate proper terminology and I am a sucker for all the specs you can possibly show/tell me. You are that person, my friend! This video has amazing and articulate information, that I don't think I would be able to find anywhere else on RU-vid!
I never knew how much I needed you to do this study - anyway, not until I was halfway through grinning from ear to ear. Thanks for debunking a whole bunch more mythology and creating a new set of useful observations makers can use to improve their craft. This was so cool. Seriously. Thanks Larrin. Gonna have to buy that book!
Wow. Did not expect that. I'm just to the part showing the catra results of the 1095/nickel. Can't wait to watch the rest of the video. Super interesting. Thank you for all the work you put into these tests, and spreading this info to us.
The damascus cutting effect has a parallel in nature. Beavers' front teeth are harder in the front than the back, so the back wears down more quickly...not sure how those would do in a CATRA test though.
Great vid. As an amateur steel nerd myself I love getting factual information regarding steel attributes and performance. I love getting insight into heat treating. Too many knife users focus on the steel and forget the heat treatment. There are some crazy 'Damascus' steel myths out there that continue to perpetuate (thanks in most part of clever marketing) as most people don't understand what it really is and how it's made. Nothing beats actual research and testing. Sharp blades all.
I read the article you did on your website comparing a lot of the alloys in edge retention, and it's crazy how much someone could learn from just 1 single article. It conformed quite a few personal theories I had on the qualities certain metals gave to the alloy, and I learned at least half the amount of information of everything I knew about cutlery alloys just from one single article.
Damasteel's toughness is quite impressive, 15 ft-lb at 61, it's higher than the current CPM-154 rating by 50%? reminds me the old mystery CPM-154 specimen :-)
Thanks Larrin for taking the time to do this study. I was searching for an answer to this exact question, not exactly "damascus vs super steels" but more or less high carbon damascus vs super steels. Im very much a function over form type of person and it flabbergasts me when someone spends thousands on a "high end" custom knife made with 1084 and 15N20 damascus, when there's modern steels that will perform better for significantly less labor.
Its the opposite of "form over function" if you don't understand how someone else might appreciate an interesting pattern and clean/ornate hand-crafted fitment over a specific performance engineered metallurgy.
@@BrokentwobuttonIf they know that's what they are getting that's fine, but I suspect they believe they are getting the best performance because of they didn't think that it wouldn't be that hard to use the better metallurgy and still get the nice pattern.
Ty for sharing your work! I myself mainly use monosteel for my knives but the few damascus knives I made share their attributes with your study 😁 Pleasure to listen to you and greetings from Germany!
Wow that was incredible. You should reach out to some steel manufacturers to provide you with some steels. Usually the more information there is on the topic, the more it brings attention to their product. Also, that's where you see which manufacturer has high confidence in their product when they are willing to supply materials for a third party, unbiased study comparing things to their competitors. Also, let me know for your next study, depending on economic timing, would be keen to send some materials your way.
You mention that carbon diffuses very rapidly at forge welding temperatures and that the carbon content between the layers becomes homogenous for typical damascus layer counts. I know there are many applications such as Japanese chisels, san-mai knives, and axe heads where it is common to forge weld a hardenable bit to a low carbon steel. This has been done successfully historically so I'm wondering if you could shed any light on how far the carbon diffuses and if there are any heat treating techniques that should be applied to minimize the carbon from the bit diffusing out into the mild steel. If you forge welded a thin hardenable steel to a thicker mild steel is it possible that enough carbon could be drawn from the edge that the steel won't harden or the cutting performance is compromised?
When you have a material with randomly occuring defects - like every type of damascus (forge welding can never be completely defect free in a large area), toughness becomes depending of the material volume under test (Weibull distribution). If the test piece cut out of a sheet is - by chance - defect free, it may do well in testing. If there is a defect, it will fail early. So nobody knows if 1084/15N20 is a tough combo, or just picked a good part for testing.
This assumes that multiple samples didn't have defects. But we found defects and it still tested well, so the presence of defects is not necessarily a guarantee of poorer performance. In this case the distribution and orientation of the defects in the 1084/15N20 did not appear to be deleterious for the toughness test.
This is fantastic information. I had a custom made with 15n20/nickel damascus in a predator pattern which left 5mm plus sections of the cutting edge with the softer nickel exposed. It proved to be non functional knife because of this. It’s neat that you had Seth Burton’s steel to test. He lives about 30 minutes away from me on Salt Spring Island. I would love to one day visit his shop.
I’m definitely going to get your book at first. I thought you were a little arrogant but after watching the episodes, especially this one I can see your love for the art and I appreciate it.
I know you probably already want one, but an SEM with EDX would be an incredible addition to this study. You could look into how much diffusion is happening between the layers.
Pfff. I came here to find out how well Tata bumpers pattern welded with shipping container sheet metal perform. What is all this s90v/20cv nonsense?? Seriously though, theres some amazing data here.
"and there are many many color pictures in the book" Is that a hint at us, the audience? :P Epic results though. I too did not expect that the damascus cutting effect was true, at least not to this extent.
Hello, thank you for the video! Damascus steel is important to my Middle Eastern/North African heritage. The legendary "Damascus steel" that we usually talk about is actually wootz steel, made differently than modern Damascus. Have you had the chance to studied wootz steel?
Throw your patreon link in the description! I love these studies and want to see you keep being able to do stuff like this! Also a discord linked to your patreon would be sweet!
I was about to buy Sakai Takayuki VG10-VG2 Coreless Damascus , but it does not have that ladder pattern damascus on it. Superb effort sir, my gratitude!
I would love to see you do some tests with bertie retfield's Damascus desighns/compositions! He is really incredibly talented and makes really crazy beautiful interesting Damascus.
Hey Larrin, Fantastic work again! I have a question and would value any input from you. I have been making stainless Damascus using AEB-L and 304, do you think the 304 would perform much differently than the 302? Also, from the testing that included 302 i gather that when making stainless Damascus its not necessary to inlcude a solid core layer in the final billet to ensure high quality knife steel for the cutting edge, would you say thag is accurate or would you suggest including that core layer?
Did your father have any thoughts on the findings, being a master smith and well-known damascus knife maker? (I was also surprised that layer count had no real impact on edge retention in the AEB-L/154CM study... I thought for sure it would make some difference.) I have to be honest, I've always loved the way that damascus blades looked. I defy anyone to say that they're not beautiful... ...But... I never really considered them serious use knives and shied away from buying them because it just didn't seem likely that it could hold up anywhere near as well as purpose-built or traditional knife steels in edge retention.
@@KnifeSteelNerds If he'd be willing, that would be interesting. Having both the maker/smith side and the metallurgy side perspective would be fascinating.
Great video! I wonder how this translates to sword making which uses a slicing motion rather than chopping. So the wear patterns should be quite different. I have a vintage katana made with Honsanmai steel - which has both soft and hard properties. It's also folded and heat and clay tempered. No idea how durable it is though.
Calling pattern welded steels "damascus" has always bothered me. The original damascus blades were a crucible steel, and the fine patterns in the final blades were extremely subtle. The exact method of creating these true damascus steels is mostly lost to us now, although there have been experiments with recreating these so-called wootz steels using traditional methods that have seen some measures of success. Contrast that with pattern welding, which has a long history in Europe and was never a lost art or something of much mystery to bladesmiths. Moran's re-branding of pattern welded steels to "damascus" relied on the legendary reputation of wootz crucible steels, -stealing- borrowing their mystique to make decorative pattern welded blades seem worth more than the sum of their rather average materials.
Moran is not the one who started calling pattern welded steel Damascus. Using the term to refer to both crucible and pattern welded steel goes back to at least the early 1800s. We can make Wootz now, the only argument is whether we do it in exactly the same way as it was made anciently. We know the mechanisms by which it occurs. Whether we use the exact same crucibles or organic matter or whatever is more of an interest to an archaeologist.
@@KnifeSteelNerds It's quite the misnomer, given how different wootz and pattern welded steels are in how they become blade blanks. I wish modern bladesmiths and researchers such as yourself would call pattern welded steel what it is, and save the term damascus for the original crucible steels. It would certainly be more accurate.
Really thoughtful experiments. Would like to see the toughness and Carta results of the individual components in the graph, although I know you mention it. Just like to see it for comparison. Easier to compare. Will you be publishing this in a peer reviewed journal?
Should be a guest judge on forged in fire. If they are neck in neck, look at the micro structure for the tie break. Your carbides were a molecule too big Jeff, and thats why we are sending you home.
Great work, in your conclusions you say that layer count did not affect edge retention, but also that ladder pattern improves edge retention. Do you confirm that even though there might no longer remain a visible pattern because of 3000+ layers, there is still that "saw-like" effect which is beneficial for edge retention ?
Good video, but… I feel that you are remiss in not mentioning that the “damascus cutting effect” only showed up when using a steel paired with a non-steel (pure nickel) in your conclusion. It seems that in all cases where a more wear resistant steel was used with a less wear resistant steel, element (primarily carbon) migration negated the effect. You did mention that steels with different hardenability may be used to produce the effect - I’d love to see experimental exploration of that idea. Additionally, would it be possible to forge weld a high and low alloy steel together (i.e. 1084 and 20CV) in order to produce the effect at higher levels of edge retention?
Just found this channel, and loved the data. One question/suggestion. Are you familiar with the @BreakingTaps channel? He has a Scanning Electron Microscope that might allow you to obtain some even more interesting data or at least pictures.
Thanks to Laird and Devin Thomas for being badasses and continuing their quest for knowledge and understanding of the most significant uses for different steals in different applications and blades Y'all are fucking awesome!!!
41:28 i noticed you did two hardness's for damasteel and did toughness testing on both but only edge retention testing on the lower hardness one. Was just curious why the higher one was not on the esge retention chart? I also noticed the protocols that were used for the damasteel were slighly different than the ones from damasteels datasheet. Can you explain why? I can make assumptions but id rather not.
Any evidence the Damascus cutting effect happens when using two steels with different wear resistance? Say something like 1084 and 52100? Hardness won’t be different but wear might be different enough to show the effect. Then again, the difference between 1095 and pure nickel is greater than that of 1018 and 52100, so it might not be noticeable if the difference isn’t enormous.
