Why You’re Wrong About Damascus Steel (with Steve Schwarzer) 

yeah, that well placed pause after the comma :)

And everyone claiming to make Damascus are NOT experts. Nobody can make real Damascus it's a lost technology. What they make is imitation Damascus.

better said "A lot of people call themselves Experts, only so many truly are"

@@joshportie your source?

@@joshportie It's not really lost, it's crucible steel and they have records of the recipes. It just doesn't pay to make it, there are modern forging tech that produces steel that has al the properties if not better.

he's not that old

Have to be a cool young guy first then a cool bloke

@@genekunkel8001 I wouldn't exactly call 75 years old, not that old. That's a, "we'll see if I wake up tomorrow" age.

no he isn't, find someone else. This guys words are full of so many mistakes it isn't funny. It is people like him that have stunted the industry and stopped it from moving forward.

Sounds like it needs to be a series!

I add my Voice to that idea as well, it would be a nice 'niche' for you to go along side your own Videos. PLEASE think about it. You have an excellent mix of Ability, Respect, Humor, and True Love for the CRAFT, that would make you a GREAT 'Keeper of the Flame', so to speak. Finding and working with people who have more experience and skill NEVER diminishes you, it only makes us better ! I'm glad to see you learned that very important lesson so young, many, sadly, never do.

He's not a historian. He's scammer. His knives are pattern welded knives. Him calling them Damascus is like calling my suitcase Gucci & charging you 5 times more.

Hope they made you stronger brother.

me too, man. me too...

So what's the formula for that majestic beard?

@@raimundotorres44 three months of deep depression followed by not shaving for about 3 years. Sadly due to working healthcare I did have to shave it all off

@@ZevVeli Hope you are feeling better

very true as you say everything we know has been built on over millions of lifetimes of experiences and experimentations which paved the way to technological advancements in basically every single way from the stone age all the way to how things are as we see the world today in all ways of life both for the working people and also the younger generation who are yet to get their first job in life after they leave their school years behind then there’s the emergency services and armed forces who have been strengthened over centuries of technological advancements and new knowledge etc. The hospital’s for example after the knowledge of how the human body worked and the creation of the technology to restart the heart came to exist the number of lives saved increased greatly then there’s the armed forces who have over the centuries learned how to use stronger materials for their weapons and armour and eventually created the first guns which eventually paved the way to the present day firearms and combat vehicles eg tanks and armoured personal carriers etc yet most people don’t realise just how many years of trial and error most of the present day is based on from advancements throughout the long history of the world over millions of years of history and yet most take the technology of today for granted but if they really realised how much easier their present day life is due to the technological advancements of the past they would be quite shocked and thankful i think and might appreciate the technology they have available to them more than they do now such as mobile phones 📱 etc

So true. I've learned so much about my guitar playing by teaching music.

Holy shit what hardware were you on?

That's cool. And I agree. But please stop using 'lived experience" it's a redundant statement, "experience" is a word that says exactly what you need it to say without this woke jargon that isn't even proper grammar. "Lived experience" doesn't say anything that "experience" doesn't already say, because the word already refers to something that one can only attain through doing it, through living it. There's no such thing as someone's non lived experience, because if you didn't live it first hand, then it's not experience, it's knowledge. Therefore it's redundant. And yes, I get that it comes out of the "Studies" area of academia and is a veiled attempt at replacing the concept of objective truth with subjective truth. The way you use it isn't that either. What you mean is the man has knowledge and experience. He has expertise. "Lived experience" is for people trying to legitimise grievances that make no sense to anyone.

@@Patrick-857 there is a difference between visceral/embodied experience (i.e. doing with the hands, muscle memory) vs. a purely mental experience. That’s the reason for my using that term and then later using “visceral experience”. I guess one could make an argument that everything is ultimately a mental/subjective experience, if you were a Buddhist, for example, or everything is ultimately an embodied experience, if you were a scientific materialist, but I personally find the dichotomy relatable and useful. I agree that if you break it down “lived experience” is a stupid term. I’m not an academic. What I meant was more of the latter “visceral experience”, ie something you can only learn by doing it over and over, rather than reading from a book or watching a RU-vid video, or thinking about it.

@@Patrick-857 I have a great deal of observational and research experience at blacksmithing & low tech survival, but very little "lived experience" in them. The practical difference is that I know what to do, and how it's done, but I cannot actually do the majority of it.

@@Patrick-857 its been 4 months, do you feel cringey at your post yet?

@@AvanaVana Thanks for the very reasonable reply. I couldn't agree more with most of what you're saying. I do think however that there really isn't often a need to make a distinction such as your "visceral experience" thing. But English is a language that is very adaptable, so one can express this concept in many different ways. The lived experience thing was certainly not coined to describe a white guy and his extensive experience with an ancient craft. I would say it was very much meant to exclude people like him. I know exactly what you meant though, and could tell you weren't using it in the way it's used in grievance studies circles. I don't blame anyone but the people trying to corrupt the language.

I've had to explain to a couple guys that folding steel doesn't make it magical. It's a method for cleaning the crap out of it. The magic is the smith's skill in getting ANYTHING useful out of some really crappy steel. If those guys were alive today, do you think that they would hesitate for a second in ordering engineered alloys from the supply dealer? Being able to start with a very well known alloy of steel would have let them progress their art and science far beyond where they got to.

@@rallen7660 You probably already know this but there are smiths in Japan keeping the "old way" alive for cultural, artistic and religious reasons, and yes, they harvest the sand and make tamahagane and refine it the old way and all that. There are still registered sword makers in Japan who will only use that steel, others who use modern steels. The traditional ones get higher prices because they do it the traditional way. Which swords are superior is a matter of opinion because they aren't used for fighting any more.

@@markfergerson2145 From what I know, only Hitachi makes tamahagane during winter. Any they can only sell the 'nuggets' to 'license' swordsmith. And what makes katana and tamahagane great...Anime and manga. Like if you expose the tamahagane to the sun for it to absorb sunlight, the blade can be use to kill demons. (Demon Slayer reference)😁

@@1968gadgetyo Let's not overdo debunking the hype. A well made katana is a well made sword. No, they can't cut atoms in half, no, they can't cut the Earth in half, but they can cut limbs off etc. My real point was that the Japanese smiths took lemons (tamahagane) and made lemonade (swords).

@@rallen7660 A lot of them would probably have offered up their firstborn daughter for her weight in a good modern alloy steel.

I've been begging You and Alec to do this since you two started working in the same shop together.

... tiny amount* of vanadium*

Into a broken* bucket. As long as a vessel in empty you can put things inside of it.

it really pisses me off... its like calling someone that can answer 1+1 a mathematician 😁

You must have extremely poor comprehension, or just selective hearing. Because he called pattern welding real Damascus. So either you just did not listen at all, or only hear what you wanted to hear. Literally said "it's just two different techniques". So he is one of those people that call pattern welded Damascus.

... tidbits* (plural, no apostrophe)

Work with lads from Tullamore and Westport.

Great places both....... from Tyrone myself...... settled with wife and kids in Derry....... Happy Christmas

@@conorlavery4762 As someone from near Toome I always have a laugh to myself when I scroll through comments on videos like this and see someone commenting from home :)

Small world Ryan 😁

What is the nonsense with the shitload of fullstops? You only need single fullstops to separate sentences.* Looks better, is easier to read, not to mention it's the correct method for all laguages using the latin alphabet.*

"The riddle of Steel" as it's sometimes called, lies in taking a material... that might not even look like metal, and make a blade from it. Also pattern welding and forge welding are old as ---- Some blades made 1000 years ago in Europe were found to have been forged from two completely different alloys! One alloy is the edge, the other the spine of the blade. It lets you have a super-hard cutting edge... made of a metal that'd shatter if used for the entire blade.

Exactly! Pattern welded was not the steel of legend and built up into mythology. The wootz from the ancient Damascus region was. Especially when forged in India.

Modern pattern welded steel can have the name damascus. Wootz is wootz. I don't know what it's like in other knifemaking communities but in my country there's no longer any confusion between the terms.

@@FuckYouYouFuck I'm coming to it from an archaeologists perspective, so clearly distinguishing between pattern welding, wootz, and damascus (which is wootz, but not all wootz is damascus), is probably more important in my context

@@FuckYouYouFuck yeah.... we all understand the modern names. No one is disagreeing that "Damascus" is used for both and that "wootz" is more of a differentiating term than "pattern welded" TODAY. We're saying that when he says "both are the 'real' Damascus" and goes on to talk about how poor quality scrap steels were blended together to get enough for the next thing they were welding unintentionally making pattern welds is super old and just a "Damascus" as the ancient steel of legend and myth with wootz patterns from the Damascus area.... that's just complete bullshit.

@@benmiller537 Pattern welded steel is as historically valid and important and functional as wootz or tamahagane. Modern pattern welded steel is more damascus than historical wootz or bulat or seric or crucible steel. Calling wootz damascus is like calling all cars Detroits. In common usage damascus is pattern welded steel and pattern welded steel is damascus. No one that makes modern wootz/crucible steel calls it damascus or wants it confused with damascus.