damascus vs high carbon vs folded steel

Tim Chan

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is there actually any performance differences?
 
hhmmm not really...

I'll give you a back history on sword forging and why it was done that way in the beginning...


back in the day.. smiths didn't have access to high-cabon steel in homogenous form like we have today from factories... in fact steel itself was very rare and had to be created in the smithy... steel is just iron with carbon... now back in the days... they had to go out and find iron... and in this chunk of iron was all kinds of other crap that, if left in, would ruin the blade...
what the smiths found out is, if you take the iron, heat it up, beat it out and fold it over and repeat... you drive all the impurities out of the iron and from the burning of the charcol, the carbon would be infused with the iron to produce steel and at the same time, all the crap that is not wanted is "forged" out of the billet. so after the process of forging and folding of the iron, only a bar of steel with a certain carbon content would be left and then he would create the blade shape and then heat-treating and then final shaping and/or sharpening.

let me put it this way... if you took a billet of iron and folded it more than 13-15 times, and then polished it out.. you wouldn't see any grain in the steel.. it would all be homogonized from so much folding and you wouldn't be able to see the layers..

the only difference between damscus and folded steel is in the the visible pattern... usualy when your talking about "damascus" today, you mean the kind of blades where you have alternating layers that are readily visible... like this...
vikshort1.jpg


this happens when you have steels or other metals, most commonly nickel, of different carbon contents that are stacked together and then forged and folded together to create different patterns in the steel, which become visible after an acid etch.

folded steel is just that.. any steel you take and fold it is folded steel... visble layers or not... many katanas are like this... they are folded (traditionaly) but the pattern is very subtle and not readily visible (in most cases).. like this...
hadahamon.jpg
and this...
habakiblade.jpg


and now to the high-carbon bit... since we now have factories that can produce any kind of steel with any amount of carbon content and with purity.. folding blades is no longer a necessity.. many smiths take a bar of steel.. and just grind a blade, heat treat, final finish, hilt up and send it off. or you can just forge it to shape without any folding and then final shaping... like this blade.. notice there is no "grain" in the steel...
blade2.jpg


if any folding is done on a blade today it is mainly for aesthetic purposes or in some cases purely to keep a traditon alive... theres a wide variety of options and different avenues you can take when looking for a blade.

like Angus Trim blades... takes a bar of 5160... puts it in a CNC machine and it does the basic shaping of the blade by computer, does some final shaping by hand, sends it off to heat treating, puts a hilt on it, sharpens it and viola'! sword in less than half the time and costs much, much less that traditionaly forging and folding it.

or you can go totaly traditional and get one from Japan.... better get your credit card though for these babies.. check out the price..http://nihonto.com/ichi.html

as for performance.. you wouldn't be able to tell the difference unless you were very, very skilled and knew what to look for and its mostly done on "feel"...


any other question or comments.. feel free... swords are my passion :)

Best,

Kokoro
 
What are you wanting to do with this. Are you wanting a folding knife, a sword, fighting knife?

My father is a woodworker and cabinet maker and swears by Carbon Steel. Says that it is the easiest to sharpen to a razor edge. He admits that it doesn't weather well, but for his work it's what he wants.
 
kokoro said:
hhmmm not really...

I'll give you a back history on sword forging and why it was done that way in the beginning...


back in the day.. smiths didn't have access to high-cabon steel in homogenous form like we have today from factories... in fact steel itself was very rare and had to be created in the smithy... steel is just iron with carbon... now back in the days... they had to go out and find iron... and in this chunk of iron was all kinds of other crap that, if left in, would ruin the blade...
what the smiths found out is, if you take the iron, heat it up, beat it out and fold it over and repeat... you drive all the impurities out of the iron and from the burning of the charcol, the carbon would be infused with the iron to produce steel and at the same time, all the crap that is not wanted is "forged" out of the billet. so after the process of forging and folding of the iron, only a bar of steel with a certain carbon content would be left and then he would create the blade shape and then heat-treating and then final shaping and/or sharpening.

let me put it this way... if you took a billet of iron and folded it more than 13-15 times, and then polished it out.. you wouldn't see any grain in the steel.. it would all be homogonized from so much folding and you wouldn't be able to see the layers..

the only difference between damscus and folded steel is in the the visible pattern... usualy when your talking about "damascus" today, you mean the kind of blades where you have alternating layers that are readily visible... like this...
vikshort1.jpg


this happens when you have steels or other metals, most commonly nickel, of different carbon contents that are stacked together and then forged and folded together to create different patterns in the steel, which become visible after an acid etch.

folded steel is just that.. any steel you take and fold it is folded steel... visble layers or not... many katanas are like this... they are folded (traditionaly) but the pattern is very subtle and not readily visible (in most cases).. like this...
hadahamon.jpg
and this...
habakiblade.jpg


and now to the high-carbon bit... since we now have factories that can produce any kind of steel with any amount of carbon content and with purity.. folding blades is no longer a necessity.. many smiths take a bar of steel.. and just grind a blade, heat treat, final finish, hilt up and send it off. or you can just forge it to shape without any folding and then final shaping... like this blade.. notice there is no "grain" in the steel...
blade2.jpg


if any folding is done on a blade today it is mainly for aesthetic purposes or in some cases purely to keep a traditon alive... theres a wide variety of options and different avenues you can take when looking for a blade.

like Angus Trim blades... takes a bar of 5160... puts it in a CNC machine and it does the basic shaping of the blade by computer, does some final shaping by hand, sends it off to heat treating, puts a hilt on it, sharpens it and viola'! sword in less than half the time and costs much, much less that traditionaly forging and folding it.

or you can go totaly traditional and get one from Japan.... better get your credit card though for these babies.. check out the price..http://nihonto.com/ichi.html

as for performance.. you wouldn't be able to tell the difference unless you were very, very skilled and knew what to look for and its mostly done on "feel"...


any other question or comments.. feel free... swords are my passion :)

Best,

Kokoro


This post was far too informative and helpful for Sherdog :icon_lol:
Seriously though, thanks for the info, nice post
 
mostly a sword polishers site... Keith Larman at Summerchild Polishng http://summerchild.com/summer.html

and the viking sword was done by Kevin Cashen.. one of the premier swordsmiths alive today...http://cashenblades.com/ his website is a little outdated and cheesy but don't be fooled... you will pay a few grand for one of his swords...
check this rapier out...
rapier.jpg


this baby will set you back around 6-7 g's

anyway.. I'll give you some sweet sword sites..

bugei.com
casiberia.com
nihonto.com
myarmoury.com
swordforum.com

Best,

Kokoro
 
damn i need a higher paying job. btw, u got any good sites for chinese swords. mostly for daos, and maybe a bagua sword, dadao/kwan dao?
 
Thanks for the great post Kokoro.
 
Are you willing to pay extra for aesthetics? I personally would as functionality in a sword is not the number one reason many people get swords in this day and age. Modern monosteel performs just as well as folded or damascus steel.

Do you plan on swinging the sword around? Hanwei/Paul Chen makes a bunch of Chinese swords that have a full tang.

Kokoro, is that a Howard Clark blade?
 
Sweet thread I've been noticing the cost of swords dropping quite a bit in recent years and now it makes more sense with the easy to mass produce option.
 

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