Does Damascus steel offer ANY combat advantage or is it just purely to make the knife stronger/more durable?
Does Damascus steel offer ANY combat advantage or is it just purely to make the knife stronger/more durable?
Does Damascus steel offer ANY combat advantage or is it just purely to make the knife stronger/more durable?
It's solely for decoration nowadays. Damascus was great in the period it was invented when metalworking wasn't as advanced or consistent, but modern steels are better.
The benefit of the Damascus steel look is the extra amount of money I charge people when I sell them knives. I don't event use the Damascus steel process, I just treat the blade for appearance.
>Does Damascus steel offer ANY combat advantage or is it just purely to make the knife stronger/more durable?
it does neither of those things
First of all
>combat advantage
Knives are for utility not combat, its the 21st fricking century, use a gun.
second of all
>is it just purely to make the knife stronger/more durable?
This is a combat advantage
Its a short sharp piece of metal, being durable and sharp is all it really needs. 99% of knife fights are not kung fu shit like the movies its one guy tackling the other and stabbing him 30 times
>99% of knife fights are not kung fu shit like the movies its one guy tackling the other and stabbing him 30 times
Not if you get good enough at using the knife.
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> ANY combat advantage or is it just purely to make the knife stronger/more durable
It does neither of those things.
the only thing pattern-welding confers is it can look pretty.
cheap pattern-welding (ie, 99% of the stuff out there) is weaker than homogenous steel, softer, and more susceptible to corrosion than a mirror polish or a modern surface treatment.
Expensive, well-made pattern-welding is as strong as a homogenous steel, but not as consistent in terms of hardness as homogenous steel, but can be close.
its entirely for looks.
Originally, it was genuinely better steel due to the alloy mixture from the impurities that produced the pattern. These days, no, it’s not any better than mass produced quality steel.
>Damascus steel
Is an often misused term for different historical kinds of steel. Most importantly the "real" damask, actually from india, which was a kind of early crucible steel, legitimately better than most steels of the time but obviously overturned by modern technology.
Most things called damask today is actually pattern welded, i.e. different kinds of steel or iron welded together in specific patterns. This too was once a way to make better blades from inferior materials by homogenizing the properties, but has long since been abandoned with better steelmaking technology.
Somewhat related are laminated blades (that need not necessarily be in a damask pattern though). For example, these use a harder edge on a softer, more ductile body. These are famously used in japanese swordmaking, but were also used in europe and many other places. Laminated steel is still, rarely, used for functional purposes, but monosteels are generally just as good.
What is a monosteel?
Well, a monosteel blade or other implement is one made from only one kind of steel. (It appears the term is not actually popular in english, maybe english has another term for it).
As I said, laminated steel blades are rare these days. Fällkniven uses them for example. Most blades are just from a single type of steel. Though mind you, some might be from a single type of steel, but differentially hardened.
The fancy high-contrast Indian material is likely not an early one, signs point to it only really appearing (at least in decent quantity) in the 16th century. The somewhat limited data we have on it also suggests a combination of extremely high carbon content and very high phosphorus content, making it problematically brittle.
Crucible steels in general do go back to much earlier times, but their patterns will tend to be decidedly less fancy and in the Russian-Persian-Ottoman-Mamluk sphere at least they don't appear to have considered the pattern anything to care about given that they frequently covered the blades in other forms of decoration. (We're after all a bit keener on any pattern at all today in the monosteel era than back when just about every nail, door hinge and table knife would have been folded metal.)
Monosteels are steels that are one piece and homogenous throughout. Ie not folded, pattern welded, bulat, damascus, noticeably inhomogeneous, or anything like that. It's what basically all steel items are made of today, but up until quite recent history it was almost unheard of as swords and similar were almost always made of different pieces of steel, laminated, folded, somewhat inhomogeneous crucible steel, or some combination thereof.
We do have indications of patterned crucible steels far earlier than the 16th c. This sasanian sword for example has the correct microstructure and likely had a diffuse pattern close to stripy or sham style crucible steel
https://hmsjournal.org/index.php/home/article/download/314/302
Another early ones is here
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeo-metallurgical-studies/sites/archaeo-metallurgical-studies/files/iams_25_2005_feuerbach.pdf
One big issue with making the statement that early crucible steel wasn't patterned is that the condition of most of those early swords is poor, and there isn't a demand or culture for repolishing them (and etching) like there is in japan
not dealing withte rest of the shitshow ITT but there are production patternwelded steels that don't suffer any performance loss, Damasteel e.g.
if we're talking the paki 1060/15n20 hot rolled garbage or like 80% of what custom makers churn out then yeah its dogshit on balance but it doesn't mean pattern welding can't be done right
Other anons have covered most of this answer, but in short: in modern times, no advantage.
Some folks will tell you pattern welding, san mai, etc. offer a best of both worlds deal with multiple steels but that's usually bullshit and more for looks. Factory-available steel is metallurgically damned near pure these days. You choose a steel based on the properties you want the knife to have. There's nearly no such thing as "better" steel (if you use a reputable vendor) as much as better for a specific task.
When I took my hunter safety course the instructor said that Damascus barrels looked nice but could burst when fired. True Damascus steel was a very high carbon steel but modern Damascus steel is pattern welded peices of steel and iron. So my guess is the knife looks pretty and that's it.
What your instructor was likely referring do is that most Damascus barreled guns were made for black powder so it would clearly be a huge safety problem to load smokeless ammo in them. Also, a damascus barreled shotgun likely has a shorter chamber than required for modern shells so that can cause pressure spikes as well. However there certainly do exist damascus barrel guns which have been proofed for modern smokeless shells.
>it's pretty
the end.
Steel is stronger than flesh. That's all that matters.
Steel isn't strong, boy, flesh is stronger! What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?
12 times denser and 500 times sharper?
neither, it's just israeli snake oil trick to get you to hand over more cash
Damascus is more likely to make the steel weaker nowadays