<story><title>“True” Damascus steel is not a “lost art”</title><url>https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/vdvtrh/a_widely_believed_history_myth_no_true_damascus/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hef19898</author><text>I think one has to seperate the steel alloy, which covered, and the forging techniques used. The former ran out, at which point steel quality decreased. Lets call that steel from Damascus.&lt;p&gt;And there is what is now commonly called Damast steel, basically folded and twisted steel of dofferent properties. That technique is as old as blacksmithing because it was, more or less, the only way to get rid of impurities. The Japanese developed this technique to the extreme by not just getting rid of impurities but by gettind &lt;i&gt;specific&lt;/i&gt; steel properties to defined parts of a blade.&lt;p&gt;European sword smiths stopped doing that, first European steel became better and more homogenous and didn&amp;#x27;t require anywhere near as much imourity removal. Secondly, spring steel is pretty sturdy monosteel, so need need to get specific steel in specific parts of a blade. And lastky, European bladed weapons from the Napoleonic era onwards were industrially mass produced (as compared to the manufacture mass production from earlier periods). And mass production means cost reductions, that didn&amp;#x27;t start with MBAs. Sonce those weapons were good enough to kill people by stabbing, cutting and slashing them Damast steel wasn&amp;#x27;t needed. The obvious exception are expensive master pieces forged individually. And the better quality &amp;quot;industrial&amp;quot; ones.&lt;p&gt;Damast steel has renessaonce at the moment, mainly because it looks great. And it is a way for knife makers to upsell, otherwise not a singpe one of them could compete on price.&lt;p&gt;The Japanese way of blade making has the benefit of having properties of the alloy at, e.g., the blade (hard and sharp) and the core and back of a blade (softer and stronger). Damast steels properties are all over the place, meaning it has no real value, IMHO, regarding a blades capabilities when it c;mes to cutting. Those blades so, as the Japanese ones, are falling into the region of art so, and there the optical properties matter a lot. And there Damast is just beautiful.&lt;p&gt;From experience so, Damast steel bars are hard to get rigjt, I&amp;#x27;ll go out on a limb and say Japanese bar steel is easier (if you forgo the tradidional Tamahagane way that is). Finishing the blade is easier woth Damast so, a proper Japanese blade requires so much delicate heat treatment and polishing to get right, it is borderline rediculous.</text></item><item><author>throwaway81523</author><text>This article doesn&amp;#x27;t address the 1998 discovery that the &amp;quot;lost&amp;quot; art was the presence of vanadium in the ores that real damascus blades were made from.  The vanadium gave the steel its strength from the 13th to 17th centuries or something like that.  It was present in iron ore mined in a particular region, and those mines eventually ran out, after which the &amp;quot;recipes&amp;quot; for damascus steel weren&amp;#x27;t lost, they simply stopped working and no one knew why.  They had no way to tell the difference between iron ore from one place and ore from another.&lt;p&gt;This is explained in the 1998 Verhoeven, Pendray, and Dauksch (VPD) article]1] that the reddit post cites without touching on this crucial aspect.  Or anyway, I thought that VPD&amp;#x27;s explanation was now generally accepted.  This isn&amp;#x27;t anywhere near my field though.&lt;p&gt;[1] Verhoeven, John D. et al. “The key role of impurities in ancient damascus steel blades.” JOM 50 (1998): 58-64.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>trashtester</author><text>&amp;gt; so need need to get specific steel in specific parts of a blade.&lt;p&gt;This is not quite true. Even today, there are many secrets surrounding metalworking. The highest quality &amp;quot;blades&amp;quot; (such as plow blades&amp;#x2F;moldboards),  may have steel with quite diffent qualities in different areas of the blade.&lt;p&gt;The blade may start out as monosteel, but differential exposure to oxygen, carbon or different temperatures in different parts of the blade is a common way to create blades that have different microstructures (crystal structures, chemical bonds, microshapes) as well as a carbon content that can vary within the blade. These helps them to retain an edge better, better avoid scratching, while maximizing durability and minimizing weight and  thickness.</text></comment>
<story><title>“True” Damascus steel is not a “lost art”</title><url>https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/vdvtrh/a_widely_believed_history_myth_no_true_damascus/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hef19898</author><text>I think one has to seperate the steel alloy, which covered, and the forging techniques used. The former ran out, at which point steel quality decreased. Lets call that steel from Damascus.&lt;p&gt;And there is what is now commonly called Damast steel, basically folded and twisted steel of dofferent properties. That technique is as old as blacksmithing because it was, more or less, the only way to get rid of impurities. The Japanese developed this technique to the extreme by not just getting rid of impurities but by gettind &lt;i&gt;specific&lt;/i&gt; steel properties to defined parts of a blade.&lt;p&gt;European sword smiths stopped doing that, first European steel became better and more homogenous and didn&amp;#x27;t require anywhere near as much imourity removal. Secondly, spring steel is pretty sturdy monosteel, so need need to get specific steel in specific parts of a blade. And lastky, European bladed weapons from the Napoleonic era onwards were industrially mass produced (as compared to the manufacture mass production from earlier periods). And mass production means cost reductions, that didn&amp;#x27;t start with MBAs. Sonce those weapons were good enough to kill people by stabbing, cutting and slashing them Damast steel wasn&amp;#x27;t needed. The obvious exception are expensive master pieces forged individually. And the better quality &amp;quot;industrial&amp;quot; ones.&lt;p&gt;Damast steel has renessaonce at the moment, mainly because it looks great. And it is a way for knife makers to upsell, otherwise not a singpe one of them could compete on price.&lt;p&gt;The Japanese way of blade making has the benefit of having properties of the alloy at, e.g., the blade (hard and sharp) and the core and back of a blade (softer and stronger). Damast steels properties are all over the place, meaning it has no real value, IMHO, regarding a blades capabilities when it c;mes to cutting. Those blades so, as the Japanese ones, are falling into the region of art so, and there the optical properties matter a lot. And there Damast is just beautiful.&lt;p&gt;From experience so, Damast steel bars are hard to get rigjt, I&amp;#x27;ll go out on a limb and say Japanese bar steel is easier (if you forgo the tradidional Tamahagane way that is). Finishing the blade is easier woth Damast so, a proper Japanese blade requires so much delicate heat treatment and polishing to get right, it is borderline rediculous.</text></item><item><author>throwaway81523</author><text>This article doesn&amp;#x27;t address the 1998 discovery that the &amp;quot;lost&amp;quot; art was the presence of vanadium in the ores that real damascus blades were made from.  The vanadium gave the steel its strength from the 13th to 17th centuries or something like that.  It was present in iron ore mined in a particular region, and those mines eventually ran out, after which the &amp;quot;recipes&amp;quot; for damascus steel weren&amp;#x27;t lost, they simply stopped working and no one knew why.  They had no way to tell the difference between iron ore from one place and ore from another.&lt;p&gt;This is explained in the 1998 Verhoeven, Pendray, and Dauksch (VPD) article]1] that the reddit post cites without touching on this crucial aspect.  Or anyway, I thought that VPD&amp;#x27;s explanation was now generally accepted.  This isn&amp;#x27;t anywhere near my field though.&lt;p&gt;[1] Verhoeven, John D. et al. “The key role of impurities in ancient damascus steel blades.” JOM 50 (1998): 58-64.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>robinsoh</author><text>&amp;gt; Lets call that steel from Damascus.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s confusing to me, what exactly was from Damascus, the steel or the forging technique? Reading the article OP cited says: &amp;quot;This suggests the possibility that the low levels of vanadium found in the genuine wootz blades of Table III may have resulted from ore deposits in India where the wootz steels were produced. &amp;quot;</text></comment>