Damascus steel knife Fiche ARTCADEMY - Arts & Traditional Crafts Academy

Damascus steel knife | Metal and ironwork

Keywords: blacksmith, damascus steel, handle, knife, mosaic

Title: Damascus steel knife
Category: Metal and ironwork
Country: Czech republic
Period: XX Century
Provided by: Comenius
Source: http://www.kovarstvicurda.cz
Photo Gallery: https://kovarstvicurda.cz/nabidka-nozu/

Description:

Damascus steel knives occupy an exceptional position among the knives. The knife blade is formed by knocking at least two different types of steel. This ensures its nice drawing and that the knife is hard and not fragile at the same time. The right temperature is especially important for the steel smelting. Thus, up to 400 layers are formed by gradual cutting, folding and forging welding. The final shape is cooled in ash and subsequently quenched. Then the blade is grounded, sanded and polished on the felt. Finally, the polished surface of the material is etched to show a mosaic with a fine and regular structure. The handle is grinded to fit the hand well. The handle could be from mammoth tusks, fossil bones, antlers or exotic woods. Finally, the knife is sharpened, and the smith tries its sharpness.

When forging damascus steel, the blacksmith does not know until the last moment how the resulting product will look like and this is interesting on his work.

Further references:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Damascus_steel