What is better damascus or damask. Damascus steel. Damascus steel knife care

This article does not pretend to be complete coverage of all (especially purely professional) issues, compiled from the sources, links to which you will find at the end of the article, is of a popularizing, informative nature and is intended for "dummies" who want to expand their horizons and somehow figure it out in some questions of interest.

Damascus and damask - how are they different?

The blades of modern knives are made from a wide variety of materials. First of all, these are various types of steel. All used steels are divided into two large groups - traditional carbon and corrosion-resistant. Classic stainless steels are of little use for making knives, since the cutting edge of such blades does not have sufficient durability. With proper heat treatment, carbon steel has excellent performance properties - high mechanical strength, keeps the sharpness of the cutting edge well, and sharpens well. There is only one drawback - the tendency to corrosion, but it can be easily eliminated by elementary care or with the help of special coatings.

There are very few specialized materials for knives. Patterned steels - Damascus and Damask steel - are one of them. There are many opinions among consumers about Damascus and Damask steel. Someone claims that their recipe is lost. Others have heard little about it at all, and ask non-professional questions: "How is this drawn?", Or "Why is the blade not polished?" Of course, in fairness, it should be noted that from year to year there are fewer and fewer ignorant people. As soon as a person works with a knife made of high-quality damascus or damask steel, he will never acquire a knife from any other steel!

Damascus is it a metal made up of two or three different types steels with different carbon content, joined by multiple forging.

The secret of good Damascus steel lies precisely in the correct selection and proportions of the various metals. Required condition- what solid steels take more than soft. The number of types of steel, the number of layers, the forging technique give the blade a specific pattern. Well-made Damascus has good mechanical properties, excellent cutting properties and attractive appearance. It should be noted that a blade made of Damascus does not possess the property of self-sharpening, as it is often believed, it is still necessary to sharpen it. In addition, it must be remembered that laminated steel is less frost-resistant, and Damascus, like ordinary carbon steel, is prone to corrosion, which is more dangerous due to the heterogeneity of the material. Now there are so-called stainless damasks, including those made industrially, for example, "Damastil" produced in Sweden. The blade made of this material has high hardness and good mechanical properties.

Bulat it is a cast metal that is a composite material of mild steel with fragments of high carbon steel or even cast iron.

Hence the unique combination of toughness, elasticity of the blade, its high hardness and excellent cutting properties. Damask saber blades, the flexibility of which made it possible to wear them instead of a belt - not fiction, but reality. They easily bend at an angle of 900-1200 without breaking. Outwardly damask knives are inconspicuous, have a blade with a grayish tint. However, damask blades are very rare and extremely expensive, so they still remain the lot of connoisseurs and connoisseurs.

Patterned steels are distinguished by their increased strength, excellent cutting properties and beauty. As a result of the process of their manufacture, a unique pattern appears, as inimitable as fingerprints.

How many layers of metal should a Damascus steel blade contain?

The number of layers in patterned steel directly affects both the beauty and clarity of the pattern and the working qualities of the blade. The optimal average interval, taking into account the ratio of price and quality, is 300-500 layers. It is not so much the number of layers that matters as the quality of the metal. Damascus can be forged in 600 layers of nails, and it will be worse than Damascus, which has 200 layers of good metal. In addition, when forging, above 400 layers, it is required to change manufacturing process(it is necessary to additionally saturate the metal with carbon, because carbon burns out during heating), which significantly increases the cost of the workpiece and, accordingly, the knife. In addition, you need to be aware that the exceptional mechanical properties of Damascus steel do not depend on the layers, but on the quality of forging and the art of the blacksmith. It can be noted that even a specialist cannot visually determine the number of layers.

How to distinguish quality Damascus?

Sometimes we hear that a purchased knife made of Damascus steel quickly became dull. The answer is simple. Either the person bought "Damascus" (that is, stainless steel etched in a special way, artificially imitating the pattern of Damascus), or he bought Damascus, welded from soft metals. Such metal is much easier and faster to weld. It is almost impossible to visually distinguish it from high-quality Damascus. A knife made of soft Damascus (no matter how beautiful its drawing is!), Cuts worse than any knife made of stainless steel. But with limited contact with bones (when cutting an animal), as well as with small chopping blows, such a combination of hardness and elasticity is quite enough. Good blade steel should not only be tough, but also resilient.

Damascus steel blades have been tested by hunters in various parts of the country. Such knives by consumers in 99% - a positive assessment of the work of the knife is given; 1% - are people who use a knife for other purposes, for example, when they try to cut nails, steel rods with a knife, throw at a tree, etc. Although chopping nails is not that much a big problem! A knife made of any steel with a hardness of 50 units. HRC will cut the nail on the working part. It is only necessary to change it a little structurally: the thickness of the blade in the cutting part should be at least 1 mm (better is thicker), and the sharpening angle is at least 45 degrees (better is more). Order such a knife and you can chop all the nails you want! Remember that the hardness of the nail is much lower than the hardness of a knife (even from mediocre steel), it's all about the design of the blade. There are knives that cut paper, then cut through the nail (hitting the butt with a hammer) and then the knife can cut the paper again (albeit a little worse). In general, if there is a desire to check the quality of the blade on the nail, it is not necessary to cut it. It is enough to shave the nail or make small notches on it. Any knife made of good Damascus steel can withstand this operation without any problems (but not knives with very thin working part from 0.1 mm and thinner). And yet, such experiments with knives are not recommended. Of course, if in an extreme situation there is a need to use a knife for cutting nails, rope or thick wire - that's another matter. You don't need to do this unless you need it. There are other tools for this (for example: chisels, metal nippers), which are much cheaper than a good knife. With such constant experiments, especially if the cut objects turn out to be hot, the knife will still break.

According to the reviews of various hunters, with a knife made of Damascus steel, two moose in a row were stripped and butchered without additional sharpening; five small boars; large cleft; several beavers, processed several tens of kilograms of fish (after that the knife continued to cut!). If you look under magnification at the cutting edge of a Damascus knife after cutting a moose, you can see a micro-saw. It turned out due to the fact that the layers of soft steels were slightly crumpled, while the hard ones remained sharp due to the additionally acquired toughness during the forging process. Therefore, if you look at the cutting edge of the knife after prolonged work, the blade shines in places and it seems that the knife is dull. But when you start cutting, it turns out that the knife cuts no worse than a new one! Even when damascus knife completely dull, it is enough to carefully correct it with a sharpening stone to restore cutting properties. This is where the effect of straightening the soft parts of the cutting edge is triggered.

Why such a price for knives made of Damascus and damask steel?

The cost of damask blades is influenced by many factors: the exclusivity and uniqueness of each product, the complexity technological production of each knife, the quality of the materials. Recently, there has been a tendency for prices to fall in the category of a simple working knife due to the appearance of a huge amount of low-grade Damascus. Therefore, one can observe such different prices for knives made of Damascus steel even from the same company (for example, one Damascus knife costs 3000 rubles, and the other 300 $). However, high quality Damascus is a material that has invested a lot of work and craftsmanship and cannot be cheap. Butt Damascus is often used on expensive knives. This adds beauty to the product (due to the beautifully selected three or four designs). In addition, this allows you to combine materials of different hardness in one blade. So, a very hard damascus with a large amount of hard metal, soft damascus is used on the butt of the blade (the same one from which the weapon barrels were made). By combining these damasks, the strength of the knife is increased. The cutting properties of such a blade (albeit not much) increase.

All Damascus currently being produced can be roughly divided into three categories: the so-called black, white and black and white Damascus. The cheapest is black Damascus. It is welded from mild carbon steel. Technologically, it is made lighter than white and black and white damasks. In addition, having high mechanical properties, it has a very low resistance to corrosion, quickly rusts and requires special care. White and black and white damascus are slightly more expensive than black damascus. This is due to the complex technology of making blades. Such blades have corrosion resistance and high mechanical properties. In addition, black and white damascus (which is a composite of carbon and stainless steel) has excellent decorative qualities, which gives a unique look to the knife.

Cast damask in manufacture is somewhat more expensive than Damascus. It has excellent cutting properties and good strength characteristics, but it is quite expensive, and the range of knives made from it is not so great. Damascus is slightly inferior to damask steel in terms of a set of properties, but surpasses the latter in decorativeness and is cheaper relative to it.

From a consumer point of view, good damascus and good damask are one and the same thing. The same hardness, the same micro-saw effect, is also easily sharpened ... Bad damascus and bad damask - the same are identical: neither one nor the other will cut!

How to care for a Damascus steel knife?

In terms of cutting properties, high-quality Damascus steel surpasses steel of other brands several times. Its only drawback, due to the fact that Damascus contains carbon steels, is that the blade corrodes and can rust. Therefore, it needs constant care, then the knife will remain in working condition for a long time. To prevent corrosion of the blade and metal elements of the handle, it is strongly recommended that the knife be cleaned, wiped, greased with neutral oil or grease after work, and stored in a dry place. To avoid damage to the pattern on patterned steels, it is not recommended to expose the knife to acid solutions, including organic ones! If suddenly rusty spots appear on the steel, they need to be removed with very fine sandpaper with oil or, better, kerosene. All the hassle of taking care of the blade is compensated by excellent cutting properties (which cannot be compared with any stainless steel: both domestic and imported). Chopping large and hard bones with a knife, opening canned food, chopping metal objects, bending the blade to large angles, using a knife as a pry bar, screwdriver, hammer, chisel is not recommended. This can lead to loss of sharpness and damage to the blade or handle. Also, these knives are not designed for throwing.

(the article was prepared based on materials from sites:

Damascus steel (or simply Damascus) is one of the most controversial steels for which we were preparing a review. On the one hand, there are a very small number of people who have never heard of her, on the other hand, very few people know well what she is.

The hallmark of this steel grade is the pattern on the surface, which is achieved due to the uneven distribution of carbon due to the heterogeneity of the material, which is specially emphasized by etching the surface with acids to give the blade a beautiful texture.

Perhaps this all sounds not completely clear, but in this article we will mostly consider the characteristics and pros and cons of Damascus blades, and not the production technology. For those who are interested in the process, we recommend reading it.

Damascus steel chemical composition

Usually in this section I place a table with the percentage of chemical elements in steel. But in this case it is quite problematic to do it.

We make blades from a package of four steels: ShKh-15 (structural carbon steel), KHVG (steel for measuring and cutting tools), U8A (tool carbon steel) and steel-3 (the name is conditional, but will not want to fully disclose the secrets of its products) no master.



In the photo (from left to right): set and welding of a package of steels, twisting of a loose package, forging a package of steels with a hammer.

Looking at the photos, it is easy to understand how the package is recruited. Blacksmith observes technological process, but it will not be possible to measure "in grams" how much of what steel went into the workpiece. So when asked about chemical composition Damascus steel cannot be answered unequivocally - it may differ slightly from batch to batch. Of course, you can carry out radiocarbon analysis of steel, but it is very expensive.

Damascus steel characteristics

If you have already visited various knife sites, then you are perfectly familiar with such a parameter as HRC, if not, then I will make a small explanation of HRC - this is the hardness on the Rockwell scale, the higher it is, the stronger the steel, and the knife keeps sharpening longer, fluctuate given characteristic maybe from 40 with a little for the Chinese stamping to 65-70 for the Japanese samurai katana.

For knives made of Damascus steel, HRC ranges from 61 to 64 units. Our products are manufactured with HRC 62. Drawing a parallel with other steels is very problematic due to the fact that Damascus itself is not steel, but a package of steels. Damask steel is the closest in appearance and characteristics, but it has HRC = 64 and the price is slightly higher.

Damascus steel pros and cons:

Like any other steel, Damascus has positive and negative sides, let's take a closer look at them.

Pros:

  • A beautiful pattern on the blade. It is simply impossible not to add this item first to the list. Although the drawing does not affect the cutting properties, but how beautiful it looks.
  • The strength of 62 units speaks for itself, the knife will cope with work in a camping camp and cutting wood and bone without any problems.

Of course, we will not bypass the minuses either, they are present in all steels.

Minuses:

  • Low corrosion resistance. This is a payment for the fact that the blade contains a large amount of carbon, and alloying elements are almost completely absent from the steel composition.
  • The rather complicated manufacturing process of welded damascus cannot but affect the final price of the product.
  • Requires careful attitude and care after every hunting, fishing or hiking trip.

Outcomes:

  • By outward appearance Damascus blades are one of the most beautiful - ideal as a gift.
  • Needs significant maintenance after use, not intended for chopping and throwing.
  • A good option"Ceremonial" knife, but not the best option for a large volume of heavy work.

Researchers have somehow calculated that over the past five thousand years, mankind has lived without war only 224 years... Yes, there is nothing to say, representatives of the species Homo sapiens love to sort things out on the battlefield. And as long as there is war in its modern sense, there is as much technology for making weapons of murder.

It becomes sad when you realize that the most breakthrough technologies were created mainly in the military sphere. But, nevertheless, this fact in no way diminishes the human genius, whose curiosity and inquiring mind throughout history made truly amazing discoveries.

Damascus steel

Damascus steel became known in the second millennium BC in the region Forward Asia, which includes the Arabian Peninsula, Persia, Mesopotamia and the peninsula of Asia Minor. For many years the secret of obtaining such steels was passed on orally from master to apprentice. Nevertheless, after 500 years, it penetrated into Europe, and already in the 3rd century AD it became known in Ancient Rome.

The very name "Damascus" is incorrect and, apparently, was due to the large market of cold steel, which was located in this city, and possibly thanks to the first swords of Damascus steel found by archaeologists in it.

Strictly speaking, there are two types of Damascus steel: refined and welded... The difference between the two is the way they are obtained.

With the refined method, a single piece of steel is subjected to multiple reforging, while getting rid of various impurities in the workpiece, which can deteriorate the quality of the product. Until the 18th century, this method of producing Damascus was predominant, but later the forge welding method became widespread.

In this method, forge welding is used, when individual sheets are tightly fitted to each other, heated and forged. Metal sheets, without roughness and free of oxide film, adhere so tightly to each other that interatomic forces come into play, electrons begin to travel between the layers and the blank of the sheets begins to be a single piece of metal. After that, the received "layered cake" it is cut in half and folded again and the operation is repeated again. The total number of layers can reach several thousand, but the most optimal number is several hundred.

The manufacturing process requires adherence to certain conditions... The metal layers in the workpiece alternate with each other, a layer of iron is superimposed on the high-carbon steel sheet, then steel again, and so on. This is done in order to obtain certain characteristics: if high-strength steel gives the alloy elasticity and sharpness, then softer iron reduces its brittleness.

During the early Middle Ages, a method called haralug... With this method, the sheets folded together were twisted, after which they were forged and joined into a single bar. Even in the Russian chronicle "The Tale of Bygone Years" there is a mention of halaruzhny swords.

A side effect of obtaining Damascus steels is a characteristic pattern, which is due to the different carbon content in its constituent metals.

Damask steel

The first documented information about the appearance of damask steel dates back to the time of the conquests of Alexander the Great. The king's fearless soldiers were amazed at the incredible properties of swords Hindu Kshatriya warriors: they cut through their armor like paper and did not have tremendous hardness. Indeed, ancient India is considered the birthplace of damask steel, whose blacksmiths achieved tremendous success in metallurgy.

Over time, damask steel began to spread throughout the Middle East, penetrating into Persia and Arab countries. At the turn of the millennium, the secret of making damask swords was lost and rediscovered already in the 19th century by the Russian metallurgist Pavel Petrovich Anosov in 1837 in the Ural city of Zlatoust.

Bulat is an alloy of iron with carbon. Slow cooling left undissolved residues - compounds of iron with carbon, called cementite. It was they who gave the patterned pattern on the blades, which became a distinctive feature of damask steel.

General characteristics

Both types of steel can be recognized by the pattern that became their peculiar « business card» and also thanks to the legends that surround them. The complexity and high manufacturability of manufacturing have created a kind of aura of perfect weapons for them.

They have excellent sharpness and hardness, while maintaining their elasticity.

Comparison and how they differ

Although in modern literature an equal sign is put between Damascus and Damascus, this is fundamentally wrong. The first is a "puff cake" in which layers of high-carbon steel are interspersed with layers of soft iron. Due to the absence of alloying additives in it, Damascus steel is very susceptible to corrosion, so it needs special care, and long-term storage of the blade in a sheath is undesirable.

Bulat is an alloy of carbon with iron, obtained during casting, but with special requirements for its manufacture. Its forging is carried out with a light hammer, since strong blows can damage its structure, which has not yet been completely formed. It acquires its hardness only after slow cooling, when iron gradually envelops the undissolved particles of cementite. The process is laborious and time consuming, which caused its high cost in ancient times.

Areas of use

The handicraft method of producing these steels has long ceased to meet the challenges of modern industry. For many purposes, be it a rocket nozzle or a nuclear power plant reactor, materials are needed with completely different properties.

Bulat and Damascus are currently used mainly for the manufacture of collectible edged weapons and elite kitchen knives... In ancient times, they were also used to make military armor.

The presence of a pattern.

This is not a defining difference now. First, patterned steel appeared at the same time as Damascus. This is a fake and it was made, like all fakes, for the sake of money. Even many "Damascus" blades in museums after research turned out to be just an imitation. Already at the time of P.P. Anosov produced patterned steel throughout Europe, especially for rifle barrels, and he noticed that “... the skill European masters aimed more at the formation of patterns than at improving the properties of the metal. " History always repeats itself - the pattern craze has begun again. In genuine cast damask damask, the pattern is a derivative of its fighting qualities. The pattern cannot be planned. Until the end of the process, no one knew what level the damask steel would be and, accordingly, the pattern. Therefore, looking at the pattern, it was possible to determine what the damask is without subjecting it to tests. Quote: “If damask is properly etched, then samples are superfluous; without them one can see: viscous or brittle, hard or soft, elastic or weak ... metal ”PP. Anosov. In welded damascus-damask, there is no connection between patterns and quality. S. Danilov was right when he said that "any pattern does not speak of any properties, but only of the skill of a blacksmith." A. Maryanenko is also right when he says that "all the dignity of Damascus is in its pattern." All this has been said about patterned steel, and we value genuine Damascus not only for this.
Secondly, some types of damask steel may not have a pattern.

Increased cutting properties.

If we take two blades, one made of genuine damask steel, the other made of tool steel, then a blade made of damask steel will cut a line twice as long. Not 100 (one hundred), but only twice. The figure is not particularly impressive, but people familiar with the technique know that to double the result, you need to put in 10-100 times more effort. For example, a motorcycle with an engine of 12-15 hp reaches a speed of 100 km / h, and to reach a speed of 200 km / h, an engine 10-20 times more powerful is required, plus a different chassis and other aerodynamics, etc. The same is with damask steel, so that it cuts only twice as well and dulls twice as slowly, you need to make much more effort and do everything carefully than with ordinary tool steel.

Cold hardness.

This property is defining. A hardened damask blade can be put on an anvil and forged cold - it will not crack. Damask steel is very weakly hardened: either in air or in boiling fat, i.e. about the same as a scythe. Damask blade can be bent 90? And straightened when cold.
The best blades straighten themselves almost to their previous position in a few days. Damask blade cannot be broken, only bent. Quote "A good damask blade jumps out with ordinary bending and retains its former appearance ..., and when reinforced, for example, stepping on the end of the blade with your foot and bending it at a right angle, it will not break, but bend, and when straightened, it will not lose its former elasticity." It is interesting that knowing this statement by P.P. Anosova, those blacksmiths who make damask from cast iron, say: "Anosov made soft damask, and we make hard." Alas, P.P. Anosov in this case speaks of genuine damask made in Persia and Syria. At his disposal for research were the richest collections of Damascus from the governor of Orenburg B, A, Perovsky, the collection of bulats of the Tsarskoye Selo arsenal, the collection of Tsarevich Alexander, the collection of Prince Mikhail, Prince P.D. Saltykov and the collection of the chief of staff of the corps of mining engineers K.V. Chevkin. Since we cannot touch this, we will take the word of Mr. P.P. Anosov that damask steel should bend and forge cold. Bulat Damascus does not have great hardness - this follows from its heterogeneous structure. Indeed, in the structure of damask steel threads, crystals, flakes of soft iron are mixed with cementite crystals and dendrites of high-carbon steel. If you measure the hardness of such a mixture, then the diamond tip of the measuring device in different areas will show different hardness, but mostly not high, because the size of the particles is commensurate with the rounding diameter of the diamond tip of the measuring device, and this tip will slide from a hard crystal to a soft one. On this occasion, P.P. Anosov and said that "hardness is relative." "Damascus steel was hard enough to keep it sharp." If you are offered damask steel with a hardness of 80 units. HRC, it is a tungsten carbide sputtered tool steel.
Bulat-Damascus is easier to distinguish by the method of production than by the pattern, because There are not very many ways, but there are an infinite number of drawings. You can weld a damascus blank in 1000 layers and weighing 10 kg, then cutting off a portion of 200 g from it to make a knife with one pattern, the next with another; but since the basis is still the same, the quality of the product changes slightly or does not change at all.

As a rule, in English-speaking countries, these types of steel are called the same - Damascus steel. In Russia, experts are divided into two camps. However, the differences between Damascus steel and Damask steel are so obvious that they can be found without difficulty. One question remains: which is better - Damascus steel or Russian damask steel?

Features of Damascus

Damascus is produced by multiple forging and consists of several types of steel. The condition for creating good Damascus is that there should be more hard steel in the "package" than soft steel. The beautiful pattern that adorns Damascus steel is obtained precisely due to the large number of layers. But there is a rule: if there are many layers in Damascus, its excellent qualities are better expressed, but the drawing is almost invisible. If there are few layers, the blade shimmers with beautiful patterns, but its advantages over other knives are practically lost.

Damascus blade has great strength and keeps sharpening for a very long time. Sometimes you can find the statement that Damascus sharpens itself - this process is really present to some extent, due to the fact that the soft part of the blade is erased faster than the hard part - this is how a micro-file is formed. But you still need to sharpen a knife, although not often. It is also generally accepted that Damascus is rusting steel, and this is indeed the case. At the same time, if you really need a blade that does not lend itself to corrosion, you can find a special stainless damascus, or even easier - take care of the damascus, avoiding long-term serious contact with moisture.

Russian bulat

Bulat in Russia is a history of experiments and discoveries. Everyone who is interested in history knows about the research of the metallurgist Anosov, who found a way to create real damask steel. And today there are masters who are trying to repeat the discovery of Anosov. A hunting knife made of damask steel is a reliable companion and help in any difficult situation that may arise during a hike.

Damask steel is obtained by casting - it is mild steel, but with high concentration carbon on the surface. And carbon is responsible for the hardness of steel and, later on, of the blade of a hunting knife. The blade is durable and cuts well, has good toughness, therefore, it can withstand serious loads on the knife. Of course, carbon steel is susceptible to corrosion, but for this, the craftsmen create exactly stainless damask steel thanks to alloyed steel grades. Those. less corrosive steel compared to Damascus. And if you need complete resistance to rust, look for completely stainless steel Russian damask.

Summary

Damascus and damask are both worthy materials for creating a hunting knife. From them blades are created, which are suitable both for butchering a carcass, and in order to help the hunter cope with other tasks. Therefore, take into account the individual characteristics of the hunter and then you can definitely choose which blade he needs - Damascus or Damascus. And he will be satisfied for sure, therefore

 

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