Core Damascus blade

The core is XHP. If you go to Chad's site, you can read about it there.
 
It's San Mai construction. The core steel varies, he has used several, but I believe CTS-XHP is the current one. The core steel is sandwiched between two billets of his stainless damascus.
 
I have used his core damascus a few times. One was the xhp core and one had cts204p. The other one i have seen is his armor core, which uses grade 38 (i believe) titanium alloy.
 
So what exactly is armor core Damascus by Nichols? I have a knife with an armor core blade but I don't think it has any titanium involved with it. Also have an XHP core blade and they seem very similar but have not sharpened either.

EDIT- I sent the question over to Nichols Damascus.
 
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I think you may be right. I remember a thread about the armored core and it came out it was Aermet 340 or a similar alloy, not the ballistic armor I thought it was.
 
I got this reply back directly from Chad Nichols this morning.


"It is Damascus with the center core made out of a plate armor core. The armor is a high nickel cobalt iron alloy.
Thanks
Chad
Sent from my annoying time consuming computer phone device thingy!"

And just for fun here is my Jason Clark tanto flipper with Nichols armor core Damascus.
adifZyK.jpg
 
The core is Carpenter's Aermet340. This steel can be harden to 53HRC maximum. I always curious why Chad pick this steel as core on his damascus core laminated...
 
007Airman said:
Well then technically not sanmai?
Click to expand...

?

San mai is softer tougher steel layers bonded to a harder center layer, which is exactly what is being discussed here, no (the damascus being the lower hardness tougher layers, the XHP or whatever in the middle the harder layer)? The wikipedia page for san mai says it means "three flat things" and talks about having a sandwich of tough/hard/tough steels as the three flat things.
 
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