Is Stainless "Damascus" the Real Thing?

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The Mighty Ginsu

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There is at least one bladesmith who claims to make stainless Damascus knives. Are these considered real Damascus or just a modern imitation intended to recreate the look of Damascus?
 
The Mighty Ginsu said:
There is at least one bladesmith who claims to make stainless Damascus knives.
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Just one?
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It depends what you mean by "real Damascus" of course. From a historical standpoint, Damascus steel refers to forged Wootz steel from the Middle East and Southeast Asia hundreds of years ago. The technique for producing this steel was lost, so you could argue no modern steel is "real Damascus." More commonly it refers to any pattern welded steel, because the historical steel showed banded patterns. So there is no issue with calling stainless pattern welded steel Damascus.
 
The original damascus is more like wootz steel, which is very uncommon now and looks different from what most people think of when they hear damascus. The term damascus now usually refers to pattern welded steel, which can have a core made from a variety of modern steel formulations with cladding made from alternating steels. There are a lot of these that use VG-10 as the core (or the Chinese analog 10Cr15CoMoV) with layers made from even more stainless (but less suitable for edges) steels. So yes, these would be accepted as real stainless damascus. Since damascus can refer to a variety of things, the only really fake damascus is when it's not pattern welded but has a similar texture etched on.
 
Shun says their knives have "up to" 69 layers including some kind of hard, brittle, fragile core for the edge.

The bit about being brittle and fragile is from me, not their ad copy. I made the mistake of buying some Shuns. Unbelievably stupid, impractical knives.
 
The Mighty Ginsu said:
Shun says their knives have "up to" 69 layers including some kind of hard, brittle, fragile core for the edge.

The bit about being brittle and fragile is from me, not their ad copy. I made the mistake of buying some Shuns. Unbelievably stupid, impractical knives.
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Have you heard the saying "a bad workman blames his tools"?

I think you'll find many, many people who love their Shun's. I personally think they are a bit over-priced but for the most part I don't doubt their quality, although I haven't owned any.
 
Shun kitchen knives are quite good. Japanese knives tend to emphasize high hardness and edge keeping with good technique, with German chef's knives emphasizing toughness with regular touch-up on the sharpening steel, in my opinion.
 
Tsujigiri said:
The original damascus is more like wootz steel, which is very uncommon now and looks different from what most people think of when they hear damascus. The term damascus now usually refers to pattern welded steel, which can have a core made from a variety of modern steel formulations with cladding made from alternating steels. There are a lot of these that use VG-10 as the core (or the Chinese analog 10Cr15CoMoV) with layers made from even more stainless (but less suitable for edges) steels. So yes, these would be accepted as real stainless damascus. Since damascus can refer to a variety of things, the only really fake damascus is when it's not pattern welded but has a similar texture etched on.
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That fully and correctly answers the question. Subsequent posts are drifting off topic.
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