Maybe you've never seen a real Damascus knife, probably seen it at a friend's house or on other occasions, but never really owned it. For most people, the Damascus knife feels both familiar and unfamiliar. It has such a wide reputation that even if you never consider collecting knives, it is inevitable that you will be exposed to knowledge about Damascus knives from various sources. Unfortunately, most of the so-called "knowledge" of Damascus knives on the Internet comes from non-professionals, full of imprecise assumptions and speculations. The three things I'm going to say below may refresh your understanding of damascus knives.
Craftsman workshop folding and forging Damascus knife - heartless
Damascus does not produce Damascus knives
If you ask a Gansu person: Brother, which ramen in Lanzhou is delicious?
He will tell you unceremoniously: there is no Lanzhou ramen in Lanzhou. There is no restaurant called "Lanzhou Ramen" in the whole of Lanzhou, we only have beef noodles there.
The situation of Damascus knife is somewhat similar to Lanzhou ramen. For hundreds of years, the Syrian capital, Damascus, has been saddled with the title of "origin of Damascus knives". But whether it is today or the distant era of cold weapons, there has never been a noisy scene of workshops lining up to create Damascus pattern steel knives in Damascus. This patterned, sharp sword probably originated in northern India and the western regions of ancient China, not too far from damascus. Damascus was an important trading hub on the Silk Roads in ancient times, connecting China and Europe at the eastern and western ends. Patterned steel swords forged in the Western Regions were first trafficked to Damascus, where they were then sold to Europe and China. So much so that Europeans mistakenly believed that Damascus City was the origin of this knife, so they named it Damascus Knife.
Craftsman workshop folding and forging Damascus knife - big boi
From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century AD, the Mongol Empire, after three western expeditions, incorporated a large area of Central and Western Asia into the empire and established the Golden Horde. The city of Damascus also fell during the war. Mongolia implemented an extremely strict control policy on the manufacture of weapons, strictly prohibiting the private manufacture of weapons in Central and Western Asia, which was once rich in Damascus knives, and abducting a large number of "colored craftsmen" who were good at this craft to the "belly area" of the ruling center of the Yuan Dynasty (Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, and Inner Mongolia, centered on the Yuan Dynasty, directly under the jurisdiction of zhongshu province of the Yuan Dynasty), organized as craftsmen, and managed by the Iron Bureau. Therefore, Europeans believe that the Damascus knife was mysteriously lost around the sixteenth century, and speculate that the reason for the loss may be the exhaustion of the ore of Uzi steel. Of course, these speculations are not based on facts. The fact is that until the end of the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China period, there were still some craftsmen in Beijing, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong and other places who made a living by forging the sword of the Iron Folding Steel (known as Damascus Steel in the West), and they were the color craftsmen of the Yuan Dynasty Iron Bureau.
Craftsman workshop folding forging Damascus knife - Toad Palace folding laurel
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the pickaxe iron folding steel process, which was once popular in northern China, was also lost. In 1988, the Chinese Academy of Sciences set up a "pattern steel simulation test group" to try to restore the pattern steel forging process. In 2001, Daniel Zhang, a descendant of the craftsman and secretary general of the Baoding Shanggu Cold Weapons Research Association, successfully forged the iron pattern steel by folding and forging. In 2015, Daniel Zhang founded a craftsman workshop to promote the ancient forged iron Damascus knife.
Craftsman workshop folding and forging Damascus knife - Nordic style
Cast type, forged type, which is true?
Someone might tell you: real Damascus knives are forged!
People who hold this view, you can't say they don't know the Damascus knife at all. However, it is not comprehensive enough to understand, which is a half-understanding.
Damascus knives do have a distinction between casting and forging in the history of ordnance. Around the 4th century AD, a type of Uzi steel with high hardness crystals inside became popular in India and Central Asia. Forging this steel directly into the shape of a sword (without complex folding forging) can have a high degree of hardness and toughness, which is the early cast Damascus knife.
Folding forging is a forging process invented by ancient people in order to improve the quality of swords. Steel with extremely high hardness but lack of toughness is stacked with steel with low hardness (wrought iron), and then repeatedly folded and twisted after heating, so as to create a composite steel with good hardness and toughness. The folding forging process appeared in the late Bronze Age and was a superb alloy forging process. The only drawback of this process is that it is extremely labor-intensive and the yield is very low. This is the reason why it often takes several years or even more than ten years for a sword casting master to create a unique sword or sword in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.
Craftsman workshop folding and forging Damascus knife - leopard
Some historical sources prove that at the same time as the popularity of cast Damascus knives, forged Damascus knives that used Uzi steel as a raw material for folding and forging also existed. However, the forged Damascus knife is more expensive, and the number is much smaller than that of the cast type. These two ancient Damascus knives can be directly distinguished by the pattern. The Damascus knife, made directly from Uzi steel, presents a "brilliant starry" star pattern. The forged Damascus knife made of Uzi steel as a raw material folding and forging presents a ladder-like "ladder pattern".
Craftsman workshop folding and forging Damascus knife - youth forty
The real advantage of the Damascus knife is not hard, but soft
Many people's impression of the Damascus knife, in addition to the beautiful pattern, is its incredibly high hardness and sharpness. However, whether in the early Iron Age or in modern times, it was not very difficult to create simple high-hardness steel. The real difficulty is that the higher the hardness of steel (the hardness is proportional to the carbon content of steel), the more brittle the texture becomes, lacks toughness, and will break when it touches the enemy's weapon. If you want to improve the hardness while improving the toughness, it is contrary to the physical laws of steel, so you can only think of ways from the internal structure of the material. So the ancients invented the folding forging process, which stacked the steel with the lower hardness and the heating and forging into one, thus creating a high-quality sword that was both rigid and soft. Only when the hardness and toughness of a knife are good, it is possible to open a very sharp blade without worrying about collapsing or curling during use.
The hardness of the Damascus knife forged by the ancient method of the craftsman's workshop is between 60-62, which allows the sword to have a good performance in cutting and chopping. The folded and forged body, while maintaining hardness while also having toughness, performs far better in various violent tests than ordinary knives with simple high hardness.