My Son's Work in Progress
This morning I shaved with my son, Ben’s, first forged Damascus 6/8 razor. He made the billet from welded layers of 1084 high carbon and 15N20 nickel steel. He then folded it and refolded it. He calls the pattern “swirling seas”. I call it a good first effort! The scales are made from Bhilwara Heartwood. It contains a wooden wedge, and thus is only pinned at the pivot point. I set the bevel on a Chosera 1k and then took it through 12k and finished on the 9 Ball Slate with a touch of Smith’s Honing Oil. Then through the pasted 4 sided Constroption with a finish on my newly acquired Roo-skin bench strop. The shave was buttery smooth, but it's longevity is what's in question.
According to, Ben, who's his own worst critic, the problem with most open-edged pattern welded damascus, and with this particular razor, has to do with forge welds screwing up the edge. He hasn't licked the problem like Vic Creazzi has. Vic's razors have a separate piece of forge-welded monosteel (1095) in Vic's case, that serves as an uncontaminated edge. Of course, there's always the easy way out, buying Damasteel billets and just doing stock removal, but actually forging pattern-welded Damascus using a SanMai technique like Vic and like Ben attempted with the razor I shaved with this morning, and having a pure monosteel edge is not a trivial forging technique. Vic with his 30+ yrs of forging experience is, of course, a master, but many others presenting pattern-welded Damascus blades have the edge contamination issue, something that generally isn't shared with customers. The fact that it doesn't hold a consistent edge along the blade is just shrugged off. Now melted or crucible Damascus (i.e. Wootz) steel doesn't suffer from this issue, but it is a real issue for others.
The fact is that Ben was not happy with the razor I shaved with today. If you examine the edge under USB microscope, there are sections with micro-fissures, in this razor's case near the heel fortunately, but there's really not telling until the blade is completed and one attempts to hone it. So although I enjoyed my shave with my son's first pattern-welded Damascus effort, I anticipate edge-holding issues, particularly near the heel where the micro fissures showed up.
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