Tag Archives: Damascus Steel

This handmade Nebula Damascus Skeleton Knife looks like it was forged by Zeus himself

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With that uniquely gorgeous crack-like pattern on its surface, the knife looks positively electric, with bolts of lightning running down from hilt to blade!

I’ve been in the writing business for 9 years, and what I truly love about it is that you still manage to learn new things every day. I pretty much considered myself well-versed in Damascus Steel, but browsing through my YouTube introduced me to this new, gorgeous variant of the marbled metal. Dubbed Nebula Damascus, this steel doesn’t have the signature waves and bands you’d see in conventional Damascus Steel. Instead, it sports a cracked, cell-like pattern on its surface, looking somewhat like a nebula (hence the name). This form of steel is simply created by forging ball bearings together, causing them to compress and condense into a block. The bearings deform and fill the gaps in between them, creating this unique-looking surface that your eyes can’t get enough of.

The knife in question is a beautiful all-metal piece, forged by YouTuber HANS. The procedure gets documented in the video above, and although it looks deceptively simple, there’s a lot (of effort and expertise) that goes behind making any form of Damascus Steel, as most experts will tell you. In fact, it took HANS 7 failed tries before he arrived at this gorgeous piece of art.

Designer: HANS

The Nebula Damascus Skeleton Knife is an all-metal EDC with a fixed-blade design. The highlight of the knife is the material itself, but it gets complimented by a skeletal design which also involves a few strategic cutouts in the blade to help reduce weight while also giving your finger a place to rest/fidget while using the knife. The knife’s dagger-point blade has sharp edges on either side, which culminate in a pointy tip that you can use in a variety of ways. This also gives the Nebula Damascus Skeleton Knife an ambidextrous design, which most people will appreciate.

HANS creates a billet of steel by pouring ball-bearings into a metal pipe and sealing both ends. The pipe then gets hammered, heated, and hammered again into a workable billet of metal, which HANS then cuts his knife shape into. It’s a laborious process that requires a lot of forging/hammering (you need to ensure there are ZERO air gaps between the bearings), but the end result is quite unlike anything you’ll have ever seen.

Once the knife’s shape is formed, it gets a meticulous amount of sanding/polishing to ensure the surface is as perfect as possible. The sanding/polishing is then followed by the final step, immersing the knife in an acid bath to reveal the edges between all the ball-bearings. Notably, most forgers fill the air gaps between the ball bearings with powdered metal, but HANS chose to skip this step. The result is a wonderful faux cracked surface that gives the knife an otherworldly charm. You can follow the rest of HANS’ endeavors on his Instagram page.

The post This handmade Nebula Damascus Skeleton Knife looks like it was forged by Zeus himself first appeared on Yanko Design.

Knife Designer for the SpaceX Crew is back with a Damascus Steel and Titanium EDC Pocket Blade

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In 2021, SpaceX commissioned knife designer Darriel Caston to design a standard-issue EDC pocket blade for its crew. Now CRKT is teaming up with Caston to build a production-ready version of that very knife, with a titanium handle and a gorgeous Damascus Steel blade. Named Mbombo after the Kuba god of creation, the knife builds on the Central-African mythology of a god who helped create the sun, moon, and stars from within their body. The entire knife measures 7.63 inches when fully open, and weighs a mere 3.5 ounces (99.22 grams), making it absolutely ideal for traveling with. It’s a feisty little demon, with a precisely engineered flipping mechanism that makes the knife feel incredibly robust and well worth its $225 price tag.

Designer: Darriel Caston for CRKT

Caston’s knife for SpaceX had some very specific design guidelines. The build had to be reliable, infallible, and had to have the kind of precision you’d expect from a space exploration company. As a tribute to the company, Caston even incorporated materials from SpaceX’s launch pad, using the metal as the raw material for his knives. CRKT later approached Caston to help create a new derivative line of knives based on the SpaceX design. While it wasn’t entirely possible to get their hands on SpaceX’s launch pads, CRKT decided to outfit the Mbombo with some unique materials of their own.

The Mbombo’s blade is perhaps the first thing you notice about it. Crafted from Damascus Steel, the blade has a beautiful marbled pattern on it brought about by etching the steels’ different metal blends. The Mbombo comes with a cleaver-style blade with two edges, reminiscent of an American Tanto, but with a curved front profile that makes it versatile and good to look at. The blade measures a cool 3.23 inches (82mm) when open, and closes into its beautiful bead-blasted titanium handle.

The handle comes with a textured edge on the front, increasing dexterity and grip during use, while also being a hat-tip to the ridged design of the SpaceX flipper. The titanium handle also sports a nifty frame lock in the form of a thick lock bar that locks the blade in place once open, preventing it from accidentally shutting while in use. Lift the bar and the blade folds back into its handle.

The Mbombo also comes with a pocket clip as well as a lanyard hole built into it, allowing you to carry it with you everywhere you go. It starts at $225, with free shipping within the US.

The post Knife Designer for the SpaceX Crew is back with a Damascus Steel and Titanium EDC Pocket Blade first appeared on Yanko Design.

Feast Your Eyes on This Pocket Knife’s Mind-Bendingly INSANE Damascus Steel Blade

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I’ve seen thousands of knives on this website… none of them match up to the Rike Knife S05’s absolutely bonkers artistry.

Damascus Steel has an interesting history dating back to at least 400AD in the Syrian capital where this style of steel-forging is believed to have originated. Sadly, the entire art form was lost in the early 1700s due to cultural suppression and the general lack of proper documentation, and all the Damascus Steel we see today is merely our own attempts at trying to recreate the original (you can read all about it here), but at least aesthetically, we’ve figured out how to mimic it nearly flawlessly. Damascus Steel is best known for its alluring marbled patterns, caused by folding cementite (iron carbide) and ferrite (a crystalline form of iron) into the steel and then etching it in acid to reveal the different metals. For the most part, Damascus steel blades have showcased natural wavy patterns, sometimes even swirled designs. The Rike Knife S05, however, takes things to an absolutely new level with its unbelievably intricate blade design. Created presumably by forging multiple patterns and then layering them into a block, the S05’s blade is virtually a tapestry in steel, showing different patterns including checked, webbed, striped, and even Japanese characters all forged together into a single block of steel.  The steel is then formed into a blade, etched, and sharpened, resulting in a knife that defies convention in every which way. The S05 is deviously sharp, but using this immaculate piece of art as an EDC knife is sort of like using the Mona Lisa as a charcuterie board…

Designer: Rike Knife

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While most collector knives have ornamentation and embellishments on their handles, the Rike Knife S05’s beauty lies entirely in its immaculately patternwelded blade. It’s difficult to even describe how this level of layering could be achieved but with the S05’s sizeable $550 price tag, you’re paying for top-tier craftsmanship that nobody can copy even if they wanted to. The blade has multiple rows and columns of different patterned elements, all hammered into one solid ingot that’s then cut, shaped, sharpened, and acid-treated. The blade sports a clip-point style design reminiscent of Turkish weaponry, with a slight kink in the lower edge, going from convex to concave. Although Damascus steel doesn’t offer any remarkable material properties, the S05 is a pretty razor-edged little devil, being able to slice through tough materials like leather with ease.

The S05 features a titanium-crafted handle that houses its precious blade within it. Aside from being robust and durable enough to contain that beautiful blade, the titanium handle also has nothing but a matte finish that provides just the right amount of contrast needed to make the S05’s blade really shine.

The handle, however, isn’t all plain. It features a pocket clip and a rear spacer (a piece wedged between the two halves of the handle) made of MokuTi, a special Damascus-style material made of titanium alloy 6AL-4V and grade 1 titanium that showcases the same double-finish marbled design. The MokuTi elements come with a pearlescent finish, providing just the right amount of pop to give the S05 its accents. The screws holding the knife together have the same pearlescent finish too, giving the entire knife a unique appeal.

Although some may wince at the $550 price tag, it’s completely justified given the level of artistry that goes into each unit. Aside from how dizzyingly complex the Damascus steel blade is (and just the level of craftsmanship that goes into it), working with titanium poses its own challenges given that it’s the toughest metal on earth. Moreover, the MokuTi laminate is a specialized material that can only be sourced from a handful of metal forgers, making the entire Rike Knife S05 quite precious from top to bottom. The knife’s construction is faultless too, with the blade fitting so cleanly into the handle that its pointed edge aligns perfectly in place so as to not get caught in the fabric of your bag or pocket as you put it in or take it out. The knife’s designed to be durable, reliable, and have excellent cutting power… but if I were you I’d probably encase it on an expensive stand underneath an acrylic enclosure on my EDC wall!

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The post Feast Your Eyes on This Pocket Knife’s Mind-Bendingly INSANE Damascus Steel Blade first appeared on Yanko Design.

Watch how this breathtaking Copper Damascus knife is forged from start to finish

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If you haven’t heard of Damascus Steel, here’s a good primer. In short, it’s a style of metallurgy with origins in Damascus (now modern Syria) that’s characterized by a beautifully marbled design made by forging two metals together to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Typically, as its name suggests… Damascus Steel is made from different types of steel (with different properties), although fold a little copper in and you’ve got something that looks even more amazing!

The video above captures the behind-the-scenes as Denis Tyrell, a Californian bladesmith, forges his Copper Damascus Bowie Knife. An interesting factoid about Damascus metals is that the true art of making this marbled metal was lost to history. Over the years, people began experimenting with different forging techniques to recreate the metal, and although there’s no way of knowing if any of those processes are authentic, the term Damascus Steel is loosely used to describe the metal. In this video, Tyrell forms a billet using Damascus Steel procured from fellow YouTuber Salem Straub. He proceeds to create a billet by sandwiching different sheets of metal together and welding their edges. The billet uses two Damascus plates, two copper plates, two 15N20 nickel steel plates, and a 1095 steel core right in the center of the metal ‘sandwich’.

Once forged in his kiln, Tyrell proceeds to cut out the knife’s profile and finish it off by grinding, sanding, etching, and polishing the blade. Once the blade’s ready, he carves the ornate handle out of different materials, using copper, mammoth molar, and an epoxy block from Oleg Bashkevich, known for making resin blocks for knife-handles. The resulting knife is an absolute beauty. The copper ‘scar’ running across the Bowie knife feels just perfect, as it almost resembles the lightning bolt running down David Bowie’s face in his album Aladdin Sane. I’m pretty sure that’s entirely coincidental, though! Tyrell alternates between selling his pieces either on Etsy or off his Instagram page. Sadly, this one already got snapped up by an eager buyer, but I’m keeping an eye out for his next piece!

Designer: Tyrell Knifeworks

This handy piece of limited-edition EDC is made entirely from Damascus Steel!

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The Boker Merlin is made entirely from Damascus steel

Barring the pivot and the two screws that hold the handle and blade together, the Boker Merlin is entirely made from the legendary marbled metal. Created as a special edition, the variant is based off one of Boker’s classic designs by Wilfried Gorski. Partnering with Chad Nichols, a trained steel-smith who’s perfected the art of making corrosion-resistant Damascus Steel, Boker spared quite literally no effort by building every component of the knife from the marbled metal, right from the blade to the handle, to even the back spacer and interlock slider.

The result is a fairly classic and light-weight pocket knife that’s completely stunning to look at and one-of-a-kind. Limited to just 398 pieces (199 for USA and 199 for Europe), each knife comes with a certificate of authenticity, a unique serial number, and a pretty hefty price tag, but where else would you find a 100% Damascus Steel knife?

Designer: Wilfried Gorski for Boker

The Boker Merlin is made entirely from Damascus steel

The Boker Merlin is made entirely from Damascus steel

The Boker Merlin is made entirely from Damascus steel

The Boker Merlin is made entirely from Damascus steel

The power of a samurai sword in your pocket!

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We’ve been pretty interested in this phenomenon called Damascus Steel (you can read our editorial on the beautiful, marbled metal here) over the past few months. Imagine having the properties of multiple steel alloys in one single sheet of steel, and along with that, you get an absolutely hypnotic marble-effect on the surface of a metal. That’s Damascus Steel. The steel is a specially formulated sheet that incorporates different alloys with different iron and carbon ratios into one single sheet, allowing it to be stainless and much stronger than conventional knife steels.

The steel, in its most original form, dates back to as early as 400 A.D., with its application primarily used in weaponry and warfare. Now a metal that’s found its permanent home in quality EDC, Damascus Steel can quite literally put the power of a samurai’s sword in your pocket with the ultra-small, ultra-powerful Omni by Hribarcain. A small, sophisticated, and superior piece of EDC, the Omni is a mini pocket-knife with a hubless hinge that opens the blade by pressing down on the ring. The Omni comes with an aluminum body and an absolutely gorgeous patternweld steel that’s as strong and sharp as it is beautiful. The combination of multiple alloys not only give the blade a bespoke pattern (that’s unique to each knife), but also impart toughness that lets you use the blade any which way without fear of it bending or losing its sharpness. In fact, Damascus Steel stays sharp for five times longer than a regular steel edge, giving you a blade that should comfortably slice through anything, and last practically a lifetime without needing any maintenance whatsoever… making it quite literally a samurai sword in your pocket!

Designer: Hribarcain

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Check Out: Demystifying Damascus Steel: The beautifully marbled metal

Demystifying Damascus Steel: The beautifully marbled metal

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If you want to spot a true EDC enthusiast, gauge their reaction upon saying the words Damascus Steel. Chances are, if they’re a true-blue everyday carry aficionado, even so much as taking the name of the marbled metal will send chills down their spine, and rightfully so… because Damascus Steel is an exquisite metal that’s not just strong, it’s a pleasure to look at, with its wonderful, organic pattern. So, let’s delve deeper into the origins of this steel, the way it’s made, and honestly, how different is it from other tool-worthy steel alloys.

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THE ORIGIN OF DAMASCUS STEEL

The word Damascus (or Damask) comes from the Syrian capital city, where one can date back the very origin of Damascus Steel to as early as 400 A.D. However, it’s worth noting that the steel we refer to as Damascus Steel today is, for the lack of a better term, a fake, or an imitation. The truth is that the traditional method of crafting this sort of steel got lost over time. Some believe that the method of forging Damascus Steel was lost as early as the 1700s, due to a lack of proper documentation combined with cultural suppression by western imperialism. The steel we fondly refer to as Damascus Steel today is actually a patternweld, a steel formed by folding/mixing in cementite (iron carbide) and ferrite (a crystalline form of iron) into the steel to give it its distinct banding effect. The truth is that this sort of steel isn’t considered pure steel, but that’s considered an advantage, especially since it gives the steel a distinct look… and strength too.

Patternweld steel started being referred to as Damascus Steel back in 1973, when popular bladesmith William F. Moran unveiled his “Damascus knives” at the Knifemakers’ Guild Show. While the name Damascus Steel stuck around for any sort of patterned steel since that day, the original Damascus Steel is considered stuff of legends.

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HOW MODERN ‘DAMASCUS STEEL’ IS MADE

Pioneered by William F. Moran himself, the steel we commonly refer to as Damascus Steel today is in fact, created using a technique called ‘billet welding’. Billet welding involves mixing together a variety of alloys of steel and/or iron together by first welding them to each other, and then folding the overall mass multiple times, giving you sandwiched layers fused alloys with different hues. The welding process can be altered to give you different patterns, for example Devin Thomas, a famed knifesmith has practically perfected the process of billet-welding, and can now create a wide series of patterns at will. Knifesmiths also end up choosing and pairing alloys together based on their color contrast and also the properties that they lend to the knife itself, imparting not just a high contrast on the ‘damascus’ pattern, but also strength to the blade, along with properties like corrosion resistance, etc.

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IS IT WORTH THE HYPE?

There are two schools of thought in this matter. In short, purists don’t think Damascus Steel is any good, but enthusiasts love the way the blades look and perform. The long story is that Damascus Steel isn’t pure. It contains a number of ‘impurities’ like cementite, ferrite, pearlite, martensite, etc. that even though enhance certain properties of the blade, the pattern formed on the knife as a result is viewed more as cosmetic, rather than functional. There’s also the argument that the blades formed using billet welding aren’t honoring the original tradition of making Damascus steel blades (as was done in Syria). There are, in fact ways of producing blades that are stronger, either using stronger alloys, or opting for forging techniques like the Japanese San-Mai, that sandwich a harder carbon-steel layer between two stainless steel layers. (San-Mai blades can look a slight bit like Damascus Steel blades at the edges where you see the different hues of the different layers)

As far as enthusiasts and collectors go, Damascus Steel results in knives that look unique and different, not just from other knives, but from each other too, because no Damascus Steel knife boasts of the exact pattern on the blade (there are always minute deviations, much like wood grain). A well-made Damascus blade will stay sharp for longer than most production quality knives too, given the strength-building alloys added to the mix.

So… even though the tradition has been lost to man, many people have devoted their lives to trying and studying past relics and recreating the process. Known as Damascus in the Middle East, or even Wootz in India and Sri Lanka, this patterned, marbled steel has been around for practically millennia, enchanting people with its hypnotic lines, and promising a build quality that is remarkably strong. Used today, not just for knives, but for even pens, wallets, and multitools, the steel we presently call Damascus Steel isn’t going anywhere any time soon!

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