Tag Archives: Damascus Steel

This hand-forged Damascus Stainless Steel Knife boasts a spectacular mirror-finish marbled blade

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With each knife having a pattern that is unique to it, almost like its own fingerprint, the Greno puts the beauty of hand-forged VG-10 Stainless Damascus steel in your grip, giving you a knife that’s equal parts magnificent and masterful.

They say that the true process of making Damascus steel was lost to history, although the art has certainly flourished again, with a lot of forgers building their own techniques of making the gorgeously marbled metal. One such creator is Shaggs LLC, the designer and builder behind the Greno – a hand-forged fixed-blade knife with perhaps one of the most unique-looking marbled steel blades we’ve seen. While most Damascus steel blades rely on a dual-color design that highlights the marbling, the Greno is different. It employs VG-10 steel – a premium cutlery-grade stainless steel produced in Japan, which results in a marbling quite like no other. Add that to a 4.5-inch blade with a 4.3-inch handle and you’re left with a knife that doesn’t disappoint. When not in use, the Greno is an art piece, a visual representation of a one-dead handicraft… and when in motion, it’s a knife designed to dominate and get the job done every single time.

Designer: Shaggs LLC

Click Here to Buy Now: $55. Hurry, only a few left!

Measuring a staggering 9 inches from tip to end, the Greno is fairly larger than any of the flippers or folders we feature here. It comes with a fixed blade design too, and ships with a Top Grain Italian cow leather sheath to help you carry it around wherever you go. The knife’s handle comes crafted from green Micarta, used extensively in the knifemaking industry for its durability, balanced weight, and the unique texture it provides to the handle, giving it a superior grip. To supplement this, the Greno’s handle boasts an ergonomic grippy design that’s innately ambidextrous, allowing you to grab it confidently as you maneuver its crown jewel – that spectacular blade.

A self-taught knifemaker, Shaggs managed to master the art of forging Damascus steel, although their experiments with the Greno are different from any other Damascus steel you’d find on the market. To state things plainly, a lot of the Damascus steel you see today is simply a laser-etched marbling pattern on regular steel. True Damascus steel is created by folding and forging two different kinds of steel together, before acid-etching the blade to reveal a zebra-like pattern. Greno’s take on Damascus steel is similar, but the results are stunningly different. The blade shimmers with a chrome-like finish, but instead of being dual-colored, comes with contour lines, almost like the knife has its own fingerprint.

The blade itself has a drop-point design, a very popular template in the knife world. With a long 4.5-inch edge that culminates in a sharp tip, the Greno is perfect for pretty much any indoor or outdoor tasks. Whittling wood, slicing paracord, cutting meat or veggies, and self-defence, the Greno’s blade holds up remarkably well to any form of abuse. The VG-10 steel is inherently corrosion-resistant and has remarkable edge retention, which means spending more time using the knife and less time sharpening it. The rest of the blade travels through the handle, or what the industry calls a ‘full tang’ format. This effectively boosts the knife’s overall durability and allows you to lean into the Greno while using it. The full tang design means being able to apply forward and downward pressure with ease, along with also being able to twist your knife while using it to do things like open metal cans or gut your hunt.

When all’s said and done, the knife slides right into its cowhide sheath, which encases the blade so it doesn’t accidentally hurt anyone. Owing to its large size, the Greno definitely doesn’t come with a pocket clip, but it does boast a lanyard hole at the end of the handle, allowing you to loop a paracord or lanyard through the knife to make it easy to carry around with you on outdoor trips, whether it’s camping, hunting, or even showing off to your EDC-enthusiast friends!

Click Here to Buy Now: $55. Hurry, only a few left!

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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.

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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.