What Is Damascus Steel?
"Damascus" today describes a blade made of many thin layers of steel, folded or stacked and forged together. Once the blade is polished and etched, the layers show as the wavy pattern you see on our knives.
Layers outside, a hard core inside
On our knives, the layers form the cladding: the outer part of the blade. The cutting edge is a single harder core steel in the middle. On most of our knives that core is VG10, a stainless steel known for holding a fine edge. Our santoku uses AUS-10, another hard stainless steel, and our cleaver, utility knife and compact 7.6-inch chef knife use 90Cr18MoV. Each product page names its core steel.
You can see the pattern up close on our santoku and our 8" chef knife.
What the pattern does, and doesn't do
The pattern is mostly about looks, and it tells you the blade is clad. The sharpness and edge retention come from the core steel, its hardness and how the edge is ground. That's why we list the core steel and, when the maker gives it, the hardness (HRC) on every product page.
What we promise, and what we don't
- We list the steel, number of layers and hardness exactly as the manufacturer gives them.
- Our knives are Japanese-style, made in Yangjiang, China. We don't make claims about how they're made that we can't back up.
- No blade stays sharp forever. With a honing rod and a whetstone, a good edge lasts a long time.
See our Damascus knife sets or single knives.