Comments by "Gaza is not Amalek" (@Ass_of_Amalek) on "Korea's beste handgemaakte messenmeester. Proces voor het maken van messen:" video.

  1. this video isn't about ancient damascus steel. ancient damascus steel was good quality crucible steel, nowadays more commonly referred to as wootz, whereas the stuff in the video is pattern-welded steel, aka modern "damascus steel". also good modern steel with no goofy pattern is functionally better than either pattern-welded or oldschool damascus steel.
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  2. of course the blade is damaged, but it's still impressive. I would guess that that's (obviously non-hardened) mild steel. to appreciate the hardness of that knife, you need to consider that it's very thin whereas the bar it's cuttingis very compact, so very little material in the knife is resisting deformation more than a much bigger amount of material in the bar. if the knife was as soft as the bar, the knife would curl and barely cause a dent in the bar. it's also showing pretty good resistance to shattering - all good knife edges tend to break rather than bending, as does this one, but it only broke off very small chips relative to the amount of damage it did. so yes, that is impressive, though I wouldn't pay any attention to the "best knife maker" claim, and pattern-welded steel always trades in some practicality for aesthetics, as it uses at least one steel type among the two that's not ideal for a knife edge, and making a knife out of solid steel of great quality would produce a better cutting knife (or alternatively using a solid center layer and pattern-welded sides for decoration).
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