$75 USD Damascus Knife - Fake or Real Experiment
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- Опубліковано 17 тра 2021
- As mentioned in the title of the video, we have to keep in mind that there are various types of steel used to make Damascus knives. There are also different processes used; from handmade to machine made - this video is to experiment on a $75 USD Kakushin Kitchen Knife to see if by sanding and grinding down the patterns, we can make them reappear. Are those laser engraved or simply etched to display patterns that will eventually disappear because they are fake?
While there are many models out there and you can see replicas of replicas, the experiment in my video has been performed on the following knife model: kakushin.ca/collections/chefs...
the whole video I thought you were trying to prove it was fake after the acid im like wtf lol nice knife
Haha, amazing :) Glad to hear it was a cliff-hanger :)
you're absolutely right, I nearly had a heart attack. I've just spent £300 on a block of six and one separate and the steak knives and have more on my list and I watch this always who wanting to cry thinking he's gonna tell me they're fake and I'm gonna have to send them back but to say they're real I am delighted and you can tell they are sharp. If you put magnifying glasses on and look at them I cannot wait to chop stuff up
I completely understood this as you were on lsd losing your shit over this knife….. hahahaha
If someone wants to buy factory pattern welded steel and run a relatively automated setup, they can turn these knives out quick and cheap, and they're usually good knives. If there's a deficiency with most knives past even a moderate point, it's the user's ability to understand edge geometry and sharpen steel with different burr characteristics.
I still grind my own knives, though, and some for other people. Internet wants an argument that only one way is good, but everything can be good and if someone wants to pay for a handmade knife that's a little better or even the same as some of the better factory made knives, there's no shame in paying someone to make something by hand.
Very well said, David! There is way more to understand about knives then just seeing a shiny ad on Facebook or Instagram stating "they are the sharpest ever" and hitting the Buy Now button 😀
it's like the analogue vs digital argument in music production. people forget it's the artist, not the equipment, that makes 99% of the difference.
I have a small knife shop at a Flea Market in Pensacola, Florida. I have been selling the same knives for ten years and decited to buy Damascus Knives from Wazirabad Punjab, Pakistan and Texas. I have been hoping they are real. Loved your video and you cleared up allot of questions. Best video on UA-cam ! Thank You Soul Man
The proofs in the pudding and you did a great job of proving it. Thank you I'm looking forward to purchasing my set.
Good video, I had a question about a $25 knife and did similar job and used vinegar. It was patterned.
Really thank you for your afford and sharing. I bought similar knife and had suspicion about being Damascus or not. But now I am satisfied with your video.
Thanks
Happy you like it. While some might look the same, until they are grinded and etched again it can be quite difficilt to know if it's truly layered steel or not :)
... for your effort* ...
Amazing video! Thank you do much for this!
This was interesting! Thanks for posting.
Thank you! I'm planing more of these - coming soon!
Thanks for the heads up good looking out for the people
Definitely real layered steel, no question about that.
Not to mention, kakushin has fantastic customer support. I have a couple of these knives and they are very high quality for the price you pay
Thank you, Denis! Happy to have chatted with you earlier this week - stay tuned for more video's :)
Great video, really informative. Merci
Happy you liked it :)
what is the name of the liquid in which you dip the knife to show the layer. And where to buy? Thanks
This one was a blend of ferric chloride, but there are many such as even instant coffee that you can do it with.
Sehr gut ! Danke schön !
The problem comes from everyone using Damascus to describe pattern welded steel instead of of the patterned crucible steels.
Pattern welded steels were invented to compensate for low quality bloomery steel well before crucible steels became a thing.
If you have patterned crucible steel, you were guaranteed to have a high quality steel because it is cleaner and homogenous. People started to fake the pattern with pattern welding and called it Damascus. It has been used so much that people just think that is how you make Damascus steels.
Well said, you are right that the principles of Damascus comes from far back and what it was back then is no longer what it is today :)
Beautiful, can I ask if that 67 layers 10Cr15CoMoV core Damascus steel can be etched dark with coffee?
I doubt it will work - chances are that it will need acid as there is too much chrome content.
would love to see this done with the MCUSTA 33 layer vg10 core steel. pretty sure their pattern is etched on? I dunno
Its very difficult to say without grinding one, and I hate to speculate.... but, from experience I believe it's truly layered steel.
A TUMBS up from me! That was a fun and informative video and love your enthusiasm!
Nice! Thank you :)
Are they worth it though?
Do you know if the Wakoli knives are layered or lasered?
No sorry
Hi!
Which acid are you using?
In this video it was Ferric Chloride.
What most people don't understand is that 'Damascus' steel(the proper term is pattern-welded or laminated steel) is not that hard or complicated to make and nothing that special really.
Nowadays there are many suppliers that produce it en-masse and at a low cost.
Of course the quality of the forge-welding and heat-treatment of the cheap mass produced 'Damascus' knives is probably not as high as a custom-made one off piece.
Anyway cool video,I like people who are brave enough to experiment and figure things out for themselves than just speculate and argue!
Thank you! 😊
@@kakushinkitchen Thank you for the attention!
Is the same true about the sunneko vg10 67 layer i bought? all my freinds were saying its fake
It's not a brand I know, sorry.
You did not say what brand of knife this was or where to get it. I wanted to buy one.
This model is sold out, but there are many other models, steels, and fabrication styles: www.kakushin.ca
What types of steel are they? I'm not saying anything about this knife I particular, but if inferior materials are used to make the "Damascus" is the quality there, you have to compare apples to apples.
As mentioned in the first text displayed when you start the video: This particular video isn't to compare the quality of steel used in various types of Damascus (we could go on for ages with the thousands of types that exist...). The main purpose of this short video was to see if these blades are laser engraved, etched patterns, etc... vs actual layered steel.
In the video, I dont believe to make comparisons. What other 75$ Damascus knife model are you referring to so we can compare apples to apples?
@@kakushinkitchen yep thats how you know its low quality. But you get what you pay for
@@prototypenick8373 sorry, I'm not sure I understand your comment as quality wasn't really the topic. The video was about seeing if at 75$ the model is layered steel OR fake laser engraved since there are many myths and various replicas 🙃
Can I use vinegar instead of ordering some acid?
I believe that vinegar would mainly work on carbon steels - not stainless. That's being said, I'm not 100% sure but I'm sure that your steel type will determine which etching method you can / should use.
I used vinegar just last week to do this and it worked.
Muriatic acid for stainless Damascus. And ferric works best for carbon steel but you can use vinegar but it takes a lot longer and doesn’t get as dark as ferric. But you can use really strong instant coffee to get a strong contrast making the non nickel steel very dark( Depending on the steel also, some etch darker than others).
Depends on the quality of the steel in the blend. The acid is etching the higher carbon like 5160 black. This is gives the hardness to the blade. That’s what determines the cost. More black in the pattern, means more high carbon steel. Cheap Damascus isn’t good Damascus....Unless you like sharpening it ALOT.
Sharpening Damascus? Which reputable blacksmith uses a Damascus core as their cutting edge?
Used a 60x magnifier to check the top of the blade of my knife and was able to see the layers so quite happy now with a knife that had already impressed me .
Do you have use ferric chloride in this video,my friend?
Yes, that is correct! Mixed ferric chloride with coffee and distilled water.
Togheter????In what proportions? Why not separately? Ferric chloride and after coffee:water 2:1?
@@montreal74 1/4 chloride 3/4 water and a few spoons of instant coffee works well for me, but there are so many recipes and each work differently for everyone depending on steel type, etc.
But will it Keeeel? Sorry, couldnt resist. This is good info to have for any newbie buying a knife, that you dont need to spend an arm and a leg to get a damascus knife. Just picked up a Bigcat Roar Screaming Eagle that is selling for 80 CDN on Amazon. Granted it used to be 200 before they marked the price down for whatever reason, great deal and if the knife in the vid are legit Damacus, then certainly the ones from BigCat are as well. Very reassuring.
Respectfully to you sir it's ground down not grinded down
Thanks and sorry, english is my third language so such mistakes are not unusual.
Well, I was surprised! Well done. Truth is in acid.
Given how far Lazer hardening has come, I wouldn't be surprised if they would selectively temper a blade with one. Then again, if they had the money to do that for a fucking knife you'd be paying a lot more.
I have purchased over 100 sai man and Damascus blades from china. There might be junk out there, but the two factories i am getting the knives from are nothing but quality. And i am paying less than $30 a knife.
What factory?
Layered steel is the process of taking two or more pieces of metal, heating them up and pounding flat to get them to stick together. Also known as pattern welded. Damascus is the process of taking two pieces of steel, heating them up then FOLDING them over on each other hundreds of times. Damascus will last a lot longer, and be much stronger than layered. The thing that bothers me about yours is, the pattern stops short of the edge, and is in a specific pattern. Often times, acid etching will leave a pattern go very deep. A folded knife will also leave peaks and valleys. You can actually feel them. Yours looks too smooth, with an "image" of the peaks and valleys. You have to turn yours into the light just right, to see the pattern. Look up a Damascus knife or go to Bigcat Roar Knives, and you will see the difference.
That's simple not true. There's a lot of debate about what Damascus steel and what made it so special is kind of lost to time. The quality of steel used in the region varied depending on its origin as wootz wasn't exclusively made in India. Naturally, as is the case today, a monarch would receive a better blade than an infantryman. The kind of iron ore used would also have been of importance since it's inclusion of ferric Vanadium and lack of phosphorus would have made some blades better than others. There's a channel called fz making knives that makes faux wootz crucible steel. It's usually a mix of steel powder, Graphite and some steel like drill bits and tops it off with glass so as to prevent oxidation. He completely melts them down in the crucible into an all but homogenous steel so as to retain the banding or pocking effect.
Now, pattern welded Damascus is just a kind of layered steel. All Damascus is layered steel but not all layered steel is Damascus. Moreover, not all layered steel consists of dissimilar metals and indeed (good) swords used to be made of layered steel.
1. San Mai meaning three layers, was used extansively by the Chinese, Koreans and later the Japanese to preserve good steel. Much like axes with a forged welded bit, the non working parts of the knife would be made of wrought iron to add heft and give the blades rigidity. Up till the 60s crucible cast steel blades were only forge welded onto carpenters plane irons, so you can imagine how bad it was before industrialization.
2. The second kind of layered steel is like tamahagane. This is the high carbon bits of bloomery iron segregated and consolidated into a single mass. This process involved folding it over itself to remove slag inclusions and better distribute the carbon content in the matrix. The Europeans also used the method of folding steel to product a more consistent product. Blister steel was made by taking refined wrought iron, encasing it in a refractory crucible packed with finely ground charcoal powder from all sides and sealed with mortar at the top. This would then be put into a furnace for days and even up to a week where carbon monoxide forming inside the crucibles would diffuse into the steel. However, this would result in more carbon diffusion into the outer part of the billet and so it would be forged out and folded several times to even out the distribution. Folding isn't a Japanese technique, they're literally one of the last people to learn it. Eventually some German polities began carburizing thinner pieces of steel and forging those out to shorten the carburization process and begin with a larger number of layers.
Finally, what you said at the end is true, this may be a San Mai blade with Damascus cheek plates but it's frankly easier to produce a solid pattern welded knife than to make those billets and forge weld them onto a third. It's arguable the best method since it gives you the best of both worlds.
Hey dude the link is dead
Yes, unfortunately, this model is sold out but there are many more with various steel types and fabrications : www.kakushin.ca
If you read the fine print "Real Damascus Alloy for decorative purposes" Meaning that the edge is not damascus. Look at where the steel meets the handle as well as how the actual sharp edge has no pattern. If you look closely you will noticed it is alloyed together.
Yes, which allows the knife to have a hard cutting edge and soft cladding for resistance- the ideal combination.
@@kakushinkitchen i am sorry but i think you got it the wrong way around. The edge will not be hard as it is not true damascus. The edge is basically a normal knife and the platting is damascus but for decorative purposes only
@@Manowarmx3 What would be the purpose of having a soft cutting edge and hard cladding? Sounds counter-productive... Damascus is just layered steel, true or not, it's nothing more - the steel type and the quenching is what determines hardness. The layered steel (Damascus) is used as a clad to give a softer and decorative look - on the other hand, the edge itself on which the Damascus is layered (in this case is VG10) is harder than the clad. The clad used for this knife is 304 SS and is softer than the cutting edge. A similar but more complex process was used for samurai words: soft layered steel as the clad, a semi-hard steel for the top core, soft steel as the mid-core and hard steel as the bottom core - again, the hard steel is always at the core to take a better edge and retain that edge without being fragile like slate.
asia here more cheap about 50usd online , haha , thank for confirm it. i scare of buying fake damascus also
Hey didn't Rorschach kill you with a cleaver in the Watchmen movie?
Haha? No? 😂
Does this mean that a chef's knife can be made of damascus steel even if the bolster doesn't have the signature pattern? a lot of videos keep saying that the bolster needs to have the pattern to be considered legit. 🤔
Great question! Technically and in short, I would say yes for a few reasons; the bolster might not be forged with the blade and could have been welded on later - especially if it's a stamped knife. Also, for looks, the knife could have been etched up to the bolster to leave it nice and polished - but if you dip it back into ferric chloride (amongst others acids), if the bolster was forged with the blade the patterns will appear and follow. I'm sure there are other answers, but those could be 2 amongst other possibilities :)
Like the video. But the use of the word "grinded" instead of "ground" was really distracting. Lol..
How long do you have to leave the knife in the acid until it's completely gone?😉
Not sure, but send me the link to your video once you figure it out 🙃
So it's not San mai?
You can have various styles of cladding. Sure, San-Mai or Warikomi, Ni-Mai...
I just sent a message to your website. I hope to talk to ya today 👌👌👌
I was surprised, can you test how long it can hold its edge, maybe compare it to multiple knives.
By the way: 9:00 minutes videos are too long for UA-cam. 4 minutes would have been a better choice especially for simple testing videos. If your test includes multiple items and different tests then i guess 9:00 minutes can be justified.
Thank you for the feedback!
still got my knife from the dollar store. nice and dull but cuts lol.
In the US to make that knife with cost of good quality steel, and propane, or coal, and grinder belts, it will cost you no less than $125. And that's in a perfect scenario. So I guarantee Those are made in China or Pakistan made of the cheapest materials as possible.
😆 Try doing a edge retention and bend test with one of my hand crafted blades vs that cheap stuff.
I use Alabama Damascus...sushi blades run $144....my knives sell for $400 and up. Cheap knives aren’t good, Good knives aren’t cheap.
Sure - make us a damascus knife that you would sell for 75$ and we will compare apples to apples / side-by-side by including the hardness (hrc), edge retention and final polishing.
@@thewanderingpatriot Except You can buy a 60USD high carbon forged knife, and it'll be more than fine for 99% of people (cooks included)...
Some Chinese brands are just crap but they also have good brands. I tested Xinzuo 10Cr15MoV with Damascus cladding. The Damascus is real, the core steel matches description being around 60HRC, fit and finish is also very well done, and edge durability is great without chipping issues.
It will not have same cutting capacity as high end Japanese or European knives but still quite a decent knife for the price they ask. Honest brand with great quality control. A chef knife from them costs about 35 dollars.
Btw your insulation is giving you silicosis.
Insulation fibers stay in your lungs forever you should at least cover it in paper or plastic.
I can't afford one and look what you did.... noooooo 😭😭😭
Bro almost sliced ur face 😮
hea treat is ke bend the knife
You can totally see at the @5:32 time that its a complete FAKE !!!! 🤪😳
What do you see? I don't understand 🤷♂️
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