Steel construction

Once we understand the manufacturing technology, we will easily recognize what type of construction or stacking of steel we see on a knife.

First of all, high-quality steel is extremely expensive due to the demanding production process, so manufacturers have come up with the idea of ​​wrapping steel with other, cheaper steel in order to make a more acceptable product. At one point, the devil took the joke away, and today companies are almost competing to produce the "prettier" steel, that is, which will have the prettier pattern. There are countless techniques for different damask patterns that produce extremely beautiful products. We'll break down a few of the most popular builds and highlight the benefits of each.

SOLID OR MONO STEEL

At their simplest, these are knives made from a single piece of steel. The knife has the same characteristics from start to finish and this technique is more present in European knife manufacturers but we can also often see it in Japanese commercial knives. If you own any "regular knife", it is constructed like this. The advantage of these knives is almost always a lower price associated with a simpler manufacturing process compared to lapped steels. Below is a schematic cross-section of a knife that illustrates this case.

LAMINATE

When we have a situation where two different steels are glued to each other in only 2 layers, we call this construction a laminate. It can be seen in all Japanese traditional knives (Yanagiba, Deba, Usuba) and the harder steel on the diagram shown in black will always be exposed as the steel that actually provides the blade. You may ask why another type of steel is put in, why is it not made of one? The other steel, shown in white, has different characteristics such as flexibility and softness which allows the smith to better manipulate the blade, making it easier to correct if the steel is warped during tempering and grinding or during improper use of the blade later in the work. This technique is believed to have been inherited from Japanese katanas.

SAN MAI OR SANDWICH CONSTRUCTION

Three layers of steel, of which the one in the middle is always of better quality. We will often see this construction when the manufacturer tries to reduce the exposure of rusting steel to the external factor and thus save it from the oxidation process. Only a small part of the knife with the blade made of high-quality steel will be exposed, which drastically reduces the need for knife maintenance. Also, this construction is used when we have knives made of extremely expensive steels like SG2, R2 or VG10 in order to reduce the price of the product and the user has the same effective blade as if it was made from one piece. In the scheme below, the quality steel is marked in black, while the one on the side is always much cheaper. This in no way negatively affects performance, but rather gives the knife a higher level of resistance to both rust and breakage. We can also visually notice this technique on the knife in the form of one line on both sides of the knife, which is correctly located at an equal distance of a few millimeters behind the blade itself.

DAMASCUS WITHOUT CENTER STEEL

The steel folding technique is extremely popular for its aesthetic features, rarely having any actual effect on how the knife cuts the food. Coreless damascus refers to the overlapping of two or more types of steel where the overlapped steel forms both the blade and the body of the knife. We see the patterns on these knives because the steels usually differ in their nickel content and with different processing techniques, this difference is more or less emphasized depending on the aesthetic effect that the manufacturer wants to create. Throughout history, carbon or rusting steel was used for this technique, however this is less and less acceptable due to the fact that users, due to proper and regular maintenance, "erase" the patterns that were present on the knife and do not know how to restore them again, and the blade loses its aesthetic appearance. element.

DAMASCUS WITH CENTRAL STEEL

Probably the most popular way of making knife steel today is stacking Damascus steel around a central, very high quality steel. Go back to the story of the San-mai construction and imagine that instead of ordinary, cheap steel, damascus was used. Make no mistake, this damascus is also made of lower quality steel, because again, as with the San-mai technique, it never represents a blade, but the range of possibilities for the appearance of knives obtained by this technique is almost unlimited. More or less accentuated patterns, fog effect, wavy, round, zigzag patterns, even the addition of copper or silver to the damascus, all this makes the knives in this construction look beautiful and maintain top performance. The appearance of these knives can be influenced by so many factors that even the master's mood can be directly expressed. It is believed that just looking at perfectly crafted blades awakens a sense of joy and excitement in a person. It is for these reasons that the prices can be very high, but hey, you are getting a knife that is not only perfectly sharp but also looks beautiful.