My journey in becoming an expert knife maker

@dyadka_yar That's actually a pretty common misconception, the old way of making Damascus steel is called wootz and it was rediscovered a while back, I only know of 2 people that did but there are more of them and it's not that breat of a steel compared to modern steels because it has large carbide and very very high carbon content, which makes it brittle. Modern pattern welded steel is an entirely different thing and there's a lot of flexibility you have with what pattern you want on it, some guys do crazy mosaics and some guys stick to a simple twist.

Here's a comparison between the two, one is a Damascus fighter made by Kyle Royer with a pattern welded steel and the other is a piece of wootz made by Peter Swarz-Burt. I would love to work with a piece of wootz one day just because of the historical significance of the steel. In medieval times in Europe a wootz sword would have been like magic, for the time that steel was super advanced compared to the bloom steels they had in Europe.

Noice! @bruschettebites Just as a general question but do you do repairs on old knives? I still have my grandfather's pocket knife but it has seen better days. Probably beyond repair.

"Beyond repair" It just needs some love

@draig all modern commercially available steel is crucible steel, but if you mean the CPM stuff, i've been meaning to get some for a long time, it's just so damn expensive. @gabriel_true it's not beyond repair but damn is it going to be hard to fix. I've done one knife resoration and it didn't go so well.