Page 246 - The Lost Ways

Damascus steel blades were not common, except perhaps in Damascus. The basic
difference between Damascus steel and other knife steel is that true Damascus steel uses
more than one type of steel welded together so that the blade contains a combination of
the characteristics of those steels. Hence, you could have a high carbon steel, to give a

good edge, welded to a more flexible steel so that the blade wouldn’t break as easily.

Blacksmiths tended to reuse materials as well, especially in the West, where materials
shipments might not be as reliable. One favorite material for making knives was dull, used
farrier’s rasps (horse shoeing rasps). Most blacksmiths had a regular supply of these that
were made dull by shoeing the community’s horses.

Farrier’s rasps are still a popular blank for making knives today as they are made of a very
high carbon steel, which will make for a good knife blade. They are also larger than other
files and rasps, making it possible to make larger knives out of them.

Forging the Blade

The knife maker would not cut the blade’s shape out of the steel, regardless of whether
he was starting with a fresh piece of steel or with a rasp; rather, the blank was heated in
the blacksmith’s forge and then shaped with hammer and anvil.

The point of a knife was formed by
hammering the steel blank on the
edges to narrow it down. This would
cause the blank to thicken, so the
hammering of the edges had to be
combined with hammering the sides of
the blank to thin it back down.

This process of stretching the metal
while forming it is called “drawing” the
metal. It is the blacksmith’s standard method of changing the shape, thickness, and width
of a piece of steel.

Once the overall shape of the blade was established, the blacksmith would then move to
tapering the blade. Once again, this was accomplished by drawing the metal and thinning
it out. A lot of skill was needed to keep the blade’s taper consistent during this process.

Even so, most knives didn’t have as clean a line down the side, where the flat meets the
taper, simply because of the difference in manufacturing technique.

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