The History of Powder Metals in Damascus Steel

Gratitude

Thanks to cbw, Doug Siddens, Nick Dunham, and Robert Martin for becoming Knife Steel Nerds Patreon supporters!

I interviewed several knifemakers for this article. Thanks to Ed Schempp, Hank Knickmeyer, Steve Schwarzer, Rick Dunkerley, Jim Batson, Shane Taylor, Jeff Carlisle, Kelly Cupples, Daryl Meier, John Davis, Matt Diskin, Wade Colter, Barry Gallagher, Howard Clark, Bob Kramer, and Devin Thomas for talking to me.

Miscellaneous

I appeared on the Big Brown Bear Youtube Channel with Shawn Houston talking about edge retention: click here.

Damascus Steel

Conventional pattern-welded Damascus steel uses alternating layers of steel which will etch at different rates to provide contrast between the two different types. Layer counts can be modified by using thin stock, taller billets, or by cutting, stacking, and re-welding the billet.

If the steel is simply forged flat to be a knife it results in a “random” pattern. There are a variety of techniques that are used to give different patterns in the final piece which will not be covered in depth here. One simple patterning method is “twist” where the bar is forged round and twisted prior to forging flat again, which looks something like the following in the finished piece:

There are a range of techniques which rely on different designs on the end of the bar, and these patterning types are loosely called “Mosaic” patterns. These can range from the simple to the very complex. One simple pattern is “basketweave” where forged billets are re-stacked in contrasting directions:

Image adapted from [1]

Since the pattern is on the end of the bar it can be used in applications such as bolsters by simply slicing a piece off and using it as-is. When using mosaic patterns in a knife it is somewhat trickier because forging it to flat barstock would not be visible on the knife. If enough pieces are welded side by side a “loaf” can be made where slices are cut off to be the blade. However, different techniques can be used to bring the end pattern to the surface of the bar such as the “accordian” method:

Image adapted from [1]

Damascus History

I previously wrote about the history of pattern-welded Damascus steel in this article about Damascus steel myths. I did not provide a full history of pattern-welded Damascus steel in that article nor can I do so in this one. For convenience I will refer to “pattern-welded Damascus steel” simply as Damascus steel for the rest of this article. Damascus steel was produced anciently and production of it continued into the early 20th century especially in rifles. It was popularized in the USA as a knife material by Bill Moran starting in 1973. In the 1970’s and 1980’s there was a steady evolution of different patterning techniques in Damascus to make different types and looks of the final steel. One of the patterning techniques explored was the use of specific images in the steel, recognizable pictures, words, etc. Gun barrels were produced in the 19th and early 20th centuries with the name of the gun manufacturer forged into the Damascus [2]. Daryl Meier was able to use a similar technique in 1978 to produce Damascus steel that had his last name in it:

Image from [3]

By the early 1990’s patterning techniques could be quite advanced, such as the Daryl Meier flag bowie presented to George H.W. Bush at the White House in 1990. This impressive piece had 50 stars in each of the 13 flags, and the flags were the appropriate orientation on both sides of the blade. Each of the 50 stars has five points. Meier told me that he put in about 800 hours into the knife.

Image from [4]

The knife was produced from “multi-bar” Damascus which you can see with the different sections, the bottom being a twist pattern, above that the “USA” section, then the flags, and finally another twist Damascus bar. Below you can see a closeup of one of the flags in the knife.

Image from [3]

Another example of “picture” Damascus is the Hunter’s Dream landscape by Steve Schwarzer, produced in 1993:

Image from [5]

Both the stars in the flag produced by Meier and the hunter scene produced by Schwarzer used wire EDM blocks to produce the images. This requires two large blocks of steel in contrasting materials where a male and female block are produced so that once mated they can be forged to the final solid piece. Once etched the two different materials will be different colors so that the image is visible. Wire EDM and large blocks of steel are very expensive so this method has never had particularly widespread use.

Early Use of Powder Metals

In the mid-1980’s, Steve Schwarzer was presenting on Damascus steel at a Jim Batson hammer-in. Gary Runyon was working for Allegheny Technology and had access to nickel powder. Runyon was attempting to get nickel powder to stick to cable to produce a nickel-infused cable Damascus. Schwarzer suggested that he put it in a piece of pipe so that the powder could not escape. In the early 90’s Schwarzer had his signature cut out with wire EDM and was attempting to stuff thin nickel sheet around the signature but it was not working. He contacted Runyon to acquire nickel powder and poured that around the wire-cut signature instead.

Image from [6]

Pelle Billgren was the CEO of Söderfors [7], a division of Erasteel, a producer of powder metallurgy steel. I wrote about the history of powder metallurgy steel in this article. Billgren visited bladesmith Kay Embretsen who produced Damascus steel using traditional methods. They decided together to develop a method using the powder metallurgy steel to produce a Damascus steel product. This method relies on “hot isostatic pressing” of two or more steel powders to produce relatively large billets in different patterns. They submitted a patent application in Sweden in the beginning of 1994 [8]. This product was branded as Damasteel and is still sold today.

Benchmade Knife with a Damasteel Odin Heim blade. Image from [9]

Hank Knickmeyer is another USA bladesmith that started using powder in the early 1990’s. Knickmeyer had heard about the use of powder from Steve Schwarzer and Daryl Meier. Knickmeyer credits Daryl Meier for teaching him many patterning techniques when he got started with Damascus steel. Knickmeyer was aware of the wire EDM work being done by Meier and Schwarzer but felt it was too expensive to be worth it. Knickmeyer had been experimenting with the use of different steel shapes and odd pieces in canister Damascus but needed a filler in between the pieces. He started with steel “sandblasting grit” to fill in the pieces. Hank says that he is most proud of the way that he used “distortion” of the bars of steel as he forged them to make unique and interesting patterns. Hank told me that he presented the use of this powder method at the 1994 ABANA conference in St. Louis. He suggested that I attempt to find a list of presenters from that conference to check his dates. The summary of the 1994 conference did not list Knickmeyer’s name though it was a summary of the highlights, not a full list of presenters. So if powder Damascus was presented there it apparently wasn’t a highlight (Ha!). I did find, however, that Knickmeyer presented at the 1995 conference of the Florida chapter of ABANA where he discussed mosaic Damascus.

Hank Knickmeyer “Butterflies and Flowers” Damascus steel in the Best Collaboration knife at the 2008 Blade Show. Image from BladeGallery [10]

Ed Schempp was experimenting with different powder metals around 1996 where he tried some unusual combinations like canister Damascus with solids and powder nickel. He also later attempted some stainless steel powder mixed with tungsten carbide. Sources for powder steel were rare at this time. The first iron-based powder he purchased was “reduced iron” which is produced for fortifying breakfast cereal and other foods. It was purchased in a 750 pound drum so it was split between Ed Schempp, Devin Thomas, and a few others. Because this was iron it had insufficient carbon for good hardness and contrast after etching in acid. So they were adding graphite to increase the carbon content of the iron. The graphite was lighter than the iron so it tended to float to the top. Schempp added WD-40 to the graphite so it would stick to the iron and better mix through. Schempp also made a competition chopping knife using 1084 and 3V powders along with 15N20 and roller chain. He successfully cut 7 pieces of free hanging rope with the knife.

Knife by Ed Schempp using Damascus steel produced using 1084/15N20 and powders of 4600E/1084/1018. Image from BladeGallery [11]

Cheaper, Simpler Image Techniques

Devin Thomas used long pieces of nickel sheet to form different shapes and then fill them with powder. This provided a cheaper method than the use of wire EDM blocks for producing images. Relatively intricate designs can be produced this way without expensive wire EDM.

Gifs created from YouTube video [12]

A Knife produced by William Henry Knives (circa 2000) which was one of four pieces commissioned by Billy F. Gibbons of ZZ Top. The Damascus steel was produced by Devin Thomas using nickel sheet and steel powder which has the letters “ZZ TOP” forwards and backwards.

Devin made a piece of Damascus with a fish in it using his nickel sheet and powder method and showed it at Rick Dunkerley’s hammer-in in 1997. Dunkerley is one of the original members of the “Montana Mafia” which included Shane Taylor, Barry Gallagher, and Wade Colter. The four had been producing a range of different mosaic Damascus steel patterns and the use of powder offered new possibilities. At Dunkerley’s 1998 hammer-in he presented how to produce mosaic Damascus using nickel sheet and powder. Rick Dunkerley produced a knife for the 1999 Blade show using powder steel and nickel sheet for the Damascus. At that time Dunkerley only knew of one other person who had produced a knife using powder (Schwarzer). So despite the use of powder by Schwarzer and Knickmeyer in the early to mid-90’s, it hadn’t really begun to build in popularity until about 1998 or 1999.

Dunkerley’s first powder steel Damascus knife. Image provided by Eric Eggly of PointSeven Studios

Another powder Damascus knife produced by Dunkerley. The inset piece in the handle is fish Damascus produced by Devin Thomas described earlier in the article. Image provided by Eric Eggly of PointSeven Studios.

Steel Choices and Sources for Powder

Before the mid-90’s, there were a variety of steels being used in Damascus such as W1, 1095, 5160, 52100, A203e, and others. There was no wide agreement about the appropriate steels to use, and forge welding could be difficult with all of those different steels with varying compatibility. Rick Dunkerley tells me that Devin Thomas began encouraging people to switch to 1084 and 15N20 because they were easier to forge weld and very compatible for forging and heat treating. 15N20 has a similar carbon content to 1084 but with a 2% nickel addition to provide contrast after etching. When stock for Damascus steel became regularly supplied by people like Jeff Carlisle of Swains Spring Service, 1084 and 15N20 became the standard choices.

After learning about powder Damascus from Rick Dunkerley, Jeff Carlisle acquired 1084 and 4600e powders to sell to any Damascus makers that wanted to use it. 4600e was similar to 15N20 so it was easy to use for Damascus steel makers that were using 1084 and 15N20 sheet of plate in their Damascus. Bob Kramer found the source for 4600e that Carlisle began purchasing for sale to Damascus steel makers. Because of the ubiquity of 1084 and 15N20, 1084 and 4600e were easy choices as alternatives to the prior sheet and bar stock. Somewhat later Kelly Cupples also became a popular supplier of powder and sheet for Damascus steel.

Teaching of Mosaic Damascus and Powder Methods

Many of those I interviewed expressed how much of a collaborative atmosphere there was at this time in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. There were many small discoveries related to Damascus steel patterning techniques and who offered each one is a bit difficult to track down now. There were several hammer-ins at the shops of different people like Ed Schempp, Rick Dunkerley, Shane Taylor, Jim Batson, and John Davis. There was a lot of sharing between Damascus steel makers at that time leading to rapid growth of different techniques. I obtained a copy of “Hammer Doodles” by Joe Olson (thanks John Davis) where Joe illustrated demonstrations from several different Damascus steel makers between 1997 and 1999, which you can see here: Hammer Doodles. His illustrations included humor and some good information on making steel, to boot.

Many other Damascus steel makers at this time began experimenting with powder and offering their own tweaks to the process, people such as John Davis, Gary House, and Robert Eggerling along with those mentioned so far. John Davis sent me a photo of a knife he made in 2000 where he made a lion using nickel sheet and it won “Best Damascus” at the 2000 Oregon Knife Collectors Association show. So it was pretty shortly after Dunkerley’s knife that others were making their own.

John Davis Mosaic Damascus knife from 2000

With teaching of powder techniques being more widespread and easy availability of powders to use, the number of Damascus makers using powder and nickel sheet grew rapidly. One of the most impressive users of nickel sheet and powder for “picture Damascus” is Cliff Parker, which you can see an example of below:

Cliff Parker mosaic Damascus knife. Images from BladeGallery [13]

Laser Cut and Waterjet Cut Images

Matt Diskin saw a presentation of powder Damascus produced with powder and thin sheets and first tried using a similar method. However, Diskin had learned CAD in college and was familiar with laser cutting and waterjet methods. He used laser cutting to cut shapes out of sheet steel and then stacked them on top of each other and then filled that with powder. Matt tells me that he first produced steel using an elephant that he cut out. Because of the much lower cost of this method when compared with wire EDM other makers were interested like Steve Schwarzer and Shane Taylor. Diskin produced plates for several of those makers. Diskin’s favorite was Shane Taylor who did interesting and unique images like dragons which you can see below:

Image from BladeGallery [14]

Use of Powder in Other Pattern Types

Powder isn’t only used for the creation of images. Perhaps its most common use is as filler material when making Damascus with bicycle chain or ball bearings. While images were an exciting new possible use for patterning in Damascus, powder offers other more subtle patterning techniques. The use of powder continues in a range of different Damascus pieces. Powder is applicable in any situation where it is difficult or impossible to fill steel in between other types of “solid” steel stock.

Summary and Conclusions

Damascus steel has greatly grown within the knifemaking community since the 1970’s when it first gained popularity. Patterning techniques have evolved to where a large range of possibilities are available, from simple random to complex mosaic patterns. The use of powder is a fun one to cover for my site since I like to discuss different material types and creative uses of steel for knives. There are many people who contributed to the level of mastery we see today among the greatest Damascus steel makers. Understanding the development of these processes and the methods that are used in making more complex pieces means that future Damascus steel producers will be able to take Damascus to further heights. And buyers will have a greater appreciation of the knives that they purchase and the work that the maker put into it.

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[1] Dunkerley, Rick. “His Forge Burns Hot for Mosaic Damascus.” Kertzman, Joe, ed. Blade’s Guide to Making Knives. Krause Publications, 2005.

[2] http://www.culverart.com/Word%20Damascus%20Gun-Barrel%20Patterns.pdf

[3] http://www.meiersteel.com/

[4] https://blademag.com/knife-collecting/the-american-flag-custom-damascus-knife-made-for-president-george-h-w-bush

[5] http://www.steveschwarzer.com/images/ss-knf-pic-9.htm

[6] Schwarzer, Steve. “The History and Presentation of Mosaic Damascus.” Kertzman, Joe, ed. Knives 2019. Gun Digest Books, 2019.

[7] https://damasteel.se/about-us/

[8] Billgren, Per, and Kaj Embretsen. “Sätt vid framställning av en sammansatt metallprodukt.” Sweden Patent 503422, issued June 10, 1996.

[9] https://damasteel.se/inspiration/folding-knives-benchmade/

[10] https://www.bladegallery.com/shopexd.asp?id=86341

[11] https://www.bladegallery.com/shopexd.asp?id=837

[12] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrGJLunpHC4

[13] https://www.bladegallery.com/shopexd.asp?id=2436

[14] https://www.bladegallery.com/shopexd.asp?id=1088