Why Damascus? The technique of laminating steel
was first seen in Damascus, Syria around 400AD. It was
later adopted by Japanese sword smiths who would fold and
hammer many layers of steel into their blades.
A perfect blade needs to be hard, but also strong and flexible. In many respects,
these features can be contradictory. The cutting edge on Tojiro Knives is made
of extremely hard steel (Rockwell 60° - 62°). This allows the knives
to be sharpened to a more acute angle and to emerge from the factory razor sharp.
If the knives were made solely of this hard steel, however, they would be inflexible
and brittle, breaking easily if dropped or misused.
The solution lies in using the process of lamination to cushion the super hard
inner core by adding outer layers of softer stainless steel. This results in
a knife as flexible and strong as any single layer knife, but with a cutting
edge that is harder, sharper and last longer.
Our Tojiro knives are made of 37 or 63 layers of steel. (Deba knife with 19 layers)
This results in the beautiful Damascene effect - a pattern formed by the many
layers of steel, which is known in Japanese as “kasumi-nagashi” or “floating
mist”.
