Folded
Steel Kitchen Knives
Folded Steel is a type of
steel made for extremely strong and usually flexible
blades.
The method of folding
steel has been around for about 2000 years. Starting
in Syria
(giving it the name Damascus Steel) and quickly
moving to the far east: Japan, China and so on.
Today the best folded
steel knives are made in Japan.
The basic way of folding
steel is by using a forge to heat the steel to very
high temperatures,
thus making it soft, then hammering the steel to
make it flat and folding it over itself like when
you fold a piece of paper.
After that the process is
done again as many times as necessary.
What this process does is
give the steel many layers of metal making it
flexible and very strong. When the steel is hammered
the molecules line up in rows making the steel even
stronger.
The flexibility of the
blade makes it unbreakable when falling or hitting
other materials.
The more layers on the
blade, the knife is stronger.
Note that no all folded
steel knives are good quality.
It is possible to fold
almost any metal, but not all metals are strong
enough to make quality blades.
The steel compound is
extremely important to the quality of the blade.
When you look at a
Damascus blade, or folded steel you can see layers
on the blade, this is called a variegated surface.
The layers you see are
usually steel and carbon layers one on top of the
other.
When creating a valuable
blade the metal smith adds several other ingredients
which add strength, flexibility and durability to
the metal. Some of these elements may include
Carbon, Molybdenum, Cobalt, Vanadium and Chromium.
When these elements are
added in a certain order and in the right compound
amounts the blade becomes virtually indestructible
and extremely adept for production of Chef knives
and other types of blades.
There are many blades out
there which are folded, but the metals which are
used are scrap metals which depreciate the quality
and value of the blades.
There are several types of
patterns used for blade making. These are called
Damascus Patterns.
Here are images of the
most popular, but the possibilities are endless.
Making folding metal an art in itself.
Random Damascus Pattern
Ladder Damascus Pattern
Feather Damascus Pattern
Persian Damascus Pattern
Serpent eye or Snake eye Pattern
All the patterns have
the same strength and flexibility.
View Sakura chef knives made from real folded steel
