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Yes, my apologies, I did not mean to detract from the thoroughness of your article, which was excellent as always. Just my frivolous thoughts.

Almost looks like a surgeon's or mortician's knife, though I'd expect either to be more highly finished.

Yes, no do doubt, I just found it amusing that a "hot new steel" (maybe) should turn out to be grandpa's go to home engineering steel.

Interesting that this steel seems to be identical to old spec UK silver steel (EN BS1407, I think?), the new spec being aka 1.2210, which has the addition of Vanadium. I prefer the new spec, which I buy from Bohler-Uddeholm, proprietary name K510. The vanadium seems to make it pretty fool proof...

Belated happy birthday, a bountiful year ahead, and many thanks for your tip top metallurgy essays

That's the very thing I'm talking about! I noticed this years ago, but my understanding of heat treatment is more along the lines of practice rather than theory, so I always put it down as a mystery. Seems hard to believe that the difference in appearance is down to something other than grain size?

I'm not questioning the integrity of your HT! Rather, it’s a mystery to me why the grains are (or appear to be!) bigger in the unhardened part. I had indeed genuinely believed the grains were a different size, though the grain size in the "parent phase" would seem immaterial as, having undergone...

Next time snap it across the unhardened bit, too. You will see the the grain is bigger.

Alloy banding only in the unhardened section? The grain will be big there too. Don't ask my why!

Firstly, thank you again Larrin for another great article! In my experience richer alloy carbon steels such as 1.2519 are very much more resistant to grain growth than relatively low alloy stuff like EN9 (which I guess is equivalent to 1060??), which I guess is unsurprising. Personally I cannot...

Thank you for your reply, very informative!

Okay, but in what way are Takefu Steel's carbons much much minor? I mean, not just minor, but much much minor?

In what way??

I think there is some confusing of Takefu the municipality with Takefu Knife Village (whether there are knives made in Takefu the town that are not coming out of the Knife Village I don't know) with Takefu Special Steel Co. There seems to be further confusion in the understanding of generic and...

Well, unless it is information coming directly from Takefu Special Steel Co., I guess it is hearsay. Buuuut.... My version of hearsay comes directly and explicitly from the distributor of Takefu steel in my country, and that is that the vtoku is a proprietary steel very similar to the Hitachi...

The Aogami Super products I've had from Takefu used Hitachi AS. To my knowledge Takefu Special Steel Co. are producers of laminates and stockholders rather than steel producers, per se.

I have to give respect to my brother smiths trying to earn their crust wherever they are in the world, and I think dismissing the work of an entire nation as "junk" is disrespectful and not particularly intelligent. Pakistani Damascus billets are cheap and cheerful, you get what you pay for...

Cool article, thank you. I remember reading about Richtig in (I think) that article on Bob Kramer in the New Yorker some years back.

I'm a bladesmith, not a cook, and these are observations on the use of hammers, not cleavers, so these points will hopefully apply to some degree, but may be totally irrelevant, but in my experience of hammer usage in my trade, fatigue can come from: -Squeezing the handle -Relying on one joint...

A friend of mine bought some, it was fine for cladding. In his case it was not a waste of time because the billet was sound. Maybe he was lucky, maybe that particular vendor (maker?) has consistently good billets. I don't know, but I do know that making Damascus is expensive, and buying billets...