Lamination & Core Steel pics

Stefan asked me to shoot a couple of pictures of this Carter deba's spine (before I cleaned it up) to share with you guys. For those who haven't seen this before what you're looking at is a carbon steel core sandwiched between two slices of stainless steel. The carbon core has slightly patina'd where the stainless hasn't, this shows the core easily because of the contrast between the two steel types and how they react with acids.

Nice thick slab of carbon in there

Cool!

Interesting, its is a thick carbon/cladding ratio. Thinking about it that makes sense as the bevel on the deba is fairly steep. If it was a flat ground knife the weld line would be way up the knife.

Unless he forged the bevel into the blade.

Very true, I forgot about that

SpikeC said:

Unless he forged the bevel into the blade.

Click to expand...

According to Jason (I think that was Carter's assistants name), Carter doesn't forge the bevels into his knives. I personally thought that I had seen Carter mention somewhere else that he DID do this, but according to Jason, he doesn't. These pics though fit right in with what Carter says he typically uses as far as metal ratios. I think he said he usually aims for 30/40/30 on his blades. On top of that, it is my understanding that Carter doesn't forge weld the stainless and carbon layers himself. He uses blade stock that already comes forge welded, then welds that to shape. He doesn't do this with his Kuouchi and Japanese Pro lines - these lines are forge welded himself with soft steel (gokunan-tetsu) and white steel (#1 for his Japanese Pro line, he doesn't specify which for his Kurouchi line).