Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I have been posting recent experiments on Facebook and Instagram but was encouraged to share on the forums as well. It has always been my personal belief that stainless steel Damascus is the way of the future in this art, especially with more and more advances in materials science and ever improving blade alloys that can compete with and outperform traditional carbon steels. Most of them just happen to be very difficult to work with. It has been a goal of mine to master the technique and make it practical and viable material to work with. The vast majority of large scale stainless Damascus production is very nice to be sure, but is more like stock footage, or wallpaper, very consistent repetitive patterns primarily used by only stock removal makers. To be clear THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT, there is a lot of exceptional work there by the damascus makers and the knife-makers. BUT in my opinion it lacks the unique characteristics of more complex pattern welds, the blossoming flowers of mosaics or the often desirable distortion of a pattern as it is narrows towards a forged tip. While I have by no means mastered it, here are my recent experiments with AEB-L/304 stainless damascus. I have other double blade steel combination experiments that are not ready for photos yet, once they are I will post them as well.
AS FAR AS I KNOW I am the first one to do this, and by THIS I mean very specifically a ferry-flip style tiling and a 4-way crushed w's in stainless. I could very well be mistaken but I have been interested in this for a long while and have been asking questions and doing research for the last few years and never come across even a hint of this. If there are other makers doing this please post photos I would love to chat with them.
For clarification this is two separate billets, both made of crushed w's. one was ferry flipped the other was 4-way tiled.
William
Thank you for sharing. You are doing outstanding work.
Dan Cassidy
Journeyman Smith
Send an email to Dan
That's really cool, the results look great. I'm curious to see the knives you turn them into.
Jeremy
Jeremy Lindley, Apprentice Smith
Very nice William and very interesting. Please keep us posted on your progress.
As mentioned, this is very interesting. It looks great and has ostensible benefits but I wonder at it's suitability for a blade since all stainless is not the same and the varied combinations and possibilities would have to be factored in. I would assume that all of the above would be considered by the time you reached that stage in the game. Nice work. I know that is not easy.
I have finished two blades with cores laminated in San-Mai style so cutting edge is no longer an issue. 
Wow, that's cool. What's the core steel and how does the heat treat go with all of the different materials? Thanks again for posting all of this, I find it really interesting.
Jeremy
Jeremy Lindley, Apprentice Smith
