My first forge and canola heat treat blades test really close in hardness to my current kiln heat treat blades in commercial. My suspicion is, like with other low alloy steels, that overshooting temps will reduce toughness. I don't have a way to measure that, but there are no obvious performance differences. My one and only one attempt at welding a Damascus billet was with 80CrV2 and 15N20, which welded beautifully, with no flux.