Grinding Damascus

CDHumiston

CDHumiston

KNIFE MAKER
I watch a lot of knife making videos and I see some people do almost all of their grinding post heat treat.

Does that go for Damascus as well? How much grinding do most of you do prior to heat treating Damascus? I'm very new to using Damascus and I don't want to ruin an expensive piece of steel...
 
I’ll answer but with the caveat that the following is strictly my opinion, what works for you very well could be different.
First “Damascus” is just steel. I say that meaning that there are no magical properties, and for me I treat it like one or the other parent steels.
Second “Damascus” encompasses an extremely wide range of materials. To answer the question with the most confidence, I personally would need to know the parent metals.
Third, and quite frankly the most important for myself would be the material thickness. 98% of my knives are made from .120 or thinner stock (stock removal). Being that thin I rough grind the profile, drill and/or do any other machining then I heat treat and grid the bevels and refine the profile post heat treat. On the rare occasion I do anything thicker I will occasionally grind the bevels about 75% leaving roughly .050 on the edge. Not an exact science, it just makes the post heat treat grinding a touch easier.
Bottom line from my bench is this. Either way you choose to go there are hundreds not ways prior and hundreds of ways post, to ruin your piece. This particular decision won’t likely make or break the entire project.
Just my two cents.
 
Kev said:
I’ll answer but with the caveat that the following is strictly my opinion, what works for you very well could be different.
First “Damascus” is just steel. I say that meaning that there are no magical properties, and for me I treat it like one or the other parent steels.
Second “Damascus” encompasses an extremely wide range of materials. To answer the question with the most confidence, I personally would need to know the parent metals.
Third, and quite frankly the most important for myself would be the material thickness. 98% of my knives are made from .120 or thinner stock (stock removal). Being that thin I rough grind the profile, drill and/or do any other machining then I heat treat and grid the bevels and refine the profile post heat treat. On the rare occasion I do anything thicker I will occasionally grind the bevels about 75% leaving roughly .050 on the edge. Not an exact science, it just makes the post heat treat grinding a touch easier.
Bottom line from my bench is this. Either way you choose to go there are hundreds not ways prior and hundreds of ways post, to ruin your piece. This particular decision won’t likely make or break the entire project.
Just my two cents.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. I'm just looking for other opinions, as I use Stainless Steel almost exclusively. I make a lot of kitchen knives with steel in the .100 to .060 range. I do my profile and drilling pre heat treat and all my other grinding post.

The Damascus I'm using is from Alabama Damascus and it's all .165 or thicker. I've already ground one Bowie blade with profile and bevels and drilled it. The other blades are much smaller but of the same thickness. Here is a picture of the one I'm planning on heat treating as is...

20230312_154101.jpg20230312_154111.jpg
 
My equation is .125 and thinner I profile, drill holes, HT then grind. Thicker than .125 I normally do some rough grinding prior to HT. I really prefer to do my grinding post HT when I can no matter what steel I am using. I just like it better.
 
Thanks everyone! I'll see how the Bowie goes and most likely do some rough grinding on all the blades prior to heat treat.
 
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