I Bought Two Cheap Damascus Chefs knives From Amazon And Couldn’t Believe What I Received..

Category: Knife Review

Tags: Damascusknivesqualitysteeltesting

Entities: 10 CR-15 COOVDamascus knivesDr. Laren ThomasShanzooVG10

Transcript

00:00

If you've watched this channel for a while now, you'll know that I have not had very good experiences with cheap Damascus knives. It pretty much just bent and stayed bent.

>> But it's Damascus, man. >> So, the other day when I was looking on Amazon and noticed quite a few of these cheap Damascus kitchen knives, I couldn't help but wonder, do they

00:16

actually have good edge retention? Way more than I was expecting.

Are they actually 60some HRC? Pretty dag low.

Is the geometry actually that thin? I mean, that's that's kind of ridiculous.

Are they actually Damascus?

00:34

Basically, are they actually good knives or just cheap junk? >> It's like I mean, >> just like the rest of the cheap Damascus stuff that I've tested, it it's junk.

So, I bought a couple to find out and they were not what I was expecting.

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That is actually way sharper than I thought it was going to be. So, what did I buy?

Well, despite some odd marketing claims, blade is sharpened by sharp and robust grinding method with thin and sharp edge terminology I've never heard of. G10 core hardness despite being a knife maker and working in the knife

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industry for almost a decade. What are you doing making Damascus?

Against my better judgment, I bought these two Damascus kitchen/chefs knives for seemingly a really great price. I bought this Shanzoo 8 inch

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chef's knife for $69.99 and this unknown brand, which may or may not be available anymore, for $59.99. Figures.

Now, I bought these things randomly with my own money. And because there's hundreds, if not thousands of these things with different branding on Amazon, I'll link

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to the exact knives below for reference purposes. Now, I do have to admit that I came into this review completely biased.

I thought that based on my previous experiences with cheap Damascus knives, I had to have it. And here it is.

>> It smells horrible. That these were

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gonna suck. >> Is this even steel?

>> However, right out of the box, my first impressions were surprisingly amazing. >> That is That is really sharp.

>> These things came extremely sharp. Like some of the sharpest knives that I've ever seen straight from the factory.

And

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I've seen a lot. These are some of the sharper knives that I've seen from the factory.

And the fact that these knives came extremely sharp is always a good sign. And looking at the factory edges up close reveals a completely burr-free apex, which is very surprising.

But

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speaking of factory, so where exactly are these things really made? Well, I couldn't find any info on either of these as to where they're actually made.

Despite numerous references to Japan, I don't believe either of these two knives are made in Japan. with one knife claiming to use an actual VG10 core

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steel, which is a Japanese-made steel. The other knife claims it's forged from Japanese Damascus 10 CR-15 COOV, which is actually a Chinese steel.

So, basically, we have the black handle knife referencing Japan multiple times, but is being made with a Chinese steel.

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And we have the brown handled knife with no reference to Japan anywhere, but is claimed to be made with VG10, a Japanese steel. I mean, who freaking knows?

And are they actually Damascus? Well, I'll get to that in a second.

Now, one major claim both of these knives and others

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alike make is the near 60 HRC hardness with it literally being printed on one of the knives themselves. Now, both of these knives give a plus or minus 2 point HRC range, which means that these could be anywhere from 58 to 62 HRC and

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still be within spec. Now, that's a big difference since the Rockwell hardness scale isn't a linear scale.

However, given the price of these knives, if we're even close to that 60 HRC range, I'll be happy. So, what do they actually measure?

Well, there's a problem and

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also a small discovery along the way. Now, when I tested the hardness on these, I got very low readings in the mid 40 HRC range, which is very low.

But I can only test these things up here along the spine of the knife. Now, I could not test these down near the

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cutting edge for the simple reason that the grind is too thin, which I'll get to in a minute. You need a minimum thickness to get an accurate reading on the HRC tester.

Now, this did tell us something, but I'll also get to that in a minute. Now, I did test this on my HRC

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tester down by the edge. You can see the dimple right there.

And if it's too thin, what'll happen is is that it'll simply poke through the other side. So basically the HRC testing that I was able to do on my HRC tester wasn't super accurate.

But what I

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can do is actually use hardness testing files to get an estimate of the actual edge or apex hardness. Basically, hardness testing files come in varying hardnesses and you skate them along the surface to see which file stops digging

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into the surface that you're testing. Since soft stuff won't cut harder stuff, when a file starts to dig into the edge, you know that that file of known hardness is harder than the knife edge that you're testing.

The problem is that these files only come in five HRC point

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ranges. So, it's not super accurate, but it will give you an idea if you are 45 HRC or closer to 60 HRC.

60

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I think it's really close. We'll do 65.

Yeah, that definitely digs in. So, this knife, I think, is really close to 60.

Oh, I think this knife might be a touch

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harder. It skates it just a tiny bit better than the other knife.

And 65 will definitely Yeah, 65 definitely digs in. So, I think this knife is also around 60 HRC, maybe a touch higher.

So, my estimate after testing both of these

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knives for hardness is that both of these knives are very close to 60 HRC, which is surprisingly good. Now, for comparison purposes, this is our control, a $14 laser etched fake Damascus pattern knife I bought from Walmart.

This knife also tested very low

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on the HRC tester along the spine about 50 touch under 51. But with follow-up testing along the edge, I believe that this hardness reading is accurate since my 50 HRC testing file was starting to dig into the surface.

It's feeling like

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it's digging in at around 50. 55 definitely digs in.

So, I think that the HRC tester on this knife is actually correct. So testing this $14 fake Damascus knife and having both the HRC tester and testing files read almost identical further reinforces our

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previous results. So what about edge retention?

Well, I tested that using both rope and cardboard. And to spare you endless rope cutting and cardboard cutting banter, here are the results.

First, for the purist out there, I sharpened everything to the same angle at 20° per side. I also made sure that

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everything was hair whittling sharp before each test so that everything was as close to the same sharpness as possible. On the rope cutting test, the cheap $14 fake Damascus knife cut 75 rope cuts before dulling to a point it wouldn't cut paper.

Next, we have the Blackhandle

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Shanzoo knife cut 300 cuts before it stopped cutting paper, which was very surprising. Next, we had the probably unavailable brown handle knife, which I'll still link below, cut 700 rope cuts before not cutting paper, which is an

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insane result. For the cardboard test, I taped off approximately 3 in of blade length and cut dimensional cardboard pieces until they wouldn't shave arm hair.

I know, super scientific. Now, the cheap fake Damascus knife cut 10 cuts before it stopped shaving.

Now, both of our Damascus kitchen knives cut 25 cuts

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each before they wouldn't shave. Definitely not bad.

Now, I don't know why we got identical results here and not on the rope test for both of these knives. There could definitely be a lot of reasons as to why, but I won't get into that in this video.

But I think the main takeaway here is that both of these

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knives actually have pretty good edge retention for their price. Now, out of curiosity, I also tested a knife in Rex 45 steel, which is very high on the edge retention chart, and it tested about 45 cardboard cuts before it stopped shaving.

So again, I think this goes to

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show how good both of these knives actually did in these tests. Now, to further this along, the geometry on both of these knives is extremely good.

Both of our Damascus Kitchen knives tested at about 10,000 behind the edge, which for a relatively cheap production knife is

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really good. That's almost twice as thin as our offthe-shelf $14 fake Damascus knife I bought from Walmart.

This thinness makes cutting stuff easier, and it's super evident the second that you start to cut something, like in our rope

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test where the difference between the $14 fake Damascus knife and our sort of real Damascus knives was massive. Did I actually just give away something there?

Thin stuff just cuts better. So, plus some points for geometry.

So, one thing

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that I've noticed right off the bat from switching between these two knives, this is really thin geometry versus really thick geometry, is that in this knife's dull state, it still cuts better than this knife does when it's sharp. Um,

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there's just way less resistance pushing through this rope simply due to the thinness of the blade on that uh thinner Damascus knife. >> Sort of real Damascus.

Finally, are these things actually real Damascus?

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Well, that depends on what your definition of Damascus is. And we are not getting into the whole Damascus debate here in this video.

Damascus steel can only be made in actual Damascus. It was a crucible steel and they lost the actual recipe thousands of years ago.

By modern standards, pattern

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welded steel is in fact Damascus, which is to put simply two different types of steel that have been forge welded together to form some sort of a pattern on the surface. If you want to learn more about Damascus, I'll link to a video down below by Dr.

Laren Thomas of

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Knife Steel Nerds for more info. Now, if modern Damascus is forge welded steel that reveals some sort of a pattern on the surface after polishing or etching, let me show you what Damascus is not.

Damascus is not our $14 fake Damascus

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knife I bought from Walmart. What makes this fake?

Well, the laser etching on the surface to make the pattern is what makes this fake. By modern standards, for Damascus to be real, it would require two different types of steel to be welded together with slightly different chemical compositions in order

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to form a pattern on the surface and not simply printed or etched into the surface using lasers. Now, after looking at these knives under a magnification, it seems to be true.

Both of these knives are using pattern welded steel to form the Damascus pattern that you see.

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Now, remember that discovery I mentioned when hardness testing and also a small discovery along the way? Well, that discovery was that the outer layer or pattern on the surface of these knives is significantly softer than the inner steel core.

Yeah, we're getting a

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reading of 45 HRC. This means that these are not uniform Damascus knives or the entire knife is in fact Damascus, but rather more of a Sani Damascus.

This basically means that the outer pattern

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welded layers are forge welded to an inner core steel. This hardened inner core steel is actually what is heat treated and forms the hard cutting bevel along the edge of the knife.

So to take this further, I took one of the knives to the grinder and ground the pattern

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off of the knife. Rather, I ground through the etch/polish that made the pattern visible.

The pattern is still there. You just can't see it as well.

Now to reaffirm this after grinding I re-etched the blade in feric chloride and this brought the pattern back out

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and made those individual layers visible again. This is because to get visible Damascus one of the steel layers will have a slightly different chemical composition than the other with one of the layers resisting the acid etch slightly more than the other layer.

This

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brings out the visible pattern and distinction between the two different steels. Now the more steel I ground off the knife, the higher up the pattern became.

This means that it is a sanmai or a layered steel construction. Now, to further confirm this, I did something that I didn't want to do because I

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actually really like the knife, but it had to be done. A break test.

And after viewing the snap piece up close, you can clearly see the outside Damascus layers and how they are forge welded to the inner core steel. This is why we are getting those super low hardness

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readings on the spine of the knife. And also, as a quick mention, these softer outer layers make this thing pretty hard to break.

I was very surprised at how much this thing actually bent before breaking.

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So, here's the thing. I have bought loads of stuff over the last several years.

Some of it knife stuff, some of it not. And I've got to say that I have been very disappointed at both the quality and value you get for your money on a lot of things.

But I got to say, I

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am very surprised in this case because these two knives are actually extremely good quality for what you get. They look nice, have great edge retention, the geometry is thin, they actually are very affordable for what you get.

I mean, these are a fantastic value in my

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opinion, but I can't speak to the quality control. Who knows if these same quality standards are across their entire product lines, but other than that, even if these were fake Damascus with laser etched patterns, well, they

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would still make great knives. Color me impressed.

So, I don't know if I'm happy or disappointed.