Damascus or Pattern Welded Steel

Commonly called Damascus steel, pattern welded steel is the forge welding of different types of steel with different elemental content to give a stylised pattern. With dark and light sections of the metal being higher and lower nickel content among other things. True Damascus steelmaking was lost, originally made in early Syria during the 4th century. This steel has been described in many magical ways with stories of bending around corners, amazing edge retention while being soft and supple. Obviously, most stories are exaggerated but compared to the techniques at the time, it was of the highest quality. There has been a resurgence of developing the method again with people within Australia starting a wootz society where they smelt their own mixtures of metal to find the right quantities. Pattern steel is commonly now used for appearance and has no real strengthening or integrity purposes. The patterns can be simple lines to amazing feathers, crosses, anything you can imagine can nearly be made.