My 90-year-old mother was over to visit last night and after dinner I was showing her a set of barrels I recently had refinished by Dale Edmonds.

As she was examining the beautiful black and white pattern and I was explaining as best I knew how Dale did the process she asked, "Why do they call it 'damascus'. Was it invented in Damacus, Syria?"

I said, "Good question, Mom." "I don't know." "I never thought about the origin of the word before."

Please enlighten me as to why damascus steel is so named in order that I can satisfy my mothers curiosity.

Yes. Starting with swords, most likely. Not a stupid question, at all.

Today there is a growing body of evidence that the origin was in India and perhaps Sri Lanka about 100BC, perhaps earlier. They produced a wootz steel. This process was refined over the centuries and in various regions. The common belief is that the crusaders (1100–1300) first coined the term "Damascus Steel". It was a common sword making technique through out the Arabic world at that time. They brought back legends of swords so sharp they could cut a piece of falling silk.

The method of making a damascus blade is very different from that of making barrels. Firearms that used damascus barrels have been around since at least the 17th century. In the later half of the 19th century damascus barrels were seen as a better / stronger alternative to cold rolled tubes with a longitudinal weld. As steel production production improved, coke replaced charcoal, fluid steel became the preferred barrel material. Damascus barrel production required intensive amounts of hand labor in comparison to fluid steel barrels. This was despite the move to mechanization and production lines.

Mothers are very smart. Never forget that

Pete

Since we're on the subject-well sort of. I have observed the term 3 Bell Steel on barrels and in some gun advertisements, I believe it is/was a way of annealling steel to make it more malleable by the use of a hydrogen atmosphere in an oven consisting of 3 units - preheater furnace-desired atmosphere furnace- cooling furnace. This was then basically made into a barrel the same as damascus but without a pattern by forging & hammering a strip of this material around a mandrel. The question is, are my "assumptions" correct and if not please enlighten me? --- John Can.

RevDocDrew, where are you? Hope you haven't left for the BSA/mountains yet. Hope you can reach into your vast rolodex/memory and answer this one. I too have seen the "3-bell" mark and wondered. Best, Dr. BILL

Hey Dr Bill: Just managed to find a computer at Camp Geronimo. Had a nice rain Sun and has cooled down a bit. Fortunately, the Health Lodge has been pretty quiet.
Anyway-will be back on-line Fri and will work on it.
Say 'hi' to the LCers-I can't access the site for some reason

The only silly question is the one you don't ask...
I think PeteM has nailed it; "Damascus" is something of a misnomer, but we continue to use it in deference to centuries of accepted usage and tradition. I understand real damascus has basically been a lost art for centuries. I believe "pattern welded" is a more accurate description for barrels.
RG

Revdocdrew's site is here
revdocdrew

True Damascus (Wootz) has a pattern to it, but is solid steel, not a lamination of iron and steel as is used for barrels and some blades. The term damascus just stuck for any patterned steel.

BTW, the original Damascus art has been reinvented and can be done by modern craftsmen. However, it produces a just so-so blade when compared to modern alloys. Compared to the soft steel/iron blades of the Europeans, it no doubt did seem magic.

Wootz was a great steel of its day but is only equivalent to mild steel today. The original blades were not folded Damascus as we know it today. Somewhere I have a knife mag wherein some makers tried to remake the 2000 yr old blades with varying degrees of success. They were able to sample some old broken blades to try to copy the type of steel structures seen. But they were NOT folded. The term Damascus is used widely and poorly.

Apparently the secret was a combination of the ore the wootz was made from and the blade making technique. Apparently the ore body played out some time before 1800 and the techniques were forgotten when the supply of that steel ran out.

From crystalresearch.com/crt/ab40/905_a.pdf

A number of papers and books have been published on the fascinating legends and excellent properties of
Damascene blades (see, for more recent examples, Refs. [1-5]). Genuine or wootz Damascus blades, known in
Russia as ‘bulat’, were manufactured in medieval Damascus from so-called ‘wootz’ steel which in turn was
made in India and characterised by a typical impurity content. Damascene swords, sabres and daggers became
famous for their hardness, retention of their cutting edge, mysterious secrets of the forging, quenching and
annealing procedures and a beautiful characteristic pattern of light-coloured wavy fine bands over the grey
background of steel. The museum-quality wootz Damascus blades were produced mainly in 16th –17th
centuries. In the early 19th century, the last secrets of the genuine Damascus steel got finally lost, but since that
time several attempts have been performed to rediscover the recipes of achieving blades of comparable quality

Wootz has been reinvented and the secrets of forging unraveled. It is good stuff only in context of when it was made. Modern steels are much better.

The big hitter for Wootz was that it was a naturally occuring alloy that would forge at lower than usual temperatures. Thus, surface carbon burn out was minimized and better than usual edge holding was achieved.