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It sure would be fun to know what the original damascus blacksmiths ‘knew.’ They had a model for metal and it let them make amazing blades. So many things had to be done just right.
I think modern science knows everything about their metallurgy and weve figured out their process but we also look at the problem entirely different from them. I dont think they even knew what tungsten and vanadium were.
To me a damascus blade means more than just folded metal that makes a pattern. Ive heard the pattern comes from holding the steel at exactly the right tempersture for a long time and the metal migrates to form the layers. The dark metal is hard and brittle crystal austentite and the other stuff is softer.
Those old blades are like the antikythera mechanism of metallurgy - it kinda sort of indicates these old timers knew more than we suspected, certainly they made due with less theory.
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