ALL THINGS BUDGET KNIVES

I love the Harnds Talisman. I got the older version in AUS-8 a few years back. The ergonomics are fantastic. The fit and finish are good. The action was incredible for the price. While AUS-8 isn’t amazing, it was okay for the $30-ish I paid back then.

I recently picked up the 14C28N version. The steel upgrade is nice and there are a few other minor changes. Unfortunately, one of the screws is stuck on mine and I can’t disassemble it for a more thorough inspection. I don’t know if it is thread-locker or what but it spins freely and is flat on the other side.

Definitely check out Civivi. They are arguably the best bang for the buck in this price range. Their 9Cr18Mov gets an incredible heat treatment and has noticeably better edge retention than the same steel from other manufacturers. That also goes for the Sencut knives, which are also made by WE. I got the Sencut Snap with wood scales. It is my favorite budget knife of the year so far.

A little beast review:

Review: Chinese Knives: Review With Armour Needle (WA-070BK)

Camillus # 11 Barlow around 1948 according to their catalog . Nice for $ 18 .

That’s a beauty! Something about it really speaks to me… but then, saw it’s a fixed blade. If it was a folder, I’d be on it. Nothing against fixed, as I’ve got 2 of them, but they’re too bulky to carry for EDC use. Still, this design would be super in a nice liner lock or axis lock folder.

Amazing work. Been away a while but my god man you make nice stuff!

Hoping someone can help translate this. There’s a place here in Australia selling fixed blade with the following info which means nothing to me. Comes with a handle hand carved from a camels bone.

Blade: Full Tang Damascus steel (300-500 layers, 9-13 folds. Hardness: 56-57)

It it good?

You definitely want full tang, so that's good.

I don't know Damascus steel that well to know if a hardness of 56-57 is any good.

I usually buy knives with a hardness of 57-60, but Damascus steel is something different.

(I also don't know anything about camel's bone.)

How much is the knife, and how big is it?

If you like the design and if it cuts and you want to pay its price then it might be good.

It looked good but I hesitated and now sold out :slight_smile:

https://pepnimble.com.au/collections/hunting-survival-knives

Edit: Thanks for the feedback though :+1:

I have heard that real Damascus does not exist anymore. The steel was made a long time ago in Syria by some special casting process. And the end result was some steel with very high carbon content, so the hardness was probably higher than 56.
But today’s “Damascus” is just some plates welded between them…

look on youtube or instagram and search for forging damascus steel, you will see how a lot of artists still create them using modern techniques, essentially folding multiple metal over and over to create the pattern. They are very pretty, and labor intensive, thus expensive. Its not welding, nor is it meant to be super strong/sharp (it can be strong and sharp for most application nonetheless). Modern knowledge and technology tell us purity and consistency will give us a more uniformed blade, so the pattern is mainly just for looks. Old blade that’s “damascus” can’t possibly beat modern knowledge, unless you believe in ancient alien :slight_smile:

Damascus steel does not exist, a real Damascus pattern is created by the folding and hammering of any steel. This endless hammering of the steel was the old way of getting impurities out of the steel they used back then and made anything they made like that a lengthy and labor-intensive product but in the past the only known way to make the steel strong enough for a top product.

In modern times we have learned to make the steels we use pure and strong in other ways so there’s no need anymore for all this endless labor making our modern-day steel products much more cheaper and even stronger and better than in the old days.

From this story you can already get that making a real Damascus-pattern is very labor-intensive so will never be cheap, not even from China. All cheap knives with fancy pattern’s on it are not real Damascus but just fancy paint jobs on any steel they fancied using. The end result is as good as the maker is trying to make so there’s no reason to believe the patterned steel is any better than any plain steel.

Real Damascus steel is alive & well.
Devin Thomas makes some of the best. And it is not cheap. He supplies mostly Custom Knife makers.

Devin is but one maker of Damascus in the USA.

No, only the super cheap ones are laser etched or paint, most ‘’damascus’’ is normal steel but sandwiched between an aesthetic layer of multiple layers steel just for looks.
You can find many Chinese kitchen knifes like that and they are very good but its rare to find on pocket knifes. Real Damascus is super expensive.

What about like them little Japanese fellas used to make for their swords? Beat ’em silly, fold ’em over, beat ’em silly again, fold again, rinse, repeat, like 1000×? Kinda like phyllo dough but made with steel.

Making one of those swords could easy take half a year of labor from the smith and the polisher, they learned how to make this from the real steel-masters of the ancient world, the Chinese!

I can attest that some of the cheaper ones (not the total bottom end, but on the upper end of ‘cheap’) are made of a folded Damascus-style steel… but despite the availability of high purity steel, they use lower grades. It may look like Damascus, but it’s seriously inferior. You CAN see the contiguous pattern through the spline of the blade and the back end of the tang… not laser etched or painted. There are some sellers overseas who peddle them on eBay, trying to sound like purveyors of old-artisan steel makers who scrape by with producing these for a living. If those makers are real, they’re the bottom of the barrel in that trade. Their wares are mostly crap. You can sharpen them to cut, but they won’t hold an edge well, may even rust, and they’ll be noticeably heavier than you expect. I made this mistake twice and won’t ever again.

Here’s a tip for determining if the blade you are looking at is really layered steel, or just a single slab of steel with an etched pattern. Look at the spline of the blade. If you don’t see the layers on the spline, it’s just etched.