Damascus San-Mai Knife Making Steel Billet

Hand-forged San-Mai/ Go-mai knife making steel billet. 60 layers of 80crv2 and 15n20 over an 80crv2 core with nickel.  

These billets are intended to be ground to shape, perfect for stock removal makers in pursue of the character you get from hand forged steel, the pattern and the texture that pre laminate steel usually doesn't have. We like to keep the texture on the flats as you can see from the sample pictures but with care to grind symmetrically, it can be flattened. They come as forged and slightly oversize, you will need to grind the edge of the billet back to good material.

All our billets are forged in a zero-atmosphere environment to ensure perfect welds. We pride ourselves in well-centred cores, consistent patterning, and excellent quality steel.

Once heat treated, ground and etched you will see a bright nickel line separating the random/raindrop style Damascus from the jet black core as you can see from the sample pictures. The look can be changed with different polishing and etching processes. The sample piece is sanded to 320 grit, lightly etched and rubbed back with wire wool and already there's a bit of chatoyance. The contrast will be better with a heat treated blank and with better watching and polishing, please take a look at the using our billets page for more information and feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

These billets have been annealed and can be drilled with decent hss drills although we’d recommend carbide-tipped drills.

Heat treat info for 80crv2 billets:

We offer a heat treat service, we cant guarantee billets that have been heat treated by other companies so please check the billets thoroughly before sending off, and make sure you trust the company. Centerline cracks (usually found with dissimilar laminates - stainless and wrought iron) are caused by improper preparation for heat treatment and will not be covered.

Normalize once by heating to 880c and let cool to room temp in air, quench at 850c after a 5-10 minute hold at temp in parks 50 equivalent oil. Temper for 2 x 2-hour cycles at 195c for approximately 61 HRC.

This steel has good toughness and should be durable even at this hardness. Please note these instructions are just guidelines. We recommend testing your finished products to ensure the best results are achieved.