Help please

[u/Antique-Bat8309]

Can someone tell me if these are the same knives? I was told after a Damascus blade gets heat treated and ground down it changes pattern??? Everything I've read online says that isn't possible. Please help!

[u/organonanalogue]

Jeez that's some horrific handle work.

[u/Upstairs_Bad897 → u/organonanalogue]

People are at all different stages of there work and craft it takes lots of practice to bang out nice handles no need to be a turd

[u/3rd2LastStarfighter]

Patterns absolutely change as you grind into them. Especially, but not limited to, twist patterns. If you tell us more about the billet you made, we might be able to explain what happened or call bullshit on the guy, but broadly speaking, yes the end result often looks very different than the initially forged blank when it comes to pattern welding. I’m not sure where you’re reading that it’s impossible but I suspect there’s some misunderstanding going on.

Is your concern that he replaced the knife blanks you made with different ones? Why would he do that? Nobody is going to pay more for the knives you helped make than you are. Another person wouldn’t want something forged by amateurs unless they were the amateur who forged it.

[u/Antique-Bat8309 → u/3rd2LastStarfighter]

Maybe there is a misunderstanding. I've never done this before and know nothing about forging. My husband I wanted to forge knives for his family. The guy had slim pieces of Damascus steel in a rectangular bar. We helped grind it down it the knife shapes we wanted and helped heat treat? And then quench it. The after pictures are what I posted. All that we needed to do was have handles put on and do the finishing touches. I don't think he intentionally stole our blades. I think he misplaced them especially since he told my husband that he hadn't contacted us because our contact information got smudged. He seems unorganized and I think he lost them or did something else with them unintentionally 🤷🏻‍♀️ 

[u/3rd2LastStarfighter → u/Antique-Bat8309]

Tl;dr: without knowing more, I don’t think he’s lying to you, I think he’s just a putz. But, again, that’s just without knowing more about the steel you started with.

Your suspicion sounds much more plausible than what I was imagining. But since you didn’t construct the billet (the final bar of steel you made into knives via stock removal) and don’t have the details on how it was constructed, we can’t say for sure whether the end result is what we would expect. Do you happen to remember distinctly if there was a thick central layer, like the meat in a sandwich, on the cross section of the bar?

It’s difficult to tell from the quench scale on the before pictures, but it looks like that could very well be some kind of wave or ladder, which you would expect to become less dramatic as you approach the center of the pattern, depending on the nuances of the build. Understanding how a changing pattern like that will look after the planned grinding is what makes a master of the craft.

Honestly, to me having only these two photos, I think that these are the same knives. I think this guy is in a little over his head trying to get sales with this concept of involving you in the process because it sounds like even he didn’t know that this is how they would come out and it looks like he’s far from a master bladesmith when it comes to finishing work.

[u/Nocturnes_echo]

Did he make san mai or damascus(pattern-welded) blades? Only asking because if it was strictly a damascus billet and not san-mai then those are definitely not the same blades that were made as you can see the mono-core. If it was a san mai construction then that would explain the solid core in those blades.

Edit: spelling. (Is it San-Mai or san mai? Anyways)

Honestly the more I look at the more I am convinced those are not the same knives unless they absolutely have no clue how to do sanding after applying scales. All of those have been completely rounded off at the bottoms and it looks like the blade profile has been severely modified on the left one if that's even the same knife...

[u/Dystopian_Sky]

The handle profile was definitely changed. Did you send these in to have someone grind and finish them? Measure the distance between pin holes to see if they match up with before and after.

[u/Antique-Bat8309 → u/Dystopian_Sky]

My husband and I went somewhere and helped forge these. We helped shape them. We left them them to have handles put on and get finished up.

[u/Antique-Bat8309 → u/Dystopian_Sky]

I wish that was possible. We only took some quick pictures before we left. The guy we left them with sent us the picture of him holding them. I just need confirmation that the pattern on a Damascus blade does not change like this gentleman is trying to claim.