According to Red Label Abrasives, Damascus steel extracts its distinct properties from a high carbon content. It’s produced by fusing different metals — like nickel and vanadium — into one lethal alloy that can withstand significant wear and tear over a long period of time. It takes a careful and meticulous process of forging, heating, quenching (cooling), and tempering (reheating) the material over and over again; a process that few blacksmiths had the patience or expertise to execute, as TIME reports.
Legend tells that swords made from Damascus steel grew stronger and stronger with each life they took, though there’s (obviously) little in the way of scientific sensibility to support this claim. “By ritual, you repeat what you did,” Wadsworth shared after his findings. “That leads to a lot of theories about these swords being quenched into [the bodies of] slaves, to transfer the strength of the slaves to the sword” (via TIME).
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