[Swordmaker]

The techniques that blended layers of steel with different content was never lost, and that plus the etching gave a tough blade with the beautiful esthetic of the Damascene pattern, but the vanadium provided the hardness to keep an edge and the extra toughness to keep the blade from snapping in the stresses of battle.

Lots of Damascus type blades are being made today out of various pig iron, mixing carbon at smelting, no vanadium. . . They get the same results as the old Damascus Blades. It’s just a careful mixing of types of steel in the forging that results in a good strong blade. The old Damascus blades still had edge problems. The etching had nothing to do with the toughness, although the quenching after heat-treatment would harden the blade. Another probable myth was they were quenched in human slaves. . . The so-called slave swords.

The damascene technique was purely from the forge folding and hammer welding.

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Thanks.

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Just FYI, my source was The Mystery of Damascus Blades, by John D. Verhoeven, Scientific American