Visitors to the forge ask the same question: is the Damascus pattern just for show? Partly. But the folding started for a reason, and the reason still matters.
Clean steel
Old Japanese steel was smelted in clay furnaces and full of slag. Folding it, again and again, squeezed the impurities out and spread the carbon evenly. Modern steel arrives clean — but the folding still gives the cladding a fine, tough structure around the hard core.
Why stop at six
Six folds give sixty-four layers. Fold again and the layers become so thin that they blur into one another in the fire, and the pattern disappears. Sixty-four is the most we can make and still see.
Add the hard core and the two outer skins and you have the number on our letterhead: sixty-seven.
