True Damascus Steel

At the recent IBS Show a sharpener picked up our Shoto Shear and accused us that ours was not true Damascus steel. He gave two reasons, one our price was too low (I can't explain that away .. we simple don't over price our shears) and the other that the grain lines did not show up on the inside blade. Since I am not a metallurgist, I could not answer him but I put the question to the factory and got a reply today. This is the explanation:

We imported the Damascus Steel exclusively from the same Japanese factory as Matsusaki in Japan. Matsusaki was the first company to use V 10 Damascus Steel on hair scissors. Today, there are some companies that use "laser engraving" and "chemical erodent" techniques to imitate the effect of the texture of Damascus Steel. These techniques actually will make the texture come out even more in the inner blade. They also call it "Damascus Steel," but it is absolutely not true Damascus Steel at all.
Our V 10 Damascus Steel has 15 layers, which combine hard and soft steel. So the first layer is hard, second is soft, and so on. In addition, you can see the texture on the side of the blade, which runs through the entire blade--all the way to the tip. This is the distinguishing character and feature of using Damascus Steel on hair scissors.
We believe that someone familiar with the metal would recognize our Damascus Steel as genuine. Thus, we believe that the person at the hair show was not a professional in the metal.

I thought that was a good answer. The 15 layers of steel are folded on themselves thus created the thousands of layers found in the V10 Damascus Steel. If you get one of these to sharpen, you may want to send it back to us because of the high cost and risk. However, if you do sharpen it, use a 50 to 55 degree angle and a 15 micron. Take it slow and don;t remove more steel than necessary. Generally these shears just need a light honing to bring back the sharpness. We have not yet seen one seriously nicked. The screw is tough. Although our UFO tool will work on it, because of the precise fit of the screw it is best to use a modified spanner bit on a strong screw driver to put the screw in.