Damascus axe from cheap axe - video

Damascus axe from cheap axe. By Nils Ogren. 22:45 video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA5nTmGnGIY

I watched this twice and clearly I missed how the steel acquires the pattern . Nice work!

Damasc tools are very nice to look at. The blacksmith has to be (as we can see) very profiscient, a master of it's trade. But metallurgically these tools are from the past.
The original german (and probably also french and british) technology of knifes (in the whole 19th century) was to pour already carbon-reduced iron into handy bars (2" wide, 12" long).
Experience showed: If you threw a bar to the ground, it made a special 'clang' depending on the carbon content of the bar.
So to produce a steel ready for the cutlers in Solingen, the blacksmithes (of the County of 'Berg' 40 km to the south-east) blended different sounding bars to just the right carbon content. The only way of blending and homogenizing was to forge/unite the selected bars to one long flat piece, fold it, forge it again, fold it, etc. (kind of mille feuille)
The professional pride of the blacksmithes was that one could NOT SEE / distinguish any layers. Any hints of a 'damasc' pattern were a professional blunder, unsaleable, and went as scrap to the furnace.