Taikun Kamakura Wasei Damascus Steel Katana 41.3"

Taikun Kamakura Handmade Katana Series
Taikun means leader, shogun and Kamakura is the name of the first shogunate, the kamakura shogunate. So Taikun Kamakura means shogunate, kingdom of Kamakura. The last names of these katanas indicate some different elements:

Atsui= hot
Chu-in= chu-in means the time between life and death
Fui= sudden, surprising
Gen= original, primary, important
Hito= (1) bandit (2) human-being , person
Jin= man
Kigo= seasonal
Kirei= pretty, nice, tidy
Sen= (1) thousand (2) wizard, hermit (3) fire, (4) before
Sugoi= terrible, amazing, great
Tan= tongue
Wasei= traditional, Japanese

Damascus Steel

Damascus steel is a steel used in Middle Eastern swordmaking from about 1100 to 1700AD. Damascus swords were of legendary sharpness and strength, and were apocryphally claimed to be able to cut through lesser quality European swords and even rock. The exact technique used to create original Damascus steel is now a matter of historical conjecture.

Damascus swords often had an obvious patterned texture on their surface. Several other steelmaking techniques also result in patterned surfaces, and have often been sold as Damascus steel, Damascened steel and sometimes watered steel. The most common technique for producing these materials is the pattern welding, which is today widely used for custom knife making. Skilled swordmen can manipulate the patterns to mimic the complex designs found in the surface of the original, medieval Damascus steel.

Another theory behind the hardness of Damascus steel is that the steel contains a small amount of vanadium, which would theoretically strengthen the blade.

The original Damascus steel swords may have been made in the vicinity of Damascus, Syria in the period from 900AD to as late as 1750AD. Damascus steel is a type of steel alloy that is both hard and flexible, a combination that made it ideal for the building of swords. It is said that when Damascus-made swords were first encountered by Europeans during the Crussades, it garnered an almost mythical reputation—a Damascus steel blade was said to be able to cut a piece of silk in half as it fell to the ground, as well as being able to chop through normal blades, or even rock, without losing its sharp edge. Recent metallurgical experiments, based on microscopic studies of preserved Damascus-steel blades, have claimed to reproduce a very similar steel via possible reconstructions of the historical process. When forming a batch of steel, impurities are added to control the properties of the resulting alloy. In general, notably during the era of Damascus steel, one could produce an alloy that was hard and brittle at one extreme by adding up to 2% carbon, or soft and malleable at the other, with about 0.5% carbon. The problem for a swordsmith is that the best steel should be both hard and malleable — hard, so as to hold an edge once sharpened, but malleable so it would not break when hitting other metal in combat. This was not possible with normal processes.