>>2800972>Is Damascus Steel better for knives that you're going to use for /out/?No, it's worse. Damascus steel, tamahagane, foz and all other folded steels are a historic way to deal with low quality steel. You basically knead the metal until all components (especially carbon) are evenly spread, so it won't crack as easily during tempering.
Since some German engineer figured out that blowing oxygen into molten steel could control carbon content almost 200 years ago, that stopped being necessary. Nowadays, perfect folded steels and cheap, off the mill steels are equal, and the moment there's even a minor error in one of the folded steel's welds, it becomes inferior.
Laminated steel is a different matter though. In that, soft and hard steels are welded in such a way that only the edge of the blade turns hard during tempering, which allows for much harder edges than using just one kind of steel. The temperline (hamon, if you're a weeb) that's created that way looks similar to the patterns on damascus.
>>2802076Dunno about prices elsewhere, but here in Germany at least, enough blueing solution for an assault rifle (or two sporting rifles, or ~5 handguns) costs around 30€. You just need to remove th prior finish, degrease (I use isooctane, which is around 10€/l), brush on the blue, let it sit for a while, rinse off and seal (I use molten beeswax, but any wax or thick oil will do, and some people use resin so they only have to do it once).
Only real issue is making sure you actually get blue blueing. Many solutions that are sold as "blueing" will give you a dark brown or almost black result. Basically what traditional rust-blueing would turn into if left in the brine for too long.
