This knife was made for my wife. The blade is a sandwich of Wire rope (crane cable) and a rollerbearing. The roller bearing is a high carbon high Chromium alloy. The Wire rope has been fire welded into a steel bar ( all the wire strands become one solid bar of steel) called wire damascus. Then the bar is cut in half and pieces were welded, one on each side of the rollerbearing core. Making a beautiful knife with the hardness and wear resistance of the rollerbearing core. When the crane cable is acid etched the variation in carbon content show up as light and dark areas. the lighter areas are almost pure iron. the darker areas are high carbon. These variatons occur during the forging and welding process. At the high welding temperatures oxygen in the air burns the carbon out of the steel leaving the surface of each wire strand in the cable almost pure iron (little or not carbon) while the inside of each strand still has the same amount of carbon it had initially. After forging when the steel is ground down with grinders and files the inside layers are exposed bringing the high carbon areas to the surface resulting in the beautiful contasting patterns found in pattern welded steels (commonly called Damascus steel). The guard is wire Damascus also. the guard is faintly etched, but loking closely at it you can see the wood grain look it has. In the photo the wood in the back ground is the sheath, which is made from Black walnut. The knife is sitting on a weathered piece of plywood.