Thanks for the correction. When I said there was no such thing as stainless Damascus, I was relying on information I got from knife nerds a long time ago. I didn't know people had come up with ways of doing it. That being said, Shun knives are not ordinary Damascus. They are stainless cores with a few layers of different stainless welded on for show. Ordinarily, Damascus is folded all the way through. Shuns have some kind of weird marriage of san mai and factory-welded layers of stainless which serve no purpose except to look nice. They could have gone with straight san mai and saved everyone money.
It's a marketing gimmick. It doesn't make the knives better. They are extremely fragile. They are harder than most knives, but this is pointless and counterproductive because in order to make them hard, Kershaw has to make them very brittle.
Anyone can make an extremely hard, brittle knife. I could make one tomorrow afternoon.
Most companies deliberately avoid making super-hard knives because they don't want their customers to send back broken blades. A 58 RC knife that can take normal use and even some abuse is far superior to a 61 RC knife you have to keep in an incubator.
I can drop my stamped $18 knives on the floor, put them in the dishwasher, and throw them in a drawer piled on top of each other. They will never chip, and they will still cut like razors after a few passes over a cheap hone I inherited from my mother in 1997.
Real Damascus, whatever pedants may decide that is, is also a gimmick. I know people don't like hearing that. It's a backward technology that can't compete with modern steels. It doesn't make the best knives. Just the prettiest and most expensive.
I spent $80 on a Shun santoku, and they are now going for more than twice that. It had a slippery, uncomfortable handle. Pieces fell out of the edge. I had to be careful how I stored it. It was a really stupid buy, so I got rid of it and took a 100% loss.
I had a Shun vegetable cleaver. The balance was terrible. The blade shape was no good for anything. It was too heavy for vegetables and too light for meat. I never used it.
I have a big, expensive cleaver made by some other Japanese factory. I'll bet a new one costs $400 now. Useless. I can't put it in the dishwasher. The handle is wooden, so it will never be as clean or durable as plastic. Even though it has a heavy, cumbersome blade, I can't use it on meat because bones will break the wimpy super-hard edge. I wrapped it in newspapers when I moved 6 years ago, and it is still wrapped, because it's worthless. I have no idea what to do with it. I should take it to Goodwill.
If there is a possibility I can dissuade other people from doing stupid things I've done with my money, I'll certainly try. I hate to see anyone conned by dubious characters like Alton Brown. My cheap knives have been a joy to me. Zero problems. Zero, zero, zero. I have maybe $150 in the whole bunch. That's less than the price of one snob knife.