Raindrop (Birdseye) Pattern Damascus: Step by Step

Raindrop damascus — also called birdseye or pool-and-eye — covers the blade in concentric rings, like rain hitting still water. If you’ve read the ladder pattern guide, you already know how this works: it’s the identical remove-material-and-flatten trick, with round dimples instead of straight grooves. Each dimple, once the bar is flattened, becomes a bullseye of exposed layers.

Step by Step

1. Start with a solid, flat, high-layer bar. Raindrop loves layer count — 150–300 layers give each drop many fine rings (see the first billet guide for getting there). Forge the bar oversized in thickness; the dimples cost you the same ~1/3 the ladder does.
2. Lay out a staggered grid. Center-punch each dimple location: rows across the bar, each row offset half a step from its neighbor — like bricks, not graph paper. Random placement is a legitimate look (“rain”), but the offset grid is the classic. Spacing of roughly 3/8″–1/2″ between centers suits most blades.
3. Cut the dimples ~1/3 deep. The controlled way: a drill press with a round-nosed (ball-end) bit — a standard twist drill leaves a flat-bottomed hole with a sharp rim that forges into cold shuts. No round-nose bit? A ball-die under a press, or even a ball-peen hammer struck at even depth on hot steel (harder to keep consistent, very traditional). Depth consistency = ring-size consistency, so use the drill press depth stop.
4. Dimple both faces, staggered. Same rule as the ladder: the bottom-face dimples sit between the top-face dimples, never directly opposite, or you create paper-thin spots that blow through during flattening.
5. Flatten the bar. Forge route (pattern runs deeper, survives forging to shape) or grind route (crisper rings, for stock removal) — same tradeoff as the ladder guide covers. If forging, keep the blows flat and even; smearing the dimples sideways turns your raindrops into teardrops (which, to be fair, some makers do on purpose).
6. Finish as usual: profile, grind bevels — noting that the bevel grind slices through drops at different depths, adding variety — then heat treat on the 1084 recipe and etch. Raindrop rewards a slightly deeper etch: the rings gain real topography and catch light beautifully.

Design Notes

Dimple size controls drop size; depth controls how many rings each drop shows; density controls busyness. A sparse scatter of large drops over a fine-layer background is elegant; a dense grid of small drops reads almost like lace. And the combination move — raindrop over a lightly twisted bar — puts rings over flowing rope for serious visual depth.

Sources

• BLADE Magazine — How to Create Damascus Patterns
• Red Label Abrasives — Types of Damascus Patterns