Back in my high school days, I made a beautiful damascus blade from 5160 leaf springs and 1095. After having worked in the labs at https://www.scotforge.com/, it is apparent damascus has very little large scale use due to weak tensile strengths(which of course depends on the forging process). However, in personal, small scale use, I've noticed my damascus blade has withstood much more than say, a pure 1095 blade could endure. Essentially, the higher the carbon the more brittle the blade despite the heat treatment process. Damascus in a small blade seemed to yield properties of each steel involved without using a costly alloy. It is very difficult to combine high carbon steels with stainless steels due to the large difference in heat treatment processes, as stainless steels are very often air hardened, and carbon steels are hardened in a brine or oil solution.