I had these cheapo knives lying around at the bottom of the drawer. As you can see the fancy blackaning layer (e.g. paint) was worn off, and they looked awful. So we haven't used them recently. I decided to save them by removing the old painted layer and engrave some damascus pattern on them. The settings could use some more tuning as the material proved to be inhomogenous, but they definitely look better than before, and I'm sure we'll use them for a good while.