Re: sword sharpening

"Chilla" <charlesanderson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
Celtic swords were bronze, try keeping a razor edge on a piece of bronze
for any length of time. Celtic bronze weapons were very hard, but not
razor sharp.
Viking swords weren't razor sharp either, they couldn't hold an edge.

You're skipping merrily across a thousand years with mad abandon.
Celts had steel swords as early as anyone on earth. They, essentially,
invented them hundreds of years before Christ.
The Sutton Hoo swords were made before the Vikings came to power- and both
before the Crusades.

My information is different. European swords could not perform like a
true damascus blades. European metal quality was quite poor, with the
exception of Swedish steel. Even reading the sagas you find the poor old
Viking having to straighten his blade under foot, after a few whacks.

Everybody did- including the Japanese or the Indo-Persians. The 'Sutton Hoo'
sword is a marvel of forging technology, for instance.
The Japanese learned forging from the Chinese, who learned it from the
Europeans.
The European steel was the best on earth- desireable in the East as a trade
product. It was because of the iron pellets in the North, near the Baltic.
The natural occurance of such fine iron made steel-making possible very
early.
And, Europeans quenched in oil- most Eastern cultures used water-quench,
with a very limited range of quality.

Pattern welded blades of Europe were constructed with a core of pattern
welded material and an outer edge of a better quality steel.

So were just about everyone else's swords- the Wootz being the exception. Of
course, Wootz was so rare and so expensive that it was widely counterfeited,
even where it was made. It was furnished in billets, so you can find lots of
types of swords made with the material.

If you examine a pre-crusades European sword with a "true" Damascus blade,
you can see which is the better technology, definitely not the European
metal.

You need to read 'Damascus Steel' by Manfred Sachse.

What I like most about wootz (can't buy the cakes these days unless it's
an antique :- ( ) is that it's almost a one step operation to make it
into a blade. Shape your cake into a blade and that's it, no tempering or
hardening (or so the guys who make it tell me, and the buggers wont sell
me a cake :-( )

I think it was Atlanta Forge- Al Pendray- that set up to make wootz, and
will sell it to anyone who wants it. The next closest thing is probably the
cast dendritic steel.

Chas


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