Any thoughts?

[Mark Nelson]

This may be the wrong forum for this but I have a somewhat strange question. Does anyone know how early steel that knives and other weapons were made of compare to modern day steels? By this I mean a blade made in the, say, the 1500's, would it be similar to the carbon steels like 1095, 1085 etc or more along the lines of a mild steel that today we would find useless as a blade. I understand that they are not near the "super steels" that we have today. I have read the various thread of what bladesmiths use today to make swords and axes and whatnot. Just wondering.

 

[Rick Baum]

Hello Feth,

I started a thread a while back called "antique blade performance". Somewhere in that thread one of us asked your same question. You might want to do a search and read the thread. As I remember, the steels back then were very simple and had a lot of impurities. Some of the natural occuring impurities probably enhanced the steel while others weakened it. If I remember correctly, the legendary Wootz steel had some natural occurring elements that actually contributed to it's success as a steel (combined with very specific heat treatment processes). There were a lot of secrets not being shared so steel varied from region to region. From what I gathered while searching the web, it wasn't until the late 1800's that English steel manufacturing made some huge strides in it's quality processes.

Rick

 

[Will52100]

Baumr pretty much hit the nail on the head, not to mention that heat treating was guess work and spotty most of the time, not to mention porly understud at best. There were a few exections such as wootz, the original damascus. Also some of the finner blades of the Japanease sword smiths were excetional, many as good or better than today, not counting the super steels. But those seem to be the exection rather than the rule. If I remeber right first class blades were not readily availble untill they discuvered how to cast high carbon steel.

 

[Reg ELLERY]

This is a bit of a rough reply due to memory problems.

There was a show on tv a science show. They were trying to undersatnd
why some of metals alloy together well. The early steels were mentioned. Some were realy quite good. Particulary some of the Jap steel.

It came down to ball milling basically grinding down the ore into fine powder. In that form it was able to form alloys which do not normally form in the modern bulk furnaces.

The Japaneese in some areas used a sand ritch in iron to make thier steel. Other processes also ad some carbon.

The focus of the show was the new high tech allows which the ball mills made not the steel and swords but I thought it was an interesting scrap of info. I how I have not wasted your time.

 

[Mark Nelson]

Thanks to all for there responses. I will go back and search for the thread that baumr said he started just to see what else was posted. I have to agree with the idea that a really nice blade was the exception rather then the rule.