The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 $250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Notes on Weapons
There has been very little research into weapons of the same period and hopefully the next several years will see more efforts in this area. At this time some specific examples can be commented on but it would be difficult to extrapolate this to the whole as the sample is so small.
There has been one pole weapon examined, a 15th C. bill in the form usually described as Italian. The item was of no particular historical significance so the decision was made to bisect the piece in 8 places to learn as much as possible from the item. The construction method was a series of folding to create the form, but there does not seem to be any particular attempt to maximize any hardness of cutting areas or spikes. The carbon content was high enough to harden the item if so desired by the maker, but there is no evidence it was heat treated in any way to increase hardness and it was obviously not a goal of the smith. The cutting edges and top spike of the item are completely unhardened, registering below 8 on the Rockwell C scale.5
In the case of medieval and renaissance swords a little more is known. At the present time there have been about 20 such pieces tested and published, with the vast majority being constructed in a piled fashion and the edges being carburized and heat treated.9,12 The earlier Nordic pattern welded blades have actually been studied and tested far more extensively than their medieval counterparts. What has become clear is that the blade construction did not go from pattern welded blades to single homogeneous piece construction, but from pattern welded to piled construction using varying grades of carbon content pieces to achieve a hardenable sword edge.9 In fact there seems to have been an intermediate period, 9th to 11th C., where the pattern welding was a desirable decorative technique as sheets of the design were laminated to the surfaces of iron or piled blades.10 Many of the early swords, in fact some swords well into the 15th century, would probably not have had less flex than is normally thought. Instead, their soft noncarburized or low carbon cores would have been more prone to bending than flexing.
One sword tested had three distinct bands in carbon content ranging from .1% to .8% with the steely parts having achieved hardnesses in the 250-330 VPH (20-32 Rc) range.10 In eight swords sampled from the 11th to the 15th C., five were case carburized iron bars, two were iron/steel composite structures, and one was several pieces of steel welded together. The heat treating method included five blades slack quenched & tempered, two timed quenched, and one left untreated (an "Ulfbert" sword with an exceptionally high carbon content, which seems to have been made from crucible steel perhaps originating in the Middle East14).9
In the16th C. a different method of production is seen in some swords, using the technique of forging together layers or folding material to create a more homogeneous steel product. Of four 16th C. swords tested, two were constructed in this new manner; one was constructed by wrapping an iron core with a steel skin and heat treating; and the last was constructed in a piled configuration. The four swords were tested for hardness and fell in the range of 325-480 VPH (about 32-47 Rc). The sword with the 480 VPH was the steel wrapped iron core and the core hardness was 147 VPH (below 0 on the Rc scale, abt 78 on the Rb scale).12
The indications from these few examples is that the production of sword blades was a varied activity with several different methods being practiced and quite a range of results achieved. There also would seem to be a correlation in the development of better steels for armor and swords occurring at approximately the same times. Hopefully new research into the development of steel fabrication in the period under discussion will lead to a more detailed perspective on both weapons and armor fabrication and allow us to appreciate these items fully.
All hardness measurements are given in Vickers hardness scale (VPH) with their approximate Rockwell C (Rc) equivalents as listed in Hardening, Tempering, & Heat Treatment by Tubal Cain, Argus Books, England.
But the amusing difference is that back then the high quality steel came from pakistan!
So many of these studs, and writings must be taken with a HUGE grain of salt 20+ blows to kill a man. Hell, You can do it with one blow of a stick if you have a clue what you are doing!
Edge below 8 on the RC scale? No such thing in steel or iron. That is the area of very soft plastic. 0 on Rc scale. No way at all. Even the steel I use here in the shop reads between 37 and 47 depending on the type BEFORE heat treat.
M. Lovett