Fake blades in Viking times

Joined
Nov 12, 2007
Messages
1,932
Hi all,

This interesting and amusing link was posted in the British Blade forums, and I think you will all want to READ it.

Enjoy.
 
Crucible steel = Wootz. Perhaps you should post this in the Makers Forum and get the attention of Kevin Cashen . He's just come back from a study of swords in England.
The vikings made excellent steel for swords without using wootz so I'm confused by the reference to 'real' [wootz] vs fake [non-wootz]
 
If you are familiar with the stories of those times, you may know that an old sword that had been through many battles and was of proven strength, was more desired than a new sword that had not been so proven.
 
If this thread doesn’t get much play here I think it would be a nice discussion at the maker’s forum. It took me a while to get to this thread as my part of Michigan was hit with a severe storm 2 nights ago and took our power out, I am at an internet Cafe now while my wife shops for some essential supplies.

I had to smile when I read the article since it revolved around an interview and the findings of Alan Williams. During my research in London I spent some time at the Wallace collection studying the blades I was interested in, but I also got to spend some time with Dr. Williams at his metallograph, comparing notes and sharing some of my micrographs with him. Alan really knows his stuff and may be the foremost archeometallurgist working today, if you have not seen his book “The Knight and the Blast Furnace” you are missing a real treat. He gave me copies of some of his papers dealing with this topic and it is not as far off base as it first appears.

The “ULFBERHT” blades have been seen as somewhat different from other blades of the period for many centuries now, and Dr. Williams has found distinct differences on the inside as well. But now for the real surprise that I tend to agree with his findings as to the distinct possibility of the best of those blades being made from crucible steel. My support for the idea happened in about a second of shock and awe in a small staff room in the upper floors of the Wallace Collection. I have been examining modern made wootz under my microscope for a couple of years now and have been consistently baffled by certain structures that seem unique to very high carbon crucible steel, in relation to other blade steels. Very common in the quenched wootz is an acicular form of cementite that spans the pearlite grains. I always scratched my head when looking at it and never found it in other common blade steels.

While Alan did some work on the metallograph he handed me some of his work that included micrographs of and ULFBERHT sword. My jaw dropped and I hurriedly opened my album of micrographs to compare… they were identical to the micrographs I had of some of Ric Furrer’s wootz, not similar but identical! I interrupted Alan long enough to have a look at the comparison, he did not seem at all surprised.

From what I have seen I would tend to concur with the idea that some of those blades were made from crucible steel. Where the article perhaps may delve into speculation is where the source of that steel may have been, how it was obtained and how the availability may have been affected.
 
Vikings were excellent traders.They had for example an extensive codfish trade throughout Europe. Kevin , how many codfish would you take for a nice wootz blade ??
 
I grabbed this from an article authored by Craig Johnson. It's posted at the Oakeshott Institute.
entire artical...http://www.oakeshott.org/metal.html


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.

In records of medieval swords by Oakshott I believe he shows some "fake" Ulfbert's. The spelling engraved on the blade is different. It seems that Ulfbert made swords from bloom's from the middle east. The make up appears to be close to modern 1070 steel. I think a misconception is that all old swords were of high quality. In fact blades ran the spectrum. Low quality "munition grade" swords were cranked out and were made probably from very low carbon, wrought iron, or salvage metal. These were used to fill armories and arm general fighters. The good quality "steel" was saved for nobility, knights, and probably squires. More attention was payed to them thus they cost considerably more.

You can see parallels today in the modern market place. you can buy a medieval sword for say ~$59.00 off of HSC or you can spend many thousands for a high quality one. The more things change the more they stay the same.
 
> You can see parallels today in the modern market place. you can buy a medieval sword for say ~$59.00 off of HSC or you can spend many thousands for a high quality one. The more things change the more they stay the same.

But the amusing difference is that back then the high quality steel came from Pakistan!
 
It is said in some of our Icelandic saga books that it generally took 20 blows with a sword to kill a man.

Icelandic Viking's arsenal of swords propably consisted entirally of very poor blades. A very poor country then.

But some of the mightiest pens could be found here.
 
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.

If these simple scientific factors are so obviously misused and mis represented these writings, how can we trust any part of the findings.

Never have I seen so much mystical Bull than what is written about swords. No matter where they are from. Never once have I been to a Gun show or Knife show that I haven't had some one for instance tell me about their Grand Dad's personal experience of seeing a Japanese Sword cut Thur a Browning .50 cal Machine Gun Bbl.
We must have lost thousands of Browning .50's and the crews manning them to Japanese officers expertly yielding those so superior blades. Oddly, there is not one single substantiated case of this ever even remotely happening in any theater of operation the U.S. Forces ever fought in.

For me at least, when I read the latest take on some ancient sword, I think of it like a si-fi movie I'm about to watch. Just get the pop-corn and enjoy the story. In a land far- far away***
M. Lovett
 
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

This link has the conversion chart on it.
http://www.carbidedepot.com/formulas-hardness.htm

Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardness_comparison

0 on the "C" scale is ~81 on the "B" scale. The "B" scale is used soft metals.

Pure Iron tests out at approximately 80 on the brinell scale which is ~= 40 on the Rockwell "B" scale which is way below 0 on the Rockwell "C". The center of the sword was no doubt composed of fairly pure Iron.

Your milled steel bars testing out in the 40s doesn't surprise me. However, steel starts out as Iron and they had to make their own.
 
Back
Top