Frustrated...

I must say that this forum has been the most open to challenging traditional wisdom than almost any I have visited. Thank you very much Keith, Mark and others for your kind words and votes of confidence. But I guess it is a good sign that I am not one of these hypemeisters we have been discussing when I am a little uncomfortable with having too many accolades given to me when all I have done is not to reinvent the wheel but learn from and share the work already done by the names on all those books in my office like Grossman, Bain, Austens, Shepherd, Grange, Krause, Jominy, Luerssen, Verhoeven etc… The guys who really provided this information, guys who spent lifetimes with tools that actually could allow them to find the answers we seek. I am not obtuse enough to think that I could begin to challenge their findings with my quaint assortment of hammers and tongs. It was only in the last two years or so that I finally assembled enough of the tools required do more than relying on their work, and begin to look on my own into areas unique enough to blade making to be less understood. This is why I find it so amusing to hear guys with a pair of vice grips and a bucket of oil and an enmity for even the basics of material science, proclaim that they have test results to provide answers that industry can’t. Forget answers, most of what I hear shows me that these guys don’t even know the questions.

Guys who really are learning about this stuff are hesitant to get too high on a pedestal, because real knowledge has a serious humbling effect; every bit you learn shows you how ignorant you really are.

P.S. Mark, perhaps we know the same demon. The closest I can come to agree with the anti-science guys is to admit that in some ways real metallurgical knowledge is like the devil and there are days I feel like he has my soul. It is the snake and the apple, you have a choice, you can spurn it and live in blissful paradise, confident you make the best blades in the world, or you can take that first bite of the fruit of knowledge and struggle for the rest of your existence trying to do better and understand it all. But innocence will be gone forever and your heroes will acquire much more human proportions.:(
 
Here’s a scary thought:

BLADESMITHING FENG SHUI.

Just think of the articles they could run on that!
 
This thread seems to be winding down, but before it goes I wanted to touch on one facet of the conversation.

This topic often descends into what I like to call “ancestor worship”; it is a penchant for the logical fallacy of appealing to tradition that seems too prevalent in all society. The ancients had wisdom that we don’t, and ancient accounts are to be taken literally and unquestioned. We have urban myths today that we don’t have any problem questioning, debunking and labeling “for entertainment purposes only”.

Another thing that Wieland did with geese (in some accounts it was geese) was to gather their feathers and use them to make a magic coat with which he could fly away and escape from Nidung. Why aren’t we going out of our way to use chemistry, physics, and other modern science to lend credibility to this part of the tale? I personally find the idea of filing an entire sword to dust, feeding it to geese and then, somehow reconstituting the entire sword again from bird &#$@, to be every bit as fantastic as plucking them clean and then flying away with a bladder of blood under ones arm. Yet for us, since it is an ancient myth, it must have basis in fact, not like our modern bogus legends. To me this one isn’t a case of justified voodoo, it isn’t even voodoo at all it is just a fairy tale that sounded great around a fire.

I will submit a better example practical voodoo- edge packing.

Stick with me here guys, I haven’t been drinking or gone completely over the edge;). Say a guy that doesn’t keep up on all this science bunk works in a shop with less than optimal lighting conditions (or lack there of) for smithing. To him cherry red is several hundred degrees different than to the next guy. He is told about edge packing and that if he hammers at dark red for a few minutes at the end of his forging he can make a better blade. He gives it a try and is amazed at how finer a grain he gets and the better performance he sees. As well he should since for the first time in his career he wasn’t overheating the steel in that sun room he calls a smithy. For him edge packing does in fact work in a way. The problem is that this guy, in his excitement and pride, will almost invariably decide to present it to the world in the most exaggerated fashion using technical sounding terms to give it credibility, despite his lack of understanding of any of the basic principles involved. Simple normalizing now becomes a process of packing steel “molecules” denser and in alignment with the cutting edge, or even wilder stretches as he pick up more $5 words.

When temperature is hard to judge, finishing your forging at a much lower temperature for safety sake is damned good voodoo. Be happy with that; just don’t try to turn your voodoo into science, because your fantasies may get crushed as quickly as a witchdoctor trying to stop an M1 Abrams with a bag of juju. The bad part is the number of people you may mislead into believing in magic before that tank gets you.
 
Thank you, Kevin... that is exactly how I wanted to exemplify 'voodoo', but was worried about paraphrasing you accurately. Much better to have you tell your tale, rather than me repeat it and risk screwing it up.

...my only worry is that we keep touching on edge-packing, which I think most are safely out of the dark on (he says with a smirk), and haven't touched on alloy segregation and how it might be confused with other things (involving voodoo).
 
This thread rocks. I am a 100% supporter of cold, hard facts, chemistry and science when it comes to this kind of thing. While i am nostalgic and look with great reverence on the past and myths and fantastical claims, it doesnt mean I blindly accept any of them.

I do, however, belive in coincedences. Edge packing scientifically might be a myth, but as kevin just pointed out, the myth and erroneous knowledge doesnt mean that TRYING to edge pack won't make your blades better by forcing more, lower controlled heats when otherwise you might not worry about heats (Even though you should!)

Its basically saying that if someone was thermal cycling before HT for the wrong reasons, it doesnt mean his knife wouldnt still recieve the advantages of thermal cycling....he just wouldnt know why he was doing the right thing...

Some people swear by all kinds of voodoo crazier than edge packing...ever said a prayer before quenching in water? Talking to invisible men again? Ever go to church? Nothing has ever proven scientifically that anything good comes out of that, either....but it sometimes makes people better human beings.

Fine by me either way, but be it religion or edge packing, dont serve me crap and tell me its ice cream...

:)
 
Sure, the Wieland thing is almost certainly totally fairy dust and a tall tale for a cold night after lots of mead. I hope my comment wasn't taken as some kind of blanket endorsement of the idea.:eek: For all we know, though, it could be metaphor and truth was lost. Maybe his smelter looked sorta like a chicken and by the time it got writ..... ;) It was as recent as the last century we could find people who would swear God suddenly appeared riding the skies in a large silver bird with "PanAm" written on its arse. :)

There was an intended point in my madness. And that is simply that when go back to these seeming myths we must critically investigate whether there is some underlying science that isn't apparent from the fantastic claims. IF there had been something to the tale, it would have had a scientific explanation if we were sufficient to understanding it. And, IF "Weiland"
had gone through the process of grinding a sword into powder and feeding it to a chicken, it was because he thought he "knew" something through observation, not because it just seemed like a fun thing to do. (Or, perhaps after all, he was THE ONE who knew the "Magical Chickencrap Sword Rejuvenation Incantation" described in the patterns of this ancient rock I found down on the beach one night. A dead alewive taught me how to read the patterns. I'd share it with you but it won't show up in a foto. I forgot what the patterns said because I tried to take the foto which made the magic fade from my knowing. :( :D)

If someone didn't pay attention to the effects of the bogus "edge packing process" then the eventual light bulb may never have gone on. The fact that the language and understanding wasn't there didn't stop the phenomenon. The steel didn't care how we held our tongue or how much light there was or what our explanation for it was. But, until we actually understood it correctly it couldn't be controlled accurately or passed on to others consistently. The underlying science clarified and the misunderstanding debunked, we could now manipulate properties better. It moved into the realm of our ability to understand; the steel had the same capabilites all along.

With an increasing frequency in recent years, science has had to go back and say in their best Curly Stooge voice, "Oh, so that's what they was doing."

Somewhat like the article regarding the role of impurities in ancient steel. Accidental addition of alloying elements from vegetable matter carbon source, or did Hamad happen to know that perhaps the grass was better from this creek bed? Maybe didn't realize that particular grassland was fed by water richer in specific minerals than grass from a different area which "isn't as good", but knew something was going on and took advantage of it. (Maybe not, too, and it was pure serendipity. "Luck" has a lot to do with progress.)

That is the beginning of scientific thinking. We surely wouldn't be here chatting like this without that. There was quite a lengthy foundation setting the stage for the last 200 years of accelerated "progress".

My whole point was that we can't look at the people of the past as either magical or imbecilic. We can neither buy into everything as voodoo nor dismiss it because it doesn't fit our modern vocabulary. There's a whole lot of pure Blarney because we lie, but occasionally tucked away in history are some real gems. Unfortunately we often don't try to realize the difference.
 
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