How hard should a traditional Seax be?

H

HoosierQ

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Feb 9, 2010
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I have a line on a guy who will make a seax blade for me. He is not a terribly sophisticated blade smith. He says he can heat treat the blade so "it will defy a file". To me, that sounds too hard for a seax. I have, for example, a 1095 ESEE blade that I was able to rather easily modify with a sharp file. Those are about 57 and I shouldn't think I'd want one any harder than that. I would think that a blade from the 6th, 7th, and 8th century would have been made to resharpen easily with either a steel or a simple whet stone.

Anybody have any thoughts on such a thing? I won't be paying custom knife like prices for this thing if I do it. It's just a another piece of forging work for him. I want something traditional in form and heat treated well enough to take an edge. I will do the handle. Probably go through 2 or 3 iterations on the handle before I get one that I stick with. My seax pattern will be just like the British Isles style of "Broken back" Seax found in museams...may even go with exact proportions if I can find one with measurements.
 
Seax is a type of knife.

Material and hardness are key elements of edge retention. If you don't get the two correct, you will have unwanted results. Are you going to use this knife, or are you just wanting a show piece?
 
What steel is it made out of?
If you want it softer, annealing in your home oven is very easy.
 
afishhunter said:
sorry. I'll bite. What's a "seax"? I am not familiar with the term or blade.
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"seax" means "knife" in Old English. Today it is used as a general descriptor for large single edge knives of that time period used in the British Isles.

Nice article in Wiki with a picture of a replica.
 
temper_colors_hardness_Page_1.jpg


For simple steel, you harden it, then anneal it to what you want.

Here's some thoughts for annealing at home. I myself have just taken knife files to a "straw yellow" color and found them still hard but somewhat flexible.
 
Here's a PIC of a replica of a seax that had been excavated
 
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These were rather "soft" compared to what we might expect today. Most accounts and descriptions seem to describe something in the 47-52 range of the Rockwell C scale. There are archaeologically-recovered blades that are bent, or show signs of havingg been bent and straightened, which kinda makes me wonder if maybe many of the blades were even softer.

I don't know if this was deliberate (due to intended use), or due to a lack of knowledge, or if it was due to the metal used. The experiments I did with bog iron back in the '90s seemed to suggest that the easiest-to-produce/most consistent steel using early Iron Age techniques was somewhere allong the lines of 1070, which can be easily tempered in this range by eye. Based on the historical record and experimental data, the 30-40 or so single-metal saxes I forged were all tempered by eye to just-past-sky-blue. These went to various re-enactors and experimenters, who've put them to some heavy use over the ensuing years.
 
coffeecup said:
These were rather "soft" compared to what we might expect today. Most accounts and descriptions seem to describe something in the 47-52 range of the Rockwell C scale. There are archaeologically-recovered blades that are bent, or show signs of havingg been bent and straightened, which kinda makes me wonder if maybe many of the blades were even softer.

I don't know if this was deliberate (due to intended use), or due to a lack of knowledge, or if it was due to the metal used. The experiments I did with bog iron back in the '90s seemed to suggest that the easiest-to-produce/most consistent steel using early Iron Age techniques was somewhere allong the lines of 1070, which can be easily tempered in this range by eye. Based on the historical record and experimental data, the 30-40 or so single-metal saxes I forged were all tempered by eye to just-past-sky-blue. These went to various re-enactors and experimenters, who've put them to some heavy use over the ensuing years.
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The bending would have been deliberate and done with heat. In Scandinavia cultures (which the Saxons were part of), if you killed a powerful man in a feud or other less than up and up circumstances, you destroyed his weapons so his ghost or whatever couldn't use it against you. A large number of Saxon weapons as well as Viking weapons that have been found are bent up. It killed the magic in them presumably.

I am thinking though that the low to mid 50s is where I want this.

As to the question of "will I use it or will it be a show piece?" Well, in my opinion, it isn't a knife if I couldn't use it as one...whether I used it or not. I am not a re-enactor or SCA type of person. I like the blade shape and would probably use it a little bit. I enjoy antiquities but I think that modern technology is hard to beat for modern use. So this thing will not be in my bug out bag or anything like that.
 
HoosierQ said:
The bending would have been deliberate and done with heat. In Scandinavia cultures (which the Saxons were part of), if you killed a powerful man in a feud or other less than up and up circumstances, you destroyed his weapons so his ghost or whatever couldn't use it against you. A large number of Saxon weapons as well as Viking weapons that have been found are bent up. It killed the magic in them presumably.
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Can you cite your source on this? I've not read all of the surviving sagas, etc, but I have read most of them; nowhere have I run across this even as an isolated incident, let alone a common practice. A quick shout-out to some researchers I know failed to turn up anyone who'd heard that before--you've got several of us curious about your source.

I have examined in-hand almost a hundred of the surviving saxes. As I wrote in my first note, many show signs of having been bent and straightened, and many archaeologically-recovered specimens were found bent. None of these show signs of having been heated before being bent, or suggestions that heat was used to straighten them. (I've seen a couple I was pretty sure were re-forged from earlier examples, but that is something different.)
 
I just wish I knew more about seaxes.
I've read a paper about high status pagan graves having a sword or a seax, but a big knife didn't count as a seax. They didn't define the difference.
I've also read that only the big ones were probably weapons and the little ones were probably the cultural equivalent of pocket knives.
I've also read that some of the old ones were made of layers steel of varying carbon content , like Gaulish swords. But it sounds like many or most were made of iron with or without some steel welded on for the edge.
As a high status weapon, it should be able to handle the armor of the day. There may not have been much armor, but a high status warrior might be expected to come up against high status warriors with high status armor. I guess I would try to go for a straw-colored edge and a blue back.
Sorry about my high noise to expertise ratio.
 
coffeecup said:
Can you cite your source on this? I've not read all of the surviving sagas, etc, but I have read most of them; nowhere have I run across this even as an isolated incident, let alone a common practice. A quick shout-out to some researchers I know failed to turn up anyone who'd heard that before--you've got several of us curious about your source.

I have examined in-hand almost a hundred of the surviving saxes. As I wrote in my first note, many show signs of having been bent and straightened, and many archaeologically-recovered specimens were found bent. None of these show signs of having been heated before being bent, or suggestions that heat was used to straighten them. (I've seen a couple I was pretty sure were re-forged from earlier examples, but that is something different.)
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Well I cannot. I was, in fact, extending what I believe to be a well known phenomenon with Viking swords. Many of THOSE have been found all bent up and contorted. The reference above mine was the first time I myself had heard about bent Seaxes. So it was in fact speculation on my part...I freely stipulate to that. I fear I am no archaeologist
 
This is the pattern I am shooting for. This is the "Sittingbourne Seax". It's in a museum. I won't try to reproduce the decoration.

British_Museum_Sittingbourne_Seax_zpsv3lmhsu0.jpg
 
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That's a nice one. Thickness at the spine is about 5/16, and tapers only a hair to the bottom of the line of decoration seen in the photo. Tang tapers in thickness as well as width, but not so abruptly--about 1/4' at the base, to maybe 3/16" at tip. If you are going to use it much, you might consider using a ferrule at the blade-end of the handle; the wood will be pretty thin there and may crack in use.

I think a lot of the old blades were bent in use. There are accounts of stopping to straighten a blade during fights. . . I don't know about anyone else, but that right there would cause me to seriously question the blade maker!
 
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