pattern weld/damascus/watered steel

S

Snuffy

Joined
Jun 14, 2000
Messages
186
At the risk of asking a stupid question, has anyone ever seen a khukuri with the distinctive wavy lines of pattern welded / watered / damascus steel? Does the process or treatment of making a khukuri just make such lines *less* noticeable (I've heard you can see them under a microscope) or is it somewhere in the polishing process? I'd guess in an antique (before Mercedes Benz leaf springs) you'd have to join billets of steel together by hand, the traditional way a Japanese sword is still made.
 
Ain't no experts on this forum, Snuffy. A few serious students ( world class ) maybe.

And there ain't no stupid questions neither.
Just that there's them around here that could probably write a doctoral dissertation on wootz/damascus/pattern welded blades.

This is one time I'm following the old adage:

"It is better to remain silent and be suspected of being a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt!"

And by the way, welcome to the Cantina.

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"And it's no, no, never, never ever no more. Never ever again will I ... "

Himalayan Imports Website
 
Snuffy,
I'm sure that there has been a Kami or two that has welded up a blade at the forge, just for the chalange of it all. But I doubt that any of them, past or present have done it seriously, cuz they already work for almost nothing and considering the time needed to make one, they would be behind the money curve. Almost no one would be able to buy it.
Dan
 
As I understand it, a khukuri is a farm tool that can double as a short chopping sword, or a short chopping sword that can double as a farm tool. Has any bladesmithing tradition produced pattern-welded farm tools? Indeed, before recent decades, when modern bladesmiths have made damascus hunting knives for customers with discretionary income, has any bladesmithing tradition made pattern-welded blades that were not special-occasion weapons for the aristocracy?

Would the king of Nepal likely have a locally made damascus khukuri in his collection?

Anybody want to fly a couple of ABS School instructors to Nepal for a month, to start a whole new tradition, or maybe confuse an old one?


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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com
AKTI Member # SA00001
 
And would anybody before this last century have used the oxymoronic term, "...new tradition"?
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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com
AKTI Member # SA00001
 
James,
The original post asked if anyone had seen a damascus/wootz/pattern-welded khukuri. I certainly have not, so didn't respond. You then posed the question: "As I understand it, a khukuri is a farm tool that can double as a short chopping sword, or a short chopping sword that can double as a farm tool. Has any bladesmithing tradition produced pattern-welded farm tools?" Nepal: Destination with a Difference, a recent book written by the Ministry of Tourism of Nepal, describes the khukuri as the "weapon of the people". Whether it is essentially a tool or a weapon probably depends on when, under what circumstances, and by whom it is being used.
You asked "before recent decades, has any bladesmithing tradition made pattern-welded blades that were not special-occasion weapons for the aristocracy?" Oakeshott's Archaeology of Weapons says: "All the deposits in the bogs of Denmark...cover a period between A.D. 50 and A.D. 450.... Of all the finds in Denmark, the Nydam bog is the most important, and...contained 106 swords, all double-edged, 93 of them pattern-welded.... It is to the swords found in the Nydam bog that archaeology owes the identification of pattern-welded blades." I honestly don't know whether warriors in pre-Viking Danish society were thought of as members of the aristocracy, or war was regarded as a special occasion, though I suspect the answer to at least the latter is "No". In any case, that's a big pile of pattern-welded blades.
You also asked: "Would the king of Nepal likely have a locally made damascus khukuri in his collection?" Weland's Collectors Guide to Swords, Daggers & Cutlasses pictures a beautiful khukuri from the Wallace Collection in London, definitely of a quality fit for royalty and described as "Ghurka knife (khukri) mounted with silver, c 1800.... The particularly fine blade is of 'damascus' watered steel." No pattern is discernable in the picture, only cross-hatching like the HI 18th-Century model, but I have to assume the author knew what he was writing about in the absence of contrary evidence.
Berk

 
One point to remember about 'damascus' steel is that it was originally an expedient, not an aim in itself. It came about because of the need to combine a hard cutting edge and a flexible body in an age before advances in metallurgy made possible the huge range of quality carbon steels we now take for granted. In other words, they pattern-welded because they had to, not because they wanted to.

From ancient times well into the 19th century, simple farm tools such as axes, hammers and spades were made by forge-welding a steel edge into a soft iron body - essentially the same technique as the Japanese swordsmiths used to make nihonto, or the Vikings used for their swords (though without the additional step of laminating the cutting-edge section)

I'd be very interested to know what the kamis used for raw material before Western recyclable scrap became available. My guess is that they made their own steel from a combination of ore and 'carbon-acquiring' scrap iron (in the West, since Roman times, scrap horseshoes and horseshoe-nails were much prized for this purpose) probably by lamination. Ganga Ram would probably know the answer to that...
 
Well, I have seen some very old Khukuris in my friends collection and some of them do have pattern welded blades. One I remember in particular did have an interesting pattern on the blade, and the cutting edge was made of different type of steel. I have also seen simple farm tools/weapons from Indonesia and the Philippines that did have pattern welded blades. So, a Khukuri that has one of these types of blades doesn't surprise me.
 
Back in the Bad Old Days of Saxons and Vikings and such, a pattern-welded sword was not something an ordinary peasant would bring to war, though a highly regarded warrior might have been issued one by his lord. From the Osprey "Men at Arms Series" - #85 - Saxon, Viking, and Norman

....The early kings might thus have acquired a small collection o fsuch swowrds, passing them out to their leading warriors, and receiving them back, their value enhanced, on that warrior's death. Men below the rank o f tegn, even as late as Knut's reign, did not have swords.
At first the Saxon sword followeed very much the pattern of the Roman spatha, having a broad, two-edged blade about 75cm long with straight edges and a rather rounded point. The hilt was plain and virtually without a crossguard. The blades of these weapons, made at a time when the method of manufacture caused great varioation in quantity, were often pattern-welded to obtain a better result. Pattern-welding consisted of twisting rods of iron together and beating them into a blade which had a soft core within a skin of case-hardened iron. A bar of case-hardened iron was then welded all the way up each side and round the point to create a cuting edge which was both hard and sharp, while the blade retained its flexibility. Such a blade might take a month to manufacture, and in 958 was valued as equal to the cost of fifteen male slaves or 120 oxen.
....
All warriors, from the highest to the lowest, also carried a single-edged knife known as a scramasax. This was used to finish a felled opponent, and in the case of the peasant classes took the place of a sword.
Click to expand...

In Beowulf those pattern-welded swords were all the time either bending, breaking, or just not cutting when he needed them most. In his last fight with the dragon, the expensive sword breaks, and he stabs it with his scramasax, while taking a fatally poisoned or infected bite in the process. They should have had Mercedes Benz truck springs back then!
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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com
AKTI Member # SA00001
 
All of the patternwelded khuks I have heard of were of Indian origin. I have never heard of a wootz khuk, but that's not saying a whole lot. There's probably some floating around and they would probably be Indian also. I have never heard of any Nepalese made wootz pieces. Here's a link with a picture and some info on a patternwelded khuk on Artzi Yarom's site. Oriental Arms
 
Wow! I'm amazed at the information found in this group. Thanks for all the answers. I'm painfully ignorant about metallurgy, and the information in this thread just prompts even more questions. How is Wootz steel different from pattern welded? (I'd thought they were different names for the same thing.)
 
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