Titanium Sword / Katana?

[video=youtube;4i45jTqZuu8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i45jTqZuu8[/video]

We are still looking at dimensional differences to compensate for the lack of weight. Who the heck isn't using pneumatic for those all day chores? Anyway, I thought the topic was swords. The video simply points out that it has to be bigger and longer than the Estwing. I'll bet some do buy these hammers and some even sharing glowing reviews. Look at the nails themselves. Eight penny, c'mon. Three solid whacks for a trained monkey using the steel hammer shown. I used to have a boss scoffing at others at times that just because it's an 8, that doesn't mean you need to whack it 8 times.

Back to swords. If someone were intent on matching the performance of a lowly spadroon in ti (less than the weight of an Estwing ripping hammer), the end result would be something much larger and truly less effective for the same body motions.

Aside from poking, what advantage would you expect in duplicating one of these slim straight jobs in ti?
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Cheers

GC
 
Perhaps the tai chi style swords might be a good application for this. I agree with horseclover in that this material might be best suited for a weapon built for thrusting and fast slashes, such as a rapier, light saber, or tai chi sword. Less good for other applications. Care to share more information about the heat treat process or metallurgy?
 
Thanks for the good questions, gentlemen!

I certainly agree that the smaller, faster sword designs mentioned above are the most appropriate for a nice titanium. The smaller swords of history are not made to smash a target with mere brute force (well....a falchion maybe, haha!), and my own designs are on the small side, about 26-32 inches, or perhaps a bit more. However, many katanas are rather small, like the medium-sized wakizashi, which have been called the most useful of all samurai swords. A Chinese sabre design would be quite devastating in beta ti, with its fat tip. A rapier in a tough, stiff ti would be frightening.

Metallurgical science is a rich frontier and there is much to discover that can be applied to blade-making. I believe there are sword and knife designs and applications where titanium can rival or excel fine steels, just as there are steels that can be alloyed and shaped to make mincemeat of the lighter metals.

I can only speak from experience regarding the special titanium selected for my forged blades, which is alloyed with a very dense and heavy beta stabilizer: niobium, which weighs 535.01 pounds per cubic foot (493.18 pounds per cf for steel, 280.93 pounds for titanium), as well as other heavy elements. It actually feels a bit heavier than grade 5 ti when hefted.

Horseclover, the advantage of a titanium spadroon in beta ti (in the exact same dimensions as yours) are that would be that it would be even faster in the hand, it could be flexed extremely viciously side to side with very little fatigue, warping or breakage, and that it would have no corrosion on the blade at all even after thousands of years, just a dark gray atmospherically impermeable oxide.

Thanks again for the questions, and I will try to answer them as best I can. Here is a fun titanium sword destruction video for you all, which includes more than a dozen gratuitous edge-to-edge blows just for, jmb311!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHE39Nc-Cl8

Mecha
 
I own a Ti katana, thank you, William, and I love it. It's chisel ground, also.
I like the fact that my sword will cut, it will never rust and it's just cool.
rolf
 
Haha! It's very silly, but I hope it shows how quickly and easily one can move such a sword around and switch directions, and to show the titanium version's impact even at 21" in blade length, and that it can cut. Chopping up a melon with a sword is damn near as fun as blowing a few rounds through one, I'd say.
 
Sure. there is always the cool factor. The video was enjoyable but just underlines that it doesn't require much to cut fruit (as fun as it may be).

Regular steel can do some trick shots as well but not built on the parameters where a lighter crowbar can be abused right up to the point it may snap in half (or even shrapnel).

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That is just holding the blade tip and letting the weight of the rest of the sword flex the forte.

At what point do some of these alloys belong to a different definition of ti?

I don't know that I would want a terribly flexible blade on a ti spadroon. That would make no sense to me. Spadroons are simply smaller backswords and not meant to be flexi while still quite capable of shearing cuts. Truly duplicating one of the period spadroon blades in ti would be a bit of a chore with more fullering. Indestructable? I guess but it would still not have the mass of even these rather light swords.

Cheers

GC
 
Crimsonfalcon,

The heat treatment process of titanium beta alloys is similar to that of high carbon steel. Being allotropic metals, they undergo crystalline structure phase changes after reaching beta transus temperature, hardened atomic rearrangements which we all know and love, that can be locked in at room temperature and manipulated into other phases through quenching and annealing. Ti even roughly matches the color temperature diagrams used to judge steel temperatures in a forge.

But each steel and all alloys each have their own recipe, and in a blade the heat treatment is dependent on thickness of the material, among many other factors. Heat treatment of custom blades is an arcane skill that can not be rendered down to a time-temperature-transformation diagram. In quality mass-produced blades, you can bet there is some wizard-like metallurgist determining the special heating recipe for the large batches of homogenized blades, like Betty Crocker brownies.

However, titanium is super reactive to atmospheric contaminants, and the grain growth that makes an alloy brittle during heating is very rapid. It is sensitive to overheating and there is a smaller window of opportunity in which to forge it before it gets fried. Happily, just as a rich coal fire can improve a fine carbon steel, the volatility of hot titanium can also be used to give the metal a nice twist or special attributes during forging.

Hammering action can also develop some very nice layers of crystalline structures through a shank. What I found with grade 5 is that it responds robustly to work-hardening, and it's easy to tell between blade that has developed more beta or alpha structures during forging. It is actually a quite strange alloy that is known as an alpha-beta complex. It is stable at room temperatures in both phases, and can host a huge array of various qualities. I've some forged grade 5 sword blades that are quite wicked, and some others that came out soft. Grade 5 (6al4v) alloy attributes vary a lot. The special beta alloy I have chosen for Mad Science Forge swords develops visible, almost Damascus-like layers throughout its length as it is forged and the beta-phase heat treatment is very controllable, which allows me a lot more control of the forging process before hardening. Plus I love how stout it is.


Mecha
 
Interesting, horse clover. If that blade was made of the alloy I've been working with, it could flex similarly but only of you put the tip in a huge vice and then leaned on the handle. Here is a photo showing how stiff it is. The pommel and guard are heavy stainless steel and could bash out the windshield of a People's Liberation Urban Armored Assault Vehicle (or PLUAAV), with no problems. It's practically an anti-vehicle weapon!

Mecha

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Mecha said:
Interesting, horse clover. If that blade was made of the alloy I've been working with, it could flex similarly but only of you put the tip in a huge vice and then leaned on the handle. Here is a photo showing how stiff it is. The pommel and guard are heavy stainless steel and could bash out the windshield of a People's Liberation Urban Armored Assault Vehicle (or PLUAAV), with no problems. It's practically an anti-vehicle weapon!

Mecha

k36kxyu.jpg
Click to expand...

Make no mistake, I do not depict a spadroon blade in that photo of flexing a 20th century dress sword.

Where are you finding the cog to be on hilts and blades once assembled? You seem to be putting the balance point all in the hand. This, keeping in mind that a good many swords range from about 3" to 8" or so for types up to and including rapiers.

I more or less equate the mass distribution issues to how different types of cars handle. You may be engineering the best alloys and headed toward a George Jetson briefcase car. However, my personal preference is not yet convinced an equal dimension sword is going to "feel" and cater to my favor. You can put forth the argument that lightness and speed are somehow "better" but I just see it as a difference that doesn't convince me.

Cheers

GC
 
Lycosa said:
The wind is shifting. I sense some Ti sword orders forthcoming.
rolf
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Rolf

No way :)

No interest at all in a titanium sword

Mirabile is going to hopefully do a cable blade up for testing and Dan Keffeler called about some sword testing. Being that he is the current Blade Sport Cut champion I am interested in what he has going on in a modern Japanese interpretation

I think sword steels are improving but not in the way of Titanium as a better sword blade material

To many video games is what Ti swords is all about :)
 
Joe- lol! I know.
I love the traditional blade(s) but... we will see more Ti blades in 2014.
Plus, the zombies are multiplying, ya know.
 
The feel of a lighter sword isn't going to tickle everyone's jimmies, any more than one style of sword can please everyone the most. I don't think titanium is better than steel for swords, but if certain beta alloys are handled with the right savvy I believe they will rival the finest of their steel counterparts. Titanium could never replace steel for swords any more than it could replace kevlar for body armor, no matter how bulletproof it is.

Making titanium copies of steel swords is not my pursuit. It's to forge the best and strongest ti sword blades ever made, so that a collection of them exist in the world as I know they can and should: science fact! It's like a laser gun. Lots of people would give you reasons why one would be "worse" than powder and lead, but if someone came up with fully functional laser guns that really worked, I would want one.

Otherwise, the balance point I aim for is right on your trigger finger, behind the guard.
 
On the back rack are two 6al4v forged blades that have very different qualities from each other, post-hammering. One is more flexible, the other is very stiff with a harder edge, but both turned out decent. About half of 6al4v blades I forged during experiments developed qualities that made them poor, and the other half gained improvements.
 
Thanks, Mecha.^
William almost cut through a 4" tow rope with one hit from my Tikat. Not bad for a light, Ti blade.
rolf
 
Mecha said:
The feel of a lighter sword isn't going to tickle everyone's jimmies, any more than one style of sword can please everyone the most. I don't think titanium is better than steel for swords, but if certain beta alloys are handled with the right savvy I believe they will rival the finest of their steel counterparts.
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I would certainly be interested to see how one of your beta-Ti blades would do against a well-done S7, Dan Keffeler's CPM 3V, or Miller Bros 5160. I DO tend to favor lighter and faster blades, but that being said, lighter blades cut, but don't always have the incapacitating power of a heavier blade.
 
It's the sword F = MA experiments! An object in motion stays in motion until acted upon by an outside force, and a lot of weight in motion has a way of just getting stuff done. If you're trying to cut through something thick, a lighter blade is more drastically affected by, say, having the angle off a little bit upon impact. Increasing acceleration is the lighter blade's way of increasing F!
 
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