Wira (Vira) Axe From CF Dhalgren

It all checks out like you say it Jake, thank you 'course getting that bit on with the initial unsupported hammering just seems like such a swell trick. Well, I have to say that it strikes me as not as desirable as splitting the cheek and doing an insert and raises the question that maybe Wira Bruk owes its notoriety in that last fase more to its proximity to Stockholm.
 
Oh,I wouldn't say that,Ernest.
There was actually an older thread on here trying to compare the two methods,and much was brought up in favor of them being about the same,as in amounting to the same thing.
See,even if one inserted the steel bit clear up to the eye(as was done in places),else stuck in(or even ON)a generous size piece,once the blade wore down from sharpening enough it'd still have to be re-profiled.The convergence angle of the sides will just get too steep.

And that would still require a smith,and all sorts of hot-work...And the material in any axe Is limited,and though it Can be done in a pinch,a time or even two,eventually the thickness will just become insufficient.

So,i'd say that the very reason that at Vira they didn't go overboard with the volume of steel is that there were forges at every corner,and a woodworker could send their axe in with an apprentice,and 2-3 hours later,before lunch,that blade And bit both were reconditioned...

(in that Noewegian Folk Crafts video one can see how the smith doesn't just forge the blade out,but does all sorts of material adding.....as does the esteemed Bernard also....So i think it'd be safe to assume that that's how it was....)
 
It's conceptually very interesting of course, the bit as temporary component, to forge so as to facilitate repeated renewal with the greatest of convenience.
 
Ernest DuBois said:
It's conceptually very interesting of course, the bit as temporary component, to forge so as to facilitate repeated renewal with the greatest of convenience.
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Absolutely.
(And thank you for putting it so well).
Afterall,since (at least)the Paleo-Eskimo cultures like Old Whaling,pushing 5000 BC with their insertion of obsidian micro-blades,throught the Industrial Age and the removable circular-saw teeth and well into today with the carbide inserts brazed on,that is how humans operated historically...Warum nicht?
 
jake pogg said:
...Warum nicht?
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Because of the fallacy of disposability, the lie and deception of built-in obsolescence brought on by the marketing and product promotion industry, the internal contradictions and self-destruction mechanisms of the modern economic system.:)
There is another aspect, some will deny it while others take it as a given and that is the qualitative question. Does the compound construction make for a - to put it in very sloppy, and intentionally provocative, terms - better axe?
 
Ernest DuBois said:
the fallacy of disposability, the lie and deception of built-in obsolescence brought on by the marketing and product promotion industry, the internal contradictions and self-destruction mechanisms of the modern economic system
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Well,Sir...As someone who lives largely outside the modern economy i could argue that the obsolescence is the nature of life on this planet...In this very new,unformed geology that i inhabit the swirling clouds of basaltic dust act as a destructive mechanism on all my cutting edges...
(They say that soon,in about 50 000 to 100 000 years or so,that dust will degrade to be fine enough to be eaten by plants,and then the Yukon valley will be a lush fertile place... covered with forests for us to chop down...:).

During the Dark Ages three trades were Anathemised by the Church,Fortune telling,Musicianship,and Iron forging...All for imposing on God's prerogatives,violating His(Hers?) copyright,you may say.
It's an illustration of how we really prone to try to compete with the Creator,not content to enjoy this place as it was given us,but constantly attempting to modify it,and in ways that try to rival the Creator's tricky ones.

Similar to say abrasion-resistant enamel covering teeth,variable materials and hardness of our tool edges is kinda classy,you must admit,it is more complex,and somewhat "organic".It goes a little towards us thumbing our nose at the Creator,by saying "look,i can do it almost as good as you!":)
(But of course it falls short,as usual,because the Real class would be the self-replicating axe- bit cells,that would regenerate themselves:)...And rightly so,you're an the Garden of Eden,ain't you?So what the *** you need an Axe for?!:)

But for the meantime,a composite is just more fun,much higher cool-factor!:)

Coming down off of the coffee-induced high,i'd say that the most challenging part of forging an axe is the eye.So,if working with much softer,easily malleable material,the smith is more likely to do a better job,express himself more in interpreting this complex shape.
It takes a machine to properly form an eye from stiff,hardenable modern alloy.And that machine would usually loose something in the translation of it's vision to that of the woodworker's...
So one can say that yes,arguably,a composite axe is always better.
 
jake pogg said:
During the Dark Ages three trades were Anathemised by the Church,Fortune telling,Musicianship,and Iron forging...All for imposing on God's prerogatives,violating His(Hers?) copyright,you may say.
It's an illustration of how we really prone to try to compete with the Creator,not content to enjoy this place as it was given us,but constantly attempting to modify it,and in ways that try to rival the Creator's tricky ones.
Click to expand...

What a stark contrast there is among religions that pray to the same god. While blacksmiths were scorned in dark ages Europe, among the Jews god was the first blacksmith. The belief is that certain items had to have been created by miracles of god. Amongst these miracles was the first pair of blacksmith tongs. The reasoning is that in forging a pair of tongs a blacksmith must hold the hot iron with tongs. So the first tongs must have been a gift from god.

https://people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Shokel/020620_Tongs.html
 
That is Way cool,Square_peg,thanks!:)

(though as a terrible,pragmatic blacksmith i must note that the tongs(out of all things)are a perfect thing to be forged one end at a time,by cooling the other end to hold on to...(may be tricky with a chunk of bloom,but eventually you'll draw it out long enough)...also,in many cultures to this day people manage to use wood...not exactly sure how exactly,maybe by charring it first,and then soaking the charred part in water,but in SE Asia bamboo tongs for smaller stuff at least are commonly used).


There is that significant verse in Old Testament,in Isaiah that says:"Behold,i have created a blacksmith;he blows the coals of his fire and brings forth an instrument".

It is quite significant in that it underscores that a smith makes tools(vs just objects),as indeed the smiths have done for practically every other trade.
Blacksmithing,though only one of the "fire-trades"(others are ceramics and glass-blowing),is unique in that no other material undergoes the Phase change in the process,a very significant molecular transformation,where the alpha-iron,a body-centered cubic molecule composed of 9 atoms,at austenitic T becomes gamma-iron,a face-centered cubic,with 13 atoms...Which is kinda trippy and magical....:)

And it was of course very common for a smith to become super-religious,and have others ascribe to him strange and special powers,even in the European cultures of fairly recent history...More so in the older times,and more exotic cultures,where the practitioner of the trade was necessarily a shaman or a priest.

Another cool factoid has to do with the term "Iron Age".It's a term created by archaeologists to denote the time when this particular culture started practicing ferrous metallurgy.Such timing is different for different peoples, so that the term is relative.But there are some things that seem to be closely associated with getting into iron.And primary among those,something that seems to inescapably follow the beginning of the Iron Age in any given culture,is Literacy...:)
 
jake pogg said:
But for the meantime,a composite is just more fun,much higher cool-factor!:)
Click to expand...
Sure, sure, and not even for the smid alone, having so much fun in the process, but just to handle this kind of blade and often even to look at it as object; we don't even have to bring up the question about which is better in those terms, important and pertinent as they are on all counts.
Let me just spill my bean and lay it all out on the table, in the full light of day, (though there's no telling if that day is a clear cloudless blue-sky day or partly cloudy with showers in it;)) for all to see then. Come on now, the effective action of a composite, in use as intended, would seem, in conventional terms to have on many - at least a few - counts clear advantages over the Bessemer full-bodied monosteel counterpart: protection and support of the bit steel, shock absorbing qualities, improved sharpenability - the convention of the Japanese that the softer iron improves the friable action of water stones in grinding and honing - readily renewable, a not to be underrated element if we agree that the formation of the axes' eye forms the bulk of the effort in producing it. I just wanted to cut to the quick, getting at the crux of the matter, as they say it.

Ontologically speaking now:), we, again, have to not look into things as at all times and from all perspectives being equal. After all from a certain distance a mouse and an elephant appear almost the same and built in obsolescence with the element of time eliminated might just well get confused with the old Second Law of Thermodynamics in that same way.

It is so fine to read all these stories and references to the old texts and histories and myths and all that.
 
:)

Well,that "largely" is the operating term here...I am about 300 feet away from an airfield where Boeing 737 can,and does at times,land...
But then again,a few miles up river there's a bluff that for reasons unknown all sorts of Pleistocene mega-fauna has come to die...That was somewhere about 12000-14000 years ago,but as the remnants are thawing out of the permafrost the stench tells you that it may've been yesterday...

So i'm straddling a very sharp-edged fence,and as uncomfortable as it is,the view from here,oh man,i tell ya!:)

And as to "devil",that's also true...A few years back i had to entertain a delegation of visiting Catholic priests in the forge.After a short demonstration we got into this fascinating discussion about how probable it was that the entire scenery of Hell was drawn from life using the ironworking shops of the time.
The darkness,and the flickering fires,and the sulfurous fumes,and the naked sinners,the glint of sharp,dangerous implements....All of that actually has solid technical basis beneath it,from the smith's perspective,and they in turn provided all sorts of theological data...
It was Fantastic,we all enjoyed ourselves most thoroughly!:)
 
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