Choosing a sword

[Ken Morgan]

This is not correct.
Carbon is lost during the folding process, due to the decarburization caused by the heating cycles that are necessary for the folding process.
.

Correct, carbon will be lost, but in the folding process the smith adds the carbon by adding straw rice to the mix. We're all leaving out many details just to get to the main points...

 

[Bruno@MT]

We seem to have entered a tamahagane trivia contest

As fun as this can be, I won't distract from the main topic any further to avoid the risk of sounding pedantic and / or looking like a metallurgy nerd. It's certainly not my intention to be a nuisance.

It is interesting though: The beauty of traditional swordforging is not only to make such excellent swords, but to make them out of raw materials with so many imperfections.

Merry Christmas all!

 

[Ken Morgan]

Well we all seem to have a clue...so again we're preaching to the choir...

Come on I just want someone to come in and say how cool Japanese swords are, and how they can cut machine gun barrels, and **** like that!! Then we can gang up on them and mock them in a Monty Python sorts of way....

anyone? anyone? Bueller? anyone?

 

[jks9199]

Well we all seem to have a clue...so again we're preaching to the choir...

Come on I just want someone to come in and say how cool Japanese swords are, and how they can cut machine gun barrels, and **** like that!! Then we can gang up on them and mock them in a Monty Python sorts of way....

anyone? anyone? Bueller? anyone?

I, like, saw this movie, and, like, the guy in it had, like, a samurai sword that was so sharp that he, like, let a scarf fall on it and it, like, cut the scarf as it fell...

And, then, in this other movie, this, like, super master sword maker was making sushi, but he made swords that were, like, so sharp that they could cut people's heads off and they, like, wouldn't know it until their head fell off when they like nodded!

And in this other movie, this guy had a sword that was like folded like 20000 times!

 

[Bruno@MT]

Well we all seem to have a clue...so again we're preaching to the choir...

Come on I just want someone to come in and say how cool Japanese swords are, and how they can cut machine gun barrels, and **** like that!! Then we can gang up on them and mock them in a Monty Python sorts of way....

anyone? anyone? Bueller? anyone?

We can invite some of the youtube crowd?

 

[Ken Morgan]

We can invite some of the youtube crowd?

Fish in a barrel my friend, fish in a barrel...

 

[lklawson]

Ancient damascus steel was created by smelting ore in a crucible and letting it slowly cool to allow the forming of dendrite structures that cause the patterns and mettalurigcal properties. This technique was lost because it depended on a specific type of ore with the right combination of trace elements. It is presumed that the smiths of old didn't know -why- the ore was so important; just that it was. Making this steel required 3 important things: the right ore, the right smelting techniques, the right smithing and heat treatment techniques. When the ore ran out, the other knowledge was no longer passed on and lost a generation later.

However, research has regained this knowledge. Today this type of steel is known as 'wootz' and it is hideously expensive. It is comparable with today's supersteels, and outperforms everything else in cutting tests. The reason is that the dendritic structures are extremely hard, and wear less quickly than the surrounding steel. As a result, the cutting surface is littered with micro serrations that act like the teeth of a sawblade.

There's a whole big debate over whether or not modern "techno-wootz" really is "the real deal" wootz, how much the ancient persian smiths actually understood about their crucible steel process, and whether or not nano-structures such as dendritic fibers or carbon nano-tubes were responsible for wootz's mythic cutting legend or if, instead, it was carbide structures performing a similar function or if, indeed, wootz really deserved its legendary cutting reputation.

The fact is, we will probably never know for sure, but I'm, personally, inclined to think that modern "techno-wootz" is fairly close based on some electron microscope studies of surviving examples of true wootz in comparison with "techno-wootz."

Oh, BTW, nice pattern welding. I have a soft spot for pattern-welded blades. Do you do 'hawks and bowies too or is that market too saturated?

Peace favor your sword,
Kirk