Bladesmithing The art of crafting weaponry is one of the oldest. Since the very beginning we have been on this planet we have needed tools axes, spears, swords, metal implements etc. Funnily enough art circles still don’t acknowledge this art as such and a group of dedicated individuals are making the efforts to organize exhibitions for hand made custom blades as well as biennale in which to give exposure to this particular discipline, such as the one organized by my friend Antonio Ce Junior (you can access the site’s exhibition here
http://www.arscives.com/mastersofire/Default.htm )
Trying to make a chronology of an ancient art brief is somewhat difficult however I will try and separate its history in its major stages; Bronze Age, Iron Age to Dark Ages, Medieval Age, Renaissance and modern times.
The Bronze Age saw for the first time the use of copper smelted and alloyed into a more usable metal that we happen to know as Bronze. Bronze weapons of the time were considerably heavier than what came next but they had considerable higher edge retention as well as some particular geometry designs suited to its use. From this time we get the leaf blade weapons such as the ones that inspired the version of Sting in the LOTR trilogy as well as the Kopis, the Falcata, and early predecessors of the Spata
I will use a blade made by Don Fogg to illustrate this style.
Leaf Blade .This sample albeit made in mono steel and having hybrid features to it such as the differential tempering which can be identified as the wavy pattern on the surface of the steel, still remains true to what would have been common throughout Indo-European cultures and favoured by Greeks and other Mediterranean cultures but also seen in Thracian, and pre Slavonic cultures always cast in bronze, never forged although their edges were. Axes, spears, daggers and other weapons were also made in this way.
Kopis Bronze Age Swords Obviously patterns of blades were different all over the world as they will always be. Edged weapons evolve according to the fighting style that it is used with and the actual use within an army.
To illustrate some different weapons you can check some examples of Egyptian, Chinese and Indian weapons of the time as well
Chinese Halberd This is a Chinese Bronze Age Halberd
GoujianWarring States Sword (Jian) And these are two straight Chinese Bronze Age swords (Jian)
Amazingly enough the Muslims living in what is nowadays Turkey were highly influenced by both Chinese trade and the Macedonian conquest and from those times we have the Yataghan (this sample is a more evolved version but it still sports the lines of both the Kopis and that was the Dao in China)
Yataghan The Kopis itself is somewhat evolved from the Egyptian Kopesh (in the photo still a bronze version from Pre Ptolemaic Dynasties)
KopeshThe reason for elaborating a bit on the bronze age is that it’s our main source of geometries what established themselves and influenced the ones that existed at later stages even if in a more evolved form or suited to the needs of those times.
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Iron Age This age saw the first successful smelting of iron rich stone and ore into metal. My pattern-welding instructor Mark Constable argues that given the nature of iron this age really saw the appearance of Steel first and of Iron later. The reason for this, he states is that steel is what you get when you try to smelt iron and you screw up. Iron requires a much more controlled process of smelting in which carbon content is minimal, as soon as carbon appears in the equation you get steel, even if you weren’t looking for it.
It all leads me to believe that it’s highly possible that as a consequence people of the time came across the technique of pattern welding. To try and explain it short and sweet, imagine you have pieces of these smelting runs and they have varied contents of carbon in it, the higher the carbon the tougher and harder the steel and also its edge retention capabilities are improved. As it was difficult to have a controlled production of steel of a particular carbon content they would then create composites or sandwiches of steels of different carbon contents saving the better steel for the edges and leaving the steel or iron of less quality between the edges. They would have then heated up the sandwich and poured limestone or other fluxing compounds to help a fusion bond, and whilst hammering it then it would become a solid billet which was later worked into swords or other edged implements.
This technique gave the advantage in my opinion to cultures who mastered it as it made a much more reliable weapon when faced with lower quality iron swords which would have crumbled or shattered more easily.
The technique saw several stages of evolution; the Chinese and Korean evolved in a different way and then the Japanese took it a step further. The Arabic peoples also managed to evolve into their own and nowadays the technique is commonly named after the city of Damascus. The Scandinavians and Germanic peoples also had their own progress with it and in my opinion the Visigoths would have sported these weapons when fighting Rome and certainly it would have made a difference.
To illustrate the process please look at the pictorial my friend Jesus Hernandez has put up
Pattern Welding The results after achieving a good weld can be very varied and depend on the manipulation given to the billet (hence the word pattern welding) and also several billets of different patterns can be welded to give different effects.
One example of a straight forward pattern is this one made by my friend Jake Powning (who also excels at carving, which is also the understatement of the year)
Spirit Horse straight pattern Then there’s random manipulation of the pattern (the next three samples are made by me)
http://www.eldayn.com/images/Kenkwaiken/index.html http://www.eldayn.com/images/SankakuKenKwaiken/index.html http://www.eldayn.com/images/PatternWeldedYari/index.html And one of my favourites, the starburst pattern (this sample made by J.A Loose)
Starburst pattern Then there are the composites of which there’s plenty of historical evidence
Scandinavian find from Jutland And a modern representation by Marcus Balbach
Pattern Welded Torsion Pattern Germanic Sword (warning big photo) In the case of the Japanese as there was more folding of the layers these were much more fine and harder to see, however the pattern was still there as you can see in this Japanese Arrow head (Yanone)
Watakusi YanoneAnd then it can be seen in the Chinese style as in this Chinese Spear from Huano Swords
Chinese SpearThe Iron age saw a development in weapons that was even more diverse to the Bronze Age as for the first time we have major scale conquests from what came to be known as the Classical Civilizations and this also influenced how iron and steel were produced, as larger armies needed more weapons and armour, and more quantity always (without exception) means less quality. Eventually carburisation was developed to such an extent that pattern welded fell in disuse as it was much more time consuming and didn’t fulfil the quotas expected for the army, and that trend stayed with us right through medieval times and until our day when metallurgy was developed enough to produce Steels that on their own can achieve the qualities expected from pattern welded steel, also methods of heat treating came into play from much more rudimentary methods from previous times, however industrialisation has prevented in my opinion to keep standards high as it’s always more quantity as opposed to more quality. So as a consequence if you are interested in History from this point on I can give you a link and you can read about it.
http://damascus.free.fr/f_damas/hist.htm For more information on Damascus and pattern welding process as written in the 18th century
http://damascus.free.fr/f_damas/f_hist/perret.htm And a brief description of the Japanese method
Nihonto making (shingane and kawagane) At a later stage we can come back to this if you want explanation on say the different geometries, materials, Japanese method of forging, Chinese method of forging, Norse methods of forging, what would have been the most likely uses and application of particular weapons and their evolution and well basically anything to do with swords and drooling over them (not literally as they would rust).
In the mean time if you are interested in typical geometries check this site
http://www.myarmoury.com/compare.html
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