“True” Damascus steel is not a “lost art”
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This is explained in the 1998 Verhoeven, Pendray, and Dauksch (VPD) article]1] that the reddit post cites without touching on this crucial aspect. Or anyway, I thought that VPD's explanation was now generally accepted. This isn't anywhere near my field though.
[1] Verhoeven, John D. et al. “The key role of impurities in ancient damascus steel blades.” JOM 50 (1998): 58-64.
And there is what is now commonly called Damast steel, basically folded and twisted steel of dofferent properties. That technique is as old as blacksmithing because it was, more or less, the only way to get rid of impurities. The Japanese developed this technique to the extreme by not just getting rid of impurities but by gettind specific steel properties to defined parts of a blade.
European sword smiths stopped doing that, first European steel became better and more homogenous and didn't require anywhere near as much imourity removal. Secondly, spring steel is pretty sturdy monosteel, so need need to get specific steel in specific parts of a blade. And lastky, European bladed weapons from the Napoleonic era onwards were industrially mass produced (as compared to the manufacture mass production from earlier periods). And mass production means cost reductions, that didn't start with MBAs. Sonce those weapons were good enough to kill people by stabbing, cutting and slashing them Damast steel wasn't needed. The obvious exception are expensive master pieces forged individually. And the better quality "industrial" ones.
Damast steel has renessaonce at the moment, mainly because it looks great. And it is a way for knife makers to upsell, otherwise not a singpe one of them could compete on price.
The Japanese way of blade making has the benefit of having properties of the alloy at, e.g., the blade (hard and sharp) and the core and back of a blade (softer and stronger). Damast steels properties are all over the place, meaning it has no real value, IMHO, regarding a blades capabilities when it c;mes to cutting. Those blades so, as the Japanese ones, are falling into the region of art so, and there the optical properties matter a lot. And there Damast is just beautiful.
From experience so, Damast steel bars are hard to get rigjt, I'll go out on a limb and say Japanese bar steel is easier (if you forgo the tradidional Tamahagane way that is). Finishing the blade is easier woth Damast so, a proper Japanese blade requires so much delicate heat treatment and polishing to get right, it is borderline rediculous.
That's confusing to me, what exactly was from Damascus, the steel or the forging technique? Reading the article OP cited says: "This suggests the possibility that the low levels of vanadium found in the genuine wootz blades of Table III may have resulted from ore deposits in India where the wootz steels were produced. "
Source: Watched when japanese smiths, who have the status of a priest in japan, showed their craft for the first time outside of japan.
Actually, come think of it, there are contemporary sources decribing how to straighten bent blades on the battlefield over some rock to continue fighting.
If you are interessted, there is a book on that topic (https://www.amazon.com/Art-Japanese-Sword-Swordmaking-Apprec..., Amazon was the first result that came up), it is really comprehensive covers everything from raw Tamahagane to the scabard, including guidance on polishing and heat treatment. Can only recommmend it! Buy the hard copy so, the eBook is unreadable.
This is not quite true. Even today, there are many secrets surrounding metalworking. The highest quality "blades" (such as plow blades/moldboards), may have steel with quite diffent qualities in different areas of the blade.
The blade may start out as monosteel, but differential exposure to oxygen, carbon or different temperatures in different parts of the blade is a common way to create blades that have different microstructures (crystal structures, chemical bonds, microshapes) as well as a carbon content that can vary within the blade. These helps them to retain an edge better, better avoid scratching, while maximizing durability and minimizing weight and thickness.
Metallurgy is quite fascinating.
It is, but with all the above upthread said, I feel I'd probably get a high quality blade, if I just take my mower's 2 foot mulching blade, and use it as a sword.
I wonder how many current masterpieces, from antiquity, were created by having 20 apprentices pump out blades, and just picking the best out of 1000 blades for a respected client.
Probably 0. Swords were not that random. High quality swords would either be made from Wootz/Crucible steel, which was an expensive resource (but relatively easy to forge into a good blade) or by using various folding methods, that was immensively labour intensive.
A smith would not have apprentices produce 1000s of such blades. That would be too expensive.. Low quality swords would be produced using less labour intensive methods, and sold in larger numbers. These production methods would ensure that they would not reach the highest level of quality.
Top-quality swords would be made very carefully by or under supervision from a master, in much smaller numbers. Some of these may not have had obvious flaws, but not 99.9%.
One of the reasons steel weapons were reforged, faulty blades reworked. And handles, as well as the inner parts of the blades, used to be iron. Also in Japan sometimes. Simply because it is cheaper, and the sharp edges between handle and blade are less brittle and this less critical during heat treatment. And heat treatment of non-standardized steel is a black art indeed.
That being said, European blade making was shared enterprise since the earliest days. One general contractor signed with a customer, then he sub-contracted a smith for the blade, one for the cross guard and handle, one for polishibg, one for scabards and, if was not the same guy, one for assembly. That's were the english word cuttlery comes from. Otherwise a single smith would produce maybe a dozen blades per year, maybe even less. Not even close to what was needed.
One costs 1625 shilling, or less than the cost of a female slave.
The other costs 24000, more than the price of 9 female slaves.
Clearly, for the second sword, the steel was not the main part of the cost.
As an aside, that website is a great example of what the web used to be. Absurdly informative, fun to browse, and obviously a labor of love.
Very true. Simple elemental iron is extremely hard to find; possibly because nobody wants it. (Whenever you see phrases like "wrought iron" or "cast iron" or "ornamental iron" today that's all steel, not true iron.)
The best source I've found for true iron is wagon tires. These are the metal bands that were wrapped around wooden wagon wheels in the 1800s, and many of them are pure iron. Sometimes you can find them at antique stores or in a farmer's field. They survive long after the original wagon has rotted. They're always very rusty but that's no big deal.
Why would you want simple iron? Because it's very soft and much easier to work than steel. And if you cut into it slightly and bend it at the cut, you'll see the marvelously beautiful huge crystal structure that only true iron possesses. It's wonderful stuff; just not very durable compared to steel.
Iron is hard to purify. This is partly because it's so enthusiastic about reacting with other elements. It's like the Oprah Winfrey of elements, or the gender-swapped version of oxygen: "You get an electron, and you get an electron, and you get an electron! Everybody! gets! an! electron!" Worse, in nature it's always hanging out with its buddies manganese and nickel, and they're hard to separate. It's not as bad as zirconium and hafnium, but almost.
It wasn't until the 01930s that reasonably pure iron was produced, and it was found that it was much softer than anyone had previously suspected.
I'm sure chemical-grade iron is available but melting iron powder into ingots in an oxygen-free environment is beyond my capabilities ATM.
I understand that when you're blacksmithing normally having your iron get hot enough to become a self-sustaining fire is a risk to be avoided rather than a goal but I feel like this might be less alarming if it's in a ladle covered up with a layer of flux and slag so that it stops burning whenever you stop blowing bubbles into it through a straw.
There's obviously the difficulty of what to make your straw out of. Apparently the standard answer in modern basic oxygen steelmaking is, "a water-cooled, copper tipped lance with 3–7 nozzles is lowered into it to within a few feet of the surface of the bath and high-purity oxygen at a pressure of 700–1,000 kilopascals (100–150 psi) is introduced at supersonic speed," but I imagine graphite or aluminum phosphate would work too and might be a bit less exciting.
Apparently the standard way of doing this from Han China until the invention of the Bessemer converter is a thing called "puddling" which sounds a bit less violent but also slower. Wikipedia explains, "Working as a two-man crew, a puddler and helper could produce about 1500 kg of iron in a 12-hour shift. The strenuous labour, heat and fumes caused puddlers to have a very short life expectancy, with most dying in their 30s."
So, maybe not something you want to do every day, but it seems like something you could probably do a few times in your lifetime—I'm guessing 1500 kg of iron would last you a good long time of hobby blacksmithing, and we have a lot more respiratory PPE now than we did in the 01800s.
Or you could start with pot metal or aluminum.
I know a guy who starts usually with a spiral screw for his blades, and those blades are beautiful.
Not that I'm representative, I made a couple of blades out of Japanese multi-layer steel. And do have some rather expensive Japanese multi-layer steel bars laying around for later, one in a proper Katana-like structure with an iron back and one with 22 layers of chrom-stainless steel with a middle layer of paper steel, both around 8mm thick. They cost a factor 4 more than the ordinary spring steel I mentioned earlier. But since I don't have the time, nor the skill, to make those raw multi-layer bars myself I bought them for my tries at Katana-like blades. One day that is, I planned my first sword to be done in early 2020 and still didn't get started...
The Damascus blades somehow exceeded european crusade era steels in all three areas, which was thought impossible. And, superficially at a minimum, these swords had a pattern.
This simple etymology isn't mentioned, nor is the crusades, the sharpness/flexibility/strength/superiority, which seems strange.
I suppose you'd need a sampling of the crusades era weaponry and its properties, and try to find a real damascus blade with similar superior properties to verify the military advantage, and then figure out if it is just better. I've seen a lot of reddit/HN postings and I don't know if the superior swords were actually demonstrated.
I recall one post speculating carbon nanotubes forming back when "carbon nanotubes" was a very clickworthy headline term.
Can you take relics and heirloom swords and destroy them for testing? Probably not. Thus, the mystery. Are the "damascus swords" we do have actually the militarily superior ones? Were they just slightly better but more uniformly performant, while knight swords were a bit more variant?
Who knows. I don't think this article really cleared up much nor lived up to the central claim "we can do that, it's not a lost art".
I imagine it going like this: first, blades from a certain region start making a name for themselves for superior quality (thanks to the ore). Then a few things happen side by side, augmenting each other:
- higher prices allow smiths to spend more time per blade
- blades from that region become a status product, giving them almost exclusive access to the market segment that is willing to spend extra on fancy craftsmanship, resulting in even more time per blade
- export markets get flooded with fakes that only claim to be from the high reputation region, some of the fancy craftsmanship ends up serving as a sign of authenticity
That's because it's not that simple. Ore plays a part, but the main "secret" to "True Damascus" steel is the Crucible Steel process that was almost unique to South/Central Asia. Most steel producers in the Medieval era were not able to properly melt steel, since they were not able to create a sufficiently high temperature. But a few, primarily in India and Central Asia (and probably at least one place in Europe, associated with the Ulfberth brand) knew how to melt pig iron (that has a lower melting point) together with iron or steel to create Crucible/Damascus/Wootz steel.
Most Europeans and East Asians did not have access to such steel, meaning that European (except a few 'True Ulfberht'), Chinese, Korean and Japanese were made from inferior steel compared to swords made from Wootz/Damascus steel.
That doesn't mean that all such blades were bad. But that is where the intricate process came in, and without access to Wootz steel, creating high quality blades required a lot more labour and skill.
Here is a film of them making a wootz ingot and discussing vanadium.
The ubiquitous modern Portland cement and concrete made with it hardens faster and has initially a higher resistance.
Modern Pozzolanic cements, more similar to the Roman ones, are in practice very rarely used, even if they have most of the properties of the old Roman ones (longer time to harden, hardness/resistance increasing over the years, generally much better resistance to water).
And Portland cement is cheaper and can be made in much larger quantities.
This is kind of a recurring story with these topics: we know how to make it "better", but we don't really need that "better", we do need "cheaper" and "higher availability" instead.
"We" may not need more (as en "we" that are alive today). But future generations would thank us if we would make structures that would last for 500+ years instead of 100 years. Much better for the very long term economy AND the climate.
Sure, having an old Colosseum or Aqueduct to look at is nice, but do you really want to live in a place where every single square inch of useful ground in the whole country is occupied by an ultra-resilient building that somebody thought would be useful 2000 years ago?
We have all of these examples of nice long-lasting roman architecture because those are the examples that survived. Romans didn't live in the Colosseum and the aqueducts. The Romans built hundreds of thousands of other buildings that fell down on their own or were demolished for any number of reasons over the millennia.
The Golden Gate bridge was opened 85 years ago. Is there any sane reason to demolish it in 15 years?
Would they? 100 year old houses are already dinosaurs in terms of energy use, and often it's a lot easier and cheaper to demolish and rebuild instead of isolating and installing modern heating. I can't imagine how outdated a 500 year old house would be.
Demolishing a building and re-building it in terms of total energy (and/or emissions) is not free of costs, maybe you don't pay them directly, unlike heating or air conditioning, but they do exist.
Right now 100 years old houses (the brick or stone ones, not the wooden ones, nor the reinforced concrete ones that are usually more recent) already exist and can be restored/upgraded (though of course with some limitations) with a minimal amount of work (in terms of energy and emissions).
More or less the "if ain't broken don't fix it approach".
Now, if we had some building material lasting only 100 years that could be manufactured with little expense of energy and low or no emissions, that would be another thing.
If we imagine that (hypothetical) there is a form of (say) square section bamboo that we can grow at little or no cost and that we can assemble with (still say) some vegetal cement or similar, so that the results of the periodical demolitions can be reused or recycled or that is however biodegradable, then a short lived building would make much more sense.
Having lived in one, I can assure you that upgrading such a house to modern energy standards isn't a minimal amount of work. Lots of these houses just have a single brick wall directly facing the outdoors. Insulating that means you have to basically completely strip the house down to the brick, and even then it won't be as good as new construction.
Of course demolishing and rebuilding also takes energy; but if you amortize it over 50 years or so, I bet in the end you come out ahead. Building technology has improved a lot in energy efficiency over the last century.
No, insulating that means that you add an extra set of layers to the outside of that brick wall, which can done without impacting the interior while the people are living in that building during the renovation.
You’ve never actually done this I assume? I have lived in a 1920s house during renovation. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Should have torn it down; would have been better for the environment and my pocketbook.
I have, and there was a lot of drilling into concrete filled with tiny stones, that caused enough noise to cause pain in the ears. Only during working hours, though.
> would have been better for the environment and my pocketbook.
If you don't want to live in a building as it is being renovated, you can always rent something else for the time it takes. If the renovation takes less time than rebuilding, you also pay less rent.
The beautiful hand-carved crown moulding and stairs are nice, but not worth outrageous heating bills.
And this is, comparatively speaking, a happy case, I’m sure there are lots of big dams built back in the 1930s in places like the US or the former USSR that are only 10 or so years from that “this concrete-structure is only guaranteed to last 100 years” time-point.
This is not only due to the kind of cement, there are a number of other factors that have an influence on the (scarce) durability of modern reinforced concrete structures.
Portland cement may be cheaper than pozzolanic in some markets/countries and the contrary may be true in some other ones, but you cannot anyway make a direct comparison, as they are normally used in different kinds of structures.
The "let's build things that have a set expiry date" approach could be a very good one IF we actually knew how long a construction lasts (or should last) and matters would have been organized so that this continuous demolishing/rebuilding could be planned and carried on, but this is not what AFAIK happens anywhere, exception maybe for a few (BTW wooden) temples in Japan.
Structures which need a longer design life than that have switched to stainless steel rebar, which currently has an unknown life span. Check back in a century or two.
Wikipedia says, "Over the course of the 20th century the use of pozzolans as additions (the technical term is "supplementary cementitious material", usually abbreviated "SCM") to Portland cement concrete mixtures has become common practice. Combinations of economic and technical aspects and, increasingly, environmental concerns have made so-called blended cements, i.e., cements that contain considerable amounts of supplementary cementitious materials (mostly around 20 wt.%,[clarification needed] but over 80 wt.% in Portland blast-furnace slag cement), the most widely produced and used cement type by the beginning of the 21st century.[5]". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzolan
Who's right? Are pozzolanic cements "the most widely produced and used cement type" or "in practice very rarely used"? I'm guessing it's the writer who doesn't think "pozzolan" is a proper noun in English.
However nowadays it is rare that a Portland based cement is "pure" any Portland based cement may have pozzolanic components, i.e be a "blended" cement but the use of pozolanic components even in relatively large percentages does not make them "real pozzolanic cement" (but they are, when there are large amounts of pozzolanic components what I called "modern pozzolanic cement", the "base" is usually anyway Portland).
"Real pozzolanic cements" are fabricated/created with a different process and from different base materials, they are not really used anymore, exception made for particular restoration works.
Is this a myth I have fallen for?
I did even check to see if Tolkien had ever visited the area to see if there was any connection but no luck - unlike, for example, Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland being the real world Rivendell.
[Edit] Incidentally, I supposed the name "Damascus" was related to the patterned silk fabric named "damask", rather than the origin of the material being the Damascus area.
> N.B: A brief note on the claim carbon nanotubes exist in crucible steel:
> The only articles that "found" carbon nanotubes was published as a brief communication to Nature, i.e not a peer reviewed article, not a full article. This was in 2006, and was only a few pages in length.
> It later found its away into a conference paper by the same authors, still not a peer reviewed article. This was 2 pages in length. These findings should be considered preliminary.
> The method used (dissolving crucible steel in acid and seeing what remains) revealed stands of carbon, but carbon dissolves VERY readily into steel. Crucible steel is typified by cementite spheroids, which often stretch into rods during forging as they are deformed. If you dissolve cementite in acid, removing the iron component, you are left with carbon.
> This does not mean there was an intact carbon nanotube in the core of the cementite rod - and even if it DID mean that, it would have negligible impact on performance because it is *encased* in cementite, which itself is in a soft matrix of pearlite or sorbite.
> But don't take my word for it. Other academics, including those who have been instrumental in understanding crucible steel (namely John Verhoeven) doubt the findings.
> " John Verhoeven, of Iowa State University in Ames, suggests Paufler is seeing something else. Cementite can itself exist as rods, he notes, so there might not be any carbon nanotubes in the rod-like structure."
> "Another potential problem is that TEM equipment sometimes contains nanotubes, says physicist Alex Zettl of the University of California"
> https://www.nature.com/news/2006/061113/full/news061113-11.h...