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"Despite popular belief the art of damascus making was not a lost secret that was only recently rediscovered... The basic process is actually a simple technique that any blacksmith accomplished in forge welding can perform...It would seem that only a hand full of westerners forgot how to make the stuff." Source

From http://swordforum.com/metallurgy/titanium.html

"...it is impossible for most titanium alloys to be hardened beyond the mid-40's on the Rockwell hardness "C" scale. For knife blades this becomes a major detriment as most knives need to be heat treated to high-50s, low 60's RC"

"...here's an example using some average values for titanium alloys and high carbon steels: A steel when hardened to RC 60 has tensile yield strength of 1,500 units/cross-sectional area ... it also weighs 7,800 units per volume; an alpha-titanium alloy can be hardened to RC 40 and has yield strength of 850 units/cross-sectional-area and it weighs 4,500 units per volume. So, for a given volume of material at the hardnesses mentioned, the titanium is about half as strong and twice as light as the steel."

Acy

This is a nice example. Traditionalists frown upon his non-traditional methods, but it is said that his babies can chop through a traditional Japanese katana (mounted in a vice, of course; you don't wanna be holding on to a sword about to be chopped in two). Can't be bothered to look up evidence proving or disproving this claim though; if you really want to know just google for it; I gave you a starting point. ;)

Hmmm.

It really depends on who is making the sword, how the sword is being made and what the pattern is.

http://www.swordforum.com/ is a good place to check things out.

As for chainmail, it's a lot easier than you may think. All you're doing is weaving metal wire together.

http://www.chainmailbasket.com/construction/making _maille.html

Swordforum has two articles about the people who created the swords for LOTR and "invented" the martial arts of the different races in the movie. Enjoy!

From "The Messages in a Battle" article:
...No nukes, no M-16s, no RPGs, no complications of gender, ethnicity, creed or race, like our messy modern affairs. Also, no ambiguity, no peace marches, no talking heads or torrential blogs zigging this way and that ideologically. No sir. In those days, even if those days are set in an Oxford don's fantasy life, war was war, war was man's business, up was up, down was down, enemies were demons, and best of all, killing them was holy work about which no one had to be guilty...

Yup, those were the days! Men were real men, women were real women and the little furry creatures from Alpha Centaury were real little furry etc...

...The overwhelming visual metaphor is men vs. hordes, which in turn plays on deep Western prejudices (Tolkien, after all, was an Englishman to his DNA). It's difficult to see this great battle without thinking of "us": us the West, with our science, our medicine, our literature, our culture, our government, vs. "them," the Others who are not of the West...

It's not Western only, it's universal. I'm an East European, from the Balkans actually, and this motive (us vs. the alien hordes) flows throughout our history. As trough anybody's history, I guess. No?

Swordforum has two articles about the people who created the swords for LOTR and "invented" the martial arts of the different races in the movie. Enjoy!

From "The Messages in a Battle" article:
...No nukes, no M-16s, no RPGs, no complications of gender, ethnicity, creed or race, like our messy modern affairs. Also, no ambiguity, no peace marches, no talking heads or torrential blogs zigging this way and that ideologically. No sir. In those days, even if those days are set in an Oxford don's fantasy life, war was war, war was man's business, up was up, down was down, enemies were demons, and best of all, killing them was holy work about which no one had to be guilty...

Yup, those were the days! Men were real men, women were real women and the little furry creatures from Alpha Centaury were real little furry etc...

...The overwhelming visual metaphor is men vs. hordes, which in turn plays on deep Western prejudices (Tolkien, after all, was an Englishman to his DNA). It's difficult to see this great battle without thinking of "us": us the West, with our science, our medicine, our literature, our culture, our government, vs. "them," the Others who are not of the West...

It's not Western only, it's universal. I'm an East European, from the Balkans actually, and this motive (us vs. the alien hordes) flows throughout our history. As trough anybody's history, I guess. No?

Swordforum has two articles about the people who created the swords for LOTR and "invented" the martial arts of the different races in the movie. Enjoy!

From "The Messages in a Battle" article:
...No nukes, no M-16s, no RPGs, no complications of gender, ethnicity, creed or race, like our messy modern affairs. Also, no ambiguity, no peace marches, no talking heads or torrential blogs zigging this way and that ideologically. No sir. In those days, even if those days are set in an Oxford don's fantasy life, war was war, war was man's business, up was up, down was down, enemies were demons, and best of all, killing them was holy work about which no one had to be guilty...

Yup, those were the days! Men were real men, women were real women and the little furry creatures from Alpha Centaury were real little furry etc...

...The overwhelming visual metaphor is men vs. hordes, which in turn plays on deep Western prejudices (Tolkien, after all, was an Englishman to his DNA). It's difficult to see this great battle without thinking of "us": us the West, with our science, our medicine, our literature, our culture, our government, vs. "them," the Others who are not of the West...

It's not Western only, it's universal. I'm an East European, from the Balkans actually, and this motive (us vs. the alien hordes) flows throughout our history. As trough anybody's history, I guess. No?

I agree with your comments about the Diamond Age. Neal Stephenson is insightful and fun to read to boot. A non fiction work of his, In the beginning there was the CLI is available online ;) A good read, and pertinent to the discussion of tanks and Ferrari's.

I've personally seen the demand for handmade objects over machine made ones. I hand make custom knives and swords, and even as a nameless competitor I can command significantly more for a knife than you would typically see in a store.

A friend of mine up in Seattle sells machine made swords fabricated by a former Boeing machinist by the name of Angus Trim.. You can see his work here All Saints Blades. Very nice stuff, and in my opinion some of the best machine made swords out there. These swords run about 350-550$, with some aftermarket customization that might take them up towards 750$.

When you look toward the finer hand made blades, you'll notice a steep step in price. Check out this rapier by Kevin Cashen, an American Bladesmith's Society mastersmith. IIRC, this went for about 3000$, and would probably be more now.

And for those of you who are fond of Katana (c'mon, Fanboy, I know you're out there), look at Howard Clark's work Here. Also an ABS mastersmith, Howard makes katana's that can bend a into a full U before seriously warping.. An article documenting that, and Howard's swords is at the Swordforum. In addition to the suffering that the blade alone would set you back (about $3K), a fully polished and mounted blade would run you upwards of 6000$.

Of course, you can get hand made swords for cheaper, but they are going to be made in China, or else where under dubious working conditions (smithing is tough enough work, even when you get paid what you should for it), and not of the same level of craftsmanship. You can take a look and see what I mean.

The demand for hand made goods is all ready rising, and I predict that this trend will grow as more of the goods and services are provided to us by machines.

• Most Ryu make a big deal about doing things the traditional way. (Look at all the controversy that the shinkendo people caused when they decided that they were the only ones using "traditional" tsuka lengths.) This emphasis on doing things the same way as the previous generation makes it unlikely that a tradition would be changed without there being a record of it occuring. Many Ryu are so tradition-bound that they won't allow any useful innovation.
• Clavell is not a solid source for anything. I used to love shogun until I got a hold of the Musashi series by Eiji Yoshikawa. Those books have a much better reputation with people like Edwin O. Reischauer, who said:

  Comparisons with James Clavell's Shogun seem inevitable, because for most Americans today Shogun, as a book and a television mini-series, vies with samurai movies as their chief source of knowledge about Japan's past. [...] With the exception of Blackthorne, the historical Will Adams, Shogun deals largely with the great lords and ladies of Japan, who appear in thin disguise under names Clavell has devised for them. [...] Clavell freely distorts historical fact to fit his tale and inserts a Western-type love story that not only flagrantly flouts history but is quite unimaginable in the Japan of that time.

• Most Ryu make a big deal about doing things the traditional way. (Look at all the controversy that the shinkendo people caused when they decided that they were the only ones using "traditional" tsuka lengths.) This emphasis on doing things the same way as the previous generation makes it unlikely that a tradition would be changed without there being a record of it occuring. Many Ryu are so tradition-bound that they won't allow any useful innovation.
• Clavell is not a solid source for anything. I used to love shogun until I got a hold of the Musashi series by Eiji Yoshikawa. Those books have a much better reputation with people like Edwin O. Reischauer, who said:

  Comparisons with James Clavell's Shogun seem inevitable, because for most Americans today Shogun, as a book and a television mini-series, vies with samurai movies as their chief source of knowledge about Japan's past. [...] With the exception of Blackthorne, the historical Will Adams, Shogun deals largely with the great lords and ladies of Japan, who appear in thin disguise under names Clavell has devised for them. [...] Clavell freely distorts historical fact to fit his tale and inserts a Western-type love story that not only flagrantly flouts history but is quite unimaginable in the Japan of that time.

You'll have to excuse me, I was shooting from the hip and didn't realize that I had made a mistake in my original discussion.

I originally said, "When you bend metal you tend to form more grains in it, due to the movement breaking up existing grains and splitting them into smaller pieces. The increase in grains causes the metal to weaken, even if it is a small amount every time."

This is not exactly true, it had been a while since I studied metallurgy and I didn't have any reference texts to consult. To clarify, the reason the metal weakens is not that the number of grains is increasing and making the material more ductile (easily bendable), but that the dislocations (areas of stress in the metal matrix) and impurities are getting moved to the edge of the grains and are collecting together. This means that less of the metal has flaws distorting its structure and is therefore harder. Since it is harder it is now less flexible and more brittle. This causes micro cracks to form during the bending. Eventually these cracks lengthen and the metal fails.

Work hardening occurs when the metal is plasticly deformed. These deformations cause impurities and other strains to gather together and less distort the structure of the metal. Since more of the metal is ordered, it is harder than it was originally.

One thing you should know is that metallurgy is very complex. There are many factors which enter into the equation, such as grain size, alloys, impurities, many different phases (crystal structures) of the metal, etc. Often simply how the metal is composed, heated, cooled, worked can vastly change its properties.

Here are some sites to study more about metallurgy:

PLANT MATERIAL PROBLEMS - a site on metal failure

Metallurgical Terms Made Simple - a site on the basics of steel metallurgy

The Metallurgy Of Carbon Steel - a more in-depth analysis of steel metallurgy

Sword Forum International has an article that talks about titanium in weapons. The conclusion was that titanium alloys are currently too soft and expensive to be used for weapons.

Sword Forum International has an article that talks about titanium in weapons. The conclusion was that titanium alloys are currently too soft and expensive to be used for weapons.