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Recreating The Lost Art Of Damascus Steel
YouAreFatMan writes "The Chicago Tribune has an article about two researchers -- a metallurgist and a blacksmith -- who have apparently been able to reproduce the legendary Damascus steel. 'Islamic artisans used it for centuries to make swords that spurred envy and myths among Europeans--including the legend that a Damascus blade could slice a falling silk scarf in midair.'"
http://www.techfak.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/def_en/ articles/key_role_impurities/the_key_role_in_damas cus_steel_blades.html
Education is the silver bullet.
There are groups around the world, knifemakers guilds, that have this down pat. This is really a nothing story.
For the US check The Knifemakers' Guild . There are groups around the world making everything from letter-openers to knives, swords and more. There are shows around the place and at least two magazines dedicated to this hobby.
The "modern" damascus steel is chemically the same as museum pieces. Damascus steel is great to look at but the people charge an arm and leg for it. Good pieces by masters costs hundreds for small items, thousands for big items. With modern methods there are a lot more patterns too. They keep a great edge and you get looks when you bring out a set for the roast.
djve
"There is magic in the web." - Othello Act 3 Scene 4.
No, this is a laminating process whereas the Damascus process is not, according to Scientific American.
In Murphy We Turst
I think that might stop a bar dispute right there (of course, the big ol' sword probably helps too).
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
I works like this:
An ignorant man from another land that doesn't know brass from bronze asks you the secret of your livelihood, the thing that makes you rich while all other the other blacksmiths get by making pots and pans. As long as you tell him a good enough story and hint that you will die if the secret is traced back to you, then he will go away happy.
There are a lot of wonderful stories from the middle ages about how to make quality steel. My favorite is grinding iron up, feeding it to chickens, collecting the droppings, burning off all that isn't iron and pounding the powder together. It could be done, but wouldn't do you any good.
As for the stabbing with a red hot blade story, gullable europeans found out the hard way that:
- Red hot steel isn't anywhere near as strong as cold steel, which is one reason why you heat it up to shape it. Poking people with your red hot sword isn't likely to do much for its edge.
- A red hot piece of metal that is sticking out of somebody isn't going to cool very evenly, since people are full of inconvenient parts, like bone, that transfer heat at different rates.
- You can harden the surface of steel with nitrates, it's a form of case hardening, but it takes time and temperature to do it, a few seconds at 1330K (hot steel) or months at room temperature soaking in organic liquids isn't going to do it. The nitrogen (or carbon, or boron) atoms needs time to diffuse through the steel, and the energy to move about.
The secret to the pattern welded Damascus steel was never lost, but the material described in the article (and several others by the same author) is another kind, which didn't require all the metal folding that pattern welding requires.
Why is this useful? The idea behind Damascus steel was to create a quality steel from materials that would only produce a low quality steel by conventional techniques. That is a problem that will always be with us in one form or another, the impurities in iron & coal vary, and many can have bad effects on the steel. Also, it's yet another case of showing that just because people lived a couple of thousand years ago doesn't mean that they were stupid.
The story about quenching it in a slave's gut is that the exact temperature necessary to give the steel its trademark temper was 98 degrees, the temperature of the human body.
absolutely false.
A blade formed by molding liquid steel will always be totally inferior to one forged by a traditional process of layering and pounding on an anvil.
The traditional process will yeild successive layers of metals of differing qualities. The high-points of this art are to be found in the swords of the Japanese Samurai, as well as in the Damascus-type blades.
The differing properties of different qualities of steel suit the differing requirements of the edge and body of the blade. The end-result is actually a primative composite, far superior in performance to what would result from a cast piece; an homogenous chunk of blah.
The only thing casting of steel swords allowed was crude mass-production. (skipping the labor-intensive steps of pounding, folding, pounding, etc. which required a very skilled and experienced laborer, as well as a lot of forge-time). And if casting didn't exist, then how did bladesmiths get the stock metal to begin with? So it wasn't casting per-se that the Arabs developed, but rather casting of a metal of a type that was of sufficient quality to work as a blade all by it's lonesome. But it wasn't an especially great blade.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The January 2001 issue, to be exact. The article's not available online ($5 to download a PDF?? WTF??) but it's right there on page 74. A fascinating read, very detailed, with lots of great pictures.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
It's actually older than that, dating to the late 1980's, Omni magazine IIRC... Damascus blades have been available from knife shops for almost 10 years now to boot...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I haven't seen anyone mention the first article in Scientific American, back in the early '80's, about "Damascus" steel.
Developed in India, it was called wootz, and the best guess at the time was that it was made by stacking thin plates of wrought iron in a small crucible and filling it up with molten cast iron, then allowing it to cool. During the cooling process, excess carbon from the cast iron would migrate into the realtively carbon-free wrought iron and stay in solution after cooling to ambient temperature. The end result was a grade of steel with more dissolved carbon than could be obtained any other way.
European metalsmiths that took samples back home to try to duplicate the material were inevitably frustrated when they tried to forge the material at typical iron or steel temperatures, and the stuff just crumbled. It wasn't until the late 19th century, IIRC, that it was discovered that wootz had to be forged no higher than around 800-900 degrees (F, I think. I've slept since then.)
Shortly after publication, I had the privilege of hearing the one of the authors speak in Houston on the subject of Super-plastic, Ultra High Carbon Steels, as I think they were calling it. This was at an AMS meeting and was for metallurgists (and one medievalist geek) in the oil patch. What they had was a solution for which there was currently no problem...
The more recent article in SA suggests a reexamination of the chemistry with more sophisticated equipment. Although vanadium was a common alloying agent in higher alloys back in the 80s, the authors (and no, I don't remember their names for reasons already admitted) may have overlooked it, discounted it as an artifact or assumed the technology of the day precluded the adding of an obscure alloying agent. I doubt there was much five-nines pure Va on the shelves in that part of the world at the time. An accident of geology is another matter entirely.
Note that pattern welding, whether one welds a strip of steel on the end of a plane iron or chisel, or welds and folds, welds and folds until the material is all but homogenous, as in Japan and to a lesser degree in the Scandinavian countries...that's a different animal altogether.
What you describe is pattern-welded steel, a technique used to mimic the appearence of true Damascus Steel.
This article is talking about the real deal, which was made through a combinations of impurities in the stock (Vandium is what these guys used) and etching the finished blade. Persumably the reason the secret was originally lost was that there were only a few mines that produced the right stock to make it, and when they were exausted, masters stopped teaching their apprentices how to do it.
Any place you see selling non-antique Damascus steel is actually using pattern welding.
Back in the middle ages, the Islamic World was scientifically way beyond anything the West had seen. Historians will tell you that the information the crusaders brought back was what caused the end of the European dark ages and the beggining of the Renaissance.
The muslims had preserved much of the Greek and Roman knowldege that had been lost in Europe when the Dark ages started. Beyond that though, they made great strides on their own. Studies in astronomy, medicine, public health, nature, architecture, math, etc, in almost every field of human knowldege then known. For example, the concept of 0 comes to the West through them. Great strides in Algebra were made by them.
It is really surprising how little of this known in much of the world, besides experts in the field. Knowledge is useful, but history should also reflect where that knowledge comes from. If not for the many advances made by the Islamic world, we would be living in a really different world right now since the Dark ages would have ended god knows when.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
BBC TV has a show called Meet the Ancestors that showed a blacksmith in Britain doing just this - making a sword the old way with much folding and beating and so on. When he was done the blade was left with an amazing sheen to it, just like oil on water as described in the Chicago Tribune piece. More on the TV show here:y /i ndex.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/archaeolog
Personally I'm more keen on finding out about the way the Japanese made their blades - Miyamoto Musashi and his ilk... I'm no sword nerd but crikey! they were gorgeous.
I am a leaf on the wind
I don't know the source or the truth of this, but here is the legend as I have heard it told.
---
Richard the Lionhearted had been captured by Saladin, and was being held hostage for, literally, a king's ransom. During his rather luxurious imprisonment, Richard fell to boasting of the quality of his blade, claiming to Saladin that its equal was not to be found anywhere.
As proof, Richard called for an anvil, and with a mighty blow of his broadsword he smote it in two.
Saladin for his part answered this by taking a gossamer silk scarf and draping it over the edge of his blade, whereupon it fell to the floor neatly sliced in two.
To which all of Saladin's wives were heard to mutter, "men!"
---
OK I made that last bit up, but its as likely to be true as te rest.
If you are interested in the subject, a pair of metallurgists who also claim to have uncovered the secret of Damascus steel wrote and article in the Feb '85 issue of Scientific American that is well worth looking up.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So superior weaponry allowed the Muslims to throw the Crusaders out of the Holy Land...
Not true, at least not entirely. When the Crusaders initially invaded, the various Muslim powers of the region were divided. The consequence was that the a crew of large, smelly Western Europeans (hey, I'm one) managed to get a foothold in what was, at the time, the civilised world. Once the Muslims got their act together (and once Saladin came along) the Crusaders got clobbered (fall of Jerusalem, Battle of the Horns of Hattin, Fall of Acre, etc).
Sure weaponry played a part, but political unity, and superior strategy and tactics on the battlefield were of far greater significance.
In depth article about a year back. January actually.
m ma ry.html
The Mystery of Damascus Blades
John D. Verhoeven
Centuries ago craftsmen forged peerless stell blades. But how did they do it? The author and a blacksmith have found an answer.
http://www.sciam.com/2001/0101issue/0101quicksu
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I read this cool article in Wired about forging the strongest possible steel... using computers to design it. If you're into knives and swords (like I am) you may find it especially interesting.
Developers: We can use your help.
The Key Role of Impurities in Ancient Damascus Steel Blades (1998):e n-9809.html
t m dispells some of the most common myths surrounding swords, including the scarf slicing one.
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9809/Verhoev
It has some nice pictures too, if you don't know what Damascus Steel looks like.
http://www.miaminiceknife.com/pictures_1.htm also has some good shots.
http://home.earthlink.net/~glennwood/swordmyths.h
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Anyway, here is a quote from the article:
These guys just rediscovered the wootz type of steel
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The original article is not the SciAm one but one in the Journal of Material Science titled The Key Role of Impurities in Ancient Damascus Steel Blades . Don't forget to have a look at the high res pictures, they are great!
Best of all this original article is free (in the HTML version)!
That's not right, kenjutsu techniques rarely attempt to put blade directly against blade, ideally large flowing movements using the entire body and momentum therof are used to avoid strikes and absorb the energy of avoidance to supplement the strength of your own cuts.
;)
For example the aikido technique Ikkyo was developed from a common kenjutsu technique dealing with two opponents, one attacking from the front and one from the rear, to avoid a downward cut from the front you would step into the attack slightly and simultaneously wheel to the side with a sharp hip movement throwing your arms into the crossing attack at the opponent behind you, letting the blade strike flesh and the original attacker miss you completely with their strike, from this position a second wheel and step back and a cut from the top right to the bottom left will cause the first attacker to drop into two neat seperate segments.
Of course, all this is in theory and often in practice you would simply do everything that you could to stay alive, in ancient battlescarred blades ( and in my own katanas that I rarely use against other live blade katanas ) there is evidence of blocking with the hardened sharp edge, but in order of preference, when using a sword your options would be as follows;
1) Get out of the way and use the momentum from avoidance to deliver a counterstrike.
2) block with the flat off the blade, preferably in the center where the hardened edge fades into the more springy spine, twisting the blade at the same time will cause the block to "deflect" the attack.
3) block with the edge, you're likely to get a non fatal chip in the blade but no fatal flaws that can't be sharpened out.
4) Block with the spine, this is extremely rare as usually in combat the sharpened edge faces the enemy anyway so you would have to twist the blade a full 180 degrees in order to do this, furthermore the hardened edge would leave quite a mark on the springy spine, admittedly not compromising usability but undeniably compromising aesthetics, and seeing as the unsharpened spine was never sharpened this would be there to stay.
As for legends of falling silk scarves being cut by flashing damascene scimitar blades, this is not an impressive feat, a sharp blade is not difficult to achieve, renaissance rapiers were extremely sharp (high carbon steel) but quite brittle, in the rare occasion that one of these glasslike blades came into contact with a lower hardness steel with more spring in it with any considerable force, the likelihood of a break would be very high.
Japanese steel in a katana is forged by heating the blade white hot after hundreds of folds and covering the spine with clay and gradiating down to a thin layer on the front and plunging the blade into water (causing the spine to cool slower than the edge, resulting in a martensite/bainite/pearlite gradient from edge/center/spine and as pointed out in the parent post, causing the curve.)
Not mentioned in the parent post is the misty pattern often polished onto imitation oriental swords, this is not actually decoration on a functional katana, it is a result of the complex tempering process and is evidence of a well forged blade, on a real sword it actually goes the entire way through the blade and gives a visual record of the area of the sword which is hardest (the misty part will follow the edge up to the point, that is the hardened edge).
In my view the impressive thing about damascene steel, even though compared to the above process for the purpose only of making swords with a single edge and an unsharpened spine (which the scimitar was, also) it is quite inferior, is that damascene steel did not rely on a gradiation in tempering, it was a single solid pillar of power compared to contemporary steels and not gradiated like the japanese blade.
All in all quite a bit of media sensationalism in the article but there you go, not that new.
Verhoeven's article in the Journal of Metallurgy on their findings is at this link. http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9809/Verhoeve n-9809.html
The Japanese have been using this method for centuries to make their swords.
Each swords has 32,768 layers of microthin metal, confering to their blades superior strength.
Why 32,768 layers exactly? Well, that's what you get when you flatten a piece of steel, fold it in two, and stretch it back while hammering it 15 times...
For a really interesting discussion of how swords were really used and how they evolved check out this link.
Bitter and proud of it.
Sciam had a great article about reproducing Demascus Steel in the January 2001 issue. Unfortunately, I can't find it online, but I definitely recommend checking it out if you have an interest in this subject.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The Key Role of Impurities in Ancient Damascus Steel Blades
Etymology from the OED, which sort of supports your statement...
The Key Role of Impurities in Ancient Damascus Steel Blades
No. Frog will use it and kill Magus/Janus
Aside from developping better steel than the rest of the world, the Arabs also developped the technique of pouring molten steel into a mould to cast blades and other items out of steel. This produced much better quality swords than europeans who were using only the old "heat up a chunk of metal and pound it with a hammer" technique - because it doesn't induce all the metal fatigue of pounding, or something like that.
Anyway, the latin word caliber was a latinized form of the arabic name for the moulds used ( yes this is where we get our word 'caliber' to describe the size of bullets ). So a sword which was taken out of such a mould would be ex caliber ( out of a caliber ), hence the name of King Arthur's famous sword excaliber and why it was so much more powerful than all the other swords of the time.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
I doubt that you can base a claim of prior art on knowledge that once existed, but no longer does. Usually, prior art means that knowledge of the process you're trying to patent is already floating around. In this case, since there's no one alive who knows what the original process was, and there's no existing documentation that describes it precisely and usefully, the knowledge has ceased to float around. The inventors deserve the patent for [re]developing a process that would otherwise remain unavailable and unknown to the world.
Damascus Steel in fact was never lost, at least in Soviet Russia. Several articles But in the west, it might not be taught in metalurgy classes. There is this article found on the net from 1994 where someone had "rediscovered" the secret back in 1981, with the development of "ultrahigh carbon steels". I also recall an old Scientific american article from the 1980s (?) which went into the making of Dasmacus Steel So I imagine that the secret has been rediscovered several times over the past 20 years, There is more on this from another source here and also here. Other resources are here on the Materials Science and Engineering newsletter. I see that that the people in the article are right now looking to put a patent on it. They won't be able to get a pattent if it was already developed in recent history.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
This link gives a little more detail and some graphics: http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9809/Verhoeve n-9809.html
"known" eh?
They're not brittle at all, Typically they are created with an edge around high fifties on the RC scale hardness and low to mid forties on the spine.
My pair were sharpened only once when I first purchased them 3 years ago and I do daily tameshigiri practice on bamboo wrapped in straw and wet tatami with both of them, even when a less than optimal cutting angle is achieved they still do not take the slightest bend or lose edge.
The Bainite L6 Katana from bugei.com has been tested to take a flex of 40 degrees without taking a set. This is not "brittle"