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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.
Then again, there's a lot of metalworking tech besides Damascus steel that's been kinda-sorta lost, like a lot of the twist-core stuff used by the Franks, Vikings, and Chinese. The Franks also supposedly folded the metal multiple times, just like the Japanese did.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
Remember: Steel wants to be free!
Please...
Don't anthropomorphize steel. It hates that.
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.
You know, i sat here scratching my head for ten minutes before i realized that "it" was not referring to the sword.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
In all honesty, this brings up an interesting question.
Some bit of knowledge exists in the public domain. Then that information is lost. If it's rediscovered, can it be patented?
OK, it will be patented, no question. EVERYTHING gets patented. But is it enforceable?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
And this is the Slashdot article about this. If it weren't for the linked article, this topic would be totally redundant. Except that it contains nothing that isn't in the Scientific American article, so not only is this typical Slashdot regurgitation of old topics, but the linked article is, too.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
Actually, rolled or hammered steel will become stiffer, and more brittle compared to the cast metal weapons.
Only with a simple process. A forging process which repeatedly reheats the metal with have a far more complex effect on the metal.
They laid the groundwork of knowledge but were unable to reap the rewards out of ignorance of technology and a bizarre unflinching adherance to ancient religious law.
The more I see researchers struggle with things like Greek Fire, Building Pyramids, Damascus Steel, I wonder if we're really that much smarter than our ancestors.
With all due respect, I don't wonder at all -- we aren't any smarter than our ancestors. Better informed about many things, to be sure, but by no means are we any smarter.
Egyptian culture was much more ancient than our own -- thousands of years of their best engineering and mathematical minds worked on the techniques of building giant masonry structures. Isn't it a bit arrogant to assume that some liberally trained archaeologist, smart as he may be, should be able to figure it all out just by noodling for a few years? The sword thing is pretty analagous -- generations of highly trained specialists working empirically on a problem of life and death importance to the ruling class. It's no wonder they knew a few things we don't.
Our ancestors were plenty smart, and their technology ingenious and quite tricky to operate. Which would you rather learn to use if your life depended on it: a GPS or a sextant and chronometer?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Doesn't this case DEFINE prior art?
Rich...
Ignore Alien Orders
THeir is much misinformation about various types of swords, including the japanese blades of legend.
Yes, they 'folded' the steel... that's how they worked it. Folding & hammering changes the carbon content of the steel.
The unique technique used in making the japanese blades was the way the blade was tempered; they tempered the edge differently than the back, so the edge was almost crystalline; very hard, can be made very sharp, but is brittle.
The back, and the rest, less hard, but can bend... so the sword won't break.
THat is, of course, oversimplifying. Cutting a silk scarf in half under it's own weight? not sure you could do it regardless of how sharp the blade is...
OK, I'll give you that modern steel might hold a better edge, but get yourself a 36" x 2.5" blade and smack it against a damascus (or even spring steel) blade of equal size and see which fares better. Remember, sharp tends to mean brittle. A blade that cuts through anything doesn't do you much good if it turns to powder the first time it hits anything.
Well, the Conquistadors thought it was flint at the time and that's what they described it as. But not that you mention it, it was obsidian.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Bullshit. Use a line like that in a bar and I'll kick your ass if he dosen't.
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
Write your congressman today and request, nay, DEMAND that the DMCA and CSS and DVDA be repealed so we can steal MP3's again.
I'll agree with everything else you said, but not DVDA. That's the band of Matt Stone and Trey Parker. For those not in the know, DVDA stands for Double-vaginal-double-anal (from Orgazmo )
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
The technique of forging the steel was secret: there was no published work that explained it. Thus, there is no prior art.
This is actually a perfect example of why patents were created in the first place: to reveal and create a public record of secret processes to prevent technologies from disappearing. Society gets the secret information in the end, but, the inventor gets a legally-protected monopoly for a reasonable period.
If the Ottoman empire had a patent system, perhaps the secret of Damascus steel would never have been lost!
The original artisans did not leave complete instructions for making their steel, and the few written formulas are less than helpful. Some advise quenching the red-hot blade in the urine of a red-haired boy or of a goat fed nothing but ferns. Another text suggests driving the sword into the belly of a muscular slave.
Ironically, scientists also believe this is how the first versions of Windows were created.
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.
heheh, this reminds me of a friend of mine who is a swordsmith, he makes quite good swords, not as good as the ones you can get from master smiths but much better than the stainless steel stock removal jobs from spanish and taiwanese vendors, anyhow, he makes three swords pretty much identically and from swedish powdered steel stock and chooses cow bone as the test material (extremely hard, will expose the blade to quite a high possibility of a break if it is too brittle or a bend if it is too soft).
;)
He broke two of his blades not knowing the correct cutting technique and got me to test the third one first on one thick leg bone, then two, then three, sheared clean through them each time with nothing but a minor non fatal chip on the very edge on the third attempt with three bones.
I guess when it comes down to it, swords work in the fashion that they are designed to work, swinging a decent katana in the same fashion as a louisville slugger is probably not a good idea to test the strength of the blade.
Cough ... have you ever heard of the Ottoman Empire? With their artillery and other technical military items unmatched by Europeans for a couple of centuries?
... we still fight over the teaching of evolution because so many Americans have a bizarre
...
Yes, eventually their fortunes turned as those of France, Russia and other nations rose. Of course,
those nations found their fortunes wane as well.
Rule Britannia! The sun never sets on the British Empire!
Of course, Bismark and the Prussians brought great power to Germany (and don't forget that the Turks were still a force to be reckoned with in WW I).
And those powers waned as well, leaving the US and
Russia as the two remaining superpowers after WW II.
Now, of course, there is only one. But before we get too full of ourselves and assume we'll remain the world's most dominant force forever, consider that our bizarre unflinching adherance to ancient religious law rivals that of fundamentalist Islams .
Let's see
unflinching adherance to a literal belief in Genesis. That's not the whole story but it's not a bad place to start
bla
Steel wants to be FREE, people, and Nucor wants to keep this technology to themselves to help further their globalized corporate profitmaking.
Either that, or they want to charge out from the steppes on horseback to rape and pillage.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The Japanese swords were also quenched in a special way, to make the front edge hard, while the back remained springy (this is still done today for some swords). So it's sort of like what these guys are doing, but at a more macroscopic level.
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!
>The religious fundamentalism came later
This is not true, you already had many fundamentalist periods in the Islamic World. Fundamentalism traditionally raised every time Islam or the Islamic nation was perceived in danger, as it's the case today because of modern civilisation. This is a kind of protection against it.
I'm glad that someone's finally paying attention to the hinge-smiths of the ancient world. It's been a long-neglected field that deserves our respect and our attention.
People the world over that use swinging doors in their homes and in their cars seldom consider the technological leap represented by hinges. Before hinges, doors had to be broken or removed every time a person walked that way - a time-intensive and laborious process. With the advent of the stone hinge, our ancestors saved themselves and their descendents millions of hours of hard work.
The next time you open a door, think of the innovative hinge-smith that made it possible. And the next time you refer to a historical monument, remember to spell its name correctly.
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.
Not quite. You're making a common mistake here - confusing the Islam of today with that of yesteryear.
:)
Let's see... ignorance of technology? Umn, that's a pretty big screw you to the people who invented medicine, astronomy, and chemistry as we know it. Don't get me started on mathematics.
Here's a link for the goatse weary: http://www.al-bab.com/arab/science.htm.
The muslims of yesteryear gave us a btter calendar, which we refused; a better number system, which we grudgingly accepted; a better understanding of astronomy and medicine, which we scoffed at; and preserved all of those greek and roman texts - ya know, the canon of western thought?
So where did Islam go wrong? Way too many schisms within the groups. There are no actual schisms in the sense of christianity, mind you - the fractures start taking place at the jurisprudence level. Oh yeah, and that whole colonialism / subjugation of the middle east thing. (Read Said's Culture and Imperialism. Read Orientalism. Hell, read anything, you sound like you need it.)
In closing, racism bad, and everything you know is wrong. Have a nice day
Hey, yeah, thanks for nothin! ;-)
Just raise the taxes on crack.
To hell with proper syntax! I put my punctuation outside of quotes. Change that archaic rule now!
Speaking of archaic technologies and practices, it's somewhat interesting to note that placing punctuation marks inside quotes is a relatively modern practice, started after the advent of the printing press. The use of justufied text became popular and it lined up better if the lines ended in a quote, rather than a period. The reasoning was aesthetic, not logical.
I also put punctuation outside quotes, when dealing with technical writing, where a quoted command could become confusing. I'd love to see the practice become more widespread.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
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.
Take a piece of steel. Flatten it by hand under heat. Fold it in half. Flatten it again. Repeat 20 times. You wind up with 2^20 layers of alternating hard and soft steel joined by high carbon layers created on the outside of each fold. Reheat, finish and polish. What you get is a flexible spring that is incredibly resilient yet has an extremely hard edge.
OK, lets invent our own process of making Damascus Steel, and make a bunch of swords (our slogan? We put the SLASH in /.)
Then, all of us armed with the swords will first go get Dimitry freed, then proceed to the whitehouse to make some demands.
Remember Congressmen (and the pres for that matter) wear SILK ties.
$sig=$1 if($brain =~
an algorithm that on the surface is O(N^3) can actually be O(N^5)
I doubt that, while I agree that it can slow down computation by a huge factor, I doubt taking machine hardware into account can change an O(N^3) algorithm into an O(N^5). My reason is simple: the slowdown factor will be a constant, which might look like (time for random memory access)/(time for cache memory access). This factor will not keep increasing as N tends towards infinity (as the O(N^3)->O(N^5) implies).
You might have a slowdown of factor 1000, but that factor won't become 100000 if you multiply the size of the problem by 10.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
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.
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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.
It is easy to sharpen a blade so it is sharp enough to cut through silk.
What is hard is to make it hard enough to keep that edge without making it as brittle as glass.
The Japanese katana accomplishes this. It can be polished so sharp it will cut through meat under its own (low) weight. On the battlefield, admittdly there is little need to cut through a silk scarf or to carve steaks, but one useful tricks you could do with a katana and presumably with a fine Damascus blades was to actually cut through lesser blades. Which is very useful indeed.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
More neat katana tricks: the aesthetically and functionally perfect curve of a katana doesn't form until the nearly-finished blade is quenched, and it forms naturally - it's not forged in. The differing hardness and thickness on either side of the blade causes it to cool and contract at different speeds, forming the curve. The steel on the back of the blade is also much softer than the steel of the edge, which is why you'll see people in movies deflecting and parrying with the back of the blade. This allows an enemy's weapon to bounce off the softer steel so the hard edge doesn't chip or shatter.
At least, I think so - that's what I heard from a friend who was a blacksmith for a while.
The concept of zero was invented in India. As was the decimal system (Arabic numerals) and the concept of negative numbers. The Arabs traded between India and Europe and were responsible for learning the concepts from the Indians and transfering them to the West. So the Islamic world didn't invent the zero any more than Columbus discovered America. Both get credit only for bringing this knowledge to Europe.
Mmmm.. Donuts
And if you want some pretty pictures of knives with Damacus Blades, check out their product page Forgot to include the URL above before I hit submit *smack* ow.
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
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.
Sure, they kicked ass and took names in the beginning, but after a while they just settled down and put their feet up.
That's where they got their name.
[runs from the hail of rotten fruit, broken bricks, and lobbed scimitars]
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You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
Why, exactly, can they patent this? Isn't the Damascus steel itself prior art?
Damascus steel is cool, but it's nothing compared to the edge holding and sharpness you can get with VG-10 steel. You can find that on some of the more expensive Spyderco knives. I recently got a custom stoneworks Viele, and the thing can slice through about 30 pages of paper by just *pushing* on the blade. You really would have to use one of these to appreciate the quality. It truly puts Damascus to shame (though it isn't as pretty).
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.
Can you say Prior Art?
But can anyone prove that the Damascus steel of legend was made the same way as the Damascus steel of the 21st century? Who has the burden of proof?
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
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.
One of the features of the myth surrounding Damascus swords was that they were quenched by plunging the sword hot from the forge into the body of a slave. I wonder if Microsoft has enough middle managers to keep a good modern production line going for a while?
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
And have Sephiroth steal it and kill Aeris? Are you insane??
- the original steel for Japanese blades had several contaminates from the original iron ores they used
- Chromium
- Vanaddium
- Molybdenum
- by rehaeating the blade repeatedly the steel aquires carbon for iron carbide (very hard but brittle)
- The hard part of folded blades in general is making the welding flux things like silica sand, and Sal amonium are used this is what the secrete formulas came from mostly
- the actual folding pattern controls the patern on the blade and a lot of its individual properties. if I remeber correctly, individual modern knife-smiths have patents, trademarks and or copyrights of these paterns
In short to do-it yourself start with your Craftman's socket set, some old carbon bateries, and sand and start pounding. Maybe you'l figure it out before you go broke. I don't think that just because the original steel was from Japan that maybe chinese ores wouldn't have been simalar, and available to the Indian and Arab's, they were primarily trading societiesApocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
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
Keep in mind they patented their PROCESS for making Damascus Steel, not Damascus Steel.
This works for computers too!
air and light and time and space
/me turns on Home Shopping Network in search of the new Damascus Steal Ginsu Knife:
"It slices, it dices, it cuts through silk cans!!! It'll cut your fingers off cleaner than ever!!!"
There was an article about this in Scientific American, but I can't find the link. Do yourself a favor and find it, without pictures, articles discussing the technique are useless. (eg, look at the shiny pretty sword)
[o]_O
Why not? Hell, I'd pay a ton of money for one of them. And I know just the client to test it out on too.
Now I have a new ferrous option to coat my depleted uranium slugs with for my rail gun...
I certainly encountered more than my fair share of professors in undergrad and in grad school who had tenure and all kinds of honors, but didn't understand how a real computer works. Case in point: Algorithm analysis. We analyze the performance of algorithms based on a model where every memory access can take the same amount of time
Yes, that's why the traditional algorithm analysis is rapidly being displaced by a new field of CS -- "algorithm engineering". Algorithm engineering aims to understand what makes algorithms faster on real life machines. It is of course far less clean and much more empirical than traditional methods.
There's a lot of confusion in the posts here...
Note: I'm almost exclusively discussing European techniques.
I'm an amateur knifemaker. I don't forge blades yet (well, I've started one in 070A72 but not getting very far because of time and meteorological conditions: it's too damn hot to spend time in the forge)... but I'm studying the background and making up knives and bill-hooks by stock-removal either from rolled bar or from forged blanks that I buy.
I can buy a piece of 'damascus' about 20cm × 5cm × 1cm (i.e. 8" × 2" × 13/32") from my knife dealer, or I can buy a part-finished blade in 'damascus'. I can even get a near-as-damn-it finished bowie blade that just needs quillons, handle and pommel then sharpening.
These blanks and bars can even be made of stainless steels. Clearly this has very little to do with the original Oriental process (stainless was invented in Sheffield, England, in around 1916). The term 'damascus' is used because of the technique of taking two steels of different compositions and forge welding them together, and because the visual effect is very similar.
The action of folding, hammering, repeating gives a final piece that has many many layers of these different steels. When you clean up the finished piece with a certain chemical (I forget the list of things used, though I seem to remember iron sulphate and even citric acid), the difference in colour between the two steels is accentuated.
Making and using modern 'damascus' steel responds primarily, to my mind, to aesthetic rather than functional criteria. This is confirmed by the increasing use of 'damascus' amongst custom knifesmiths and hobbyists for making mitres, guards and pommels. Modern steels are easily good enough for the job of cutting and holding an edge. Indeed, for some jobs, you really should only use stainless (knives that touch foodstuffs, including skinning and hunting knives).
Up until the nineteenth century, and for some applications, into the first couple of decades of the twentieth century, good steel was too expensive and too brittle to be used alone. It is very common to find knives, axes, adzes and other chopping tools that are made by welding a hard steel edge onto a softer but tougher 'body'. This does not give the 'damascus' effect of wavy lines throughout the tool. Another technique was to take a bar of the expensive hard steel, a bar of the less expensive tough steel or iron, and twist the two together. This technique is ideal for the forging of long blades such as swords. This technique was known to the Vikings in Scandinavia and in England.
There are quite a few books that explain how to go about creating these modern 'damascus' steels. From the simple wavy pattern, to repeated geometric patterns. I've even seen photographs of blades with legible text composed from 'damascus' blocks.
Getting back to the point, and to touch upon patents a little, is that these two Americans have re-discovered that traces of Vanadium made a big difference... Well, I bet that professor of metallurgy is kicking himself now. It is very well known that very small amounts of Vanadium, Manganese, Chromium, etc, can change the physical properties of steel. And since we're also talking about the micro-cystalline structure of a composite material, he should have thought about this a little earlier... Take two steels, one of which contains just enough of an element that increases toughness, make 'damascus' steel from them. Simple? Perhaps so simple he overlooked it. Perhaps he thought "well, they wouldn't have had access to Vanadium back then, so it's not worth looking into".
But then again, there are some very strange steels that have been produced (and may still be being produced) in what we would call 'very primitive conditions' in India... For example there is a very large pillar made of iron or steel (I forget which, and I forget where it is) that has peculiar corrosion-resistant properties, supposedly due to "trace impurities"...
You should never overlook the improvements that can arise from letting "impurities" into things... I bet the first time yeast found its way into the dough, it was considered an "impurity".
Sorry if that wasn't clear. Yes, I know this article is about making wootz damascus steel. But there are lots of knife makers selling pattern welded damascus steel. In fact, I think it is a requirement for becoming a master knifesmith, to demonstrate a damascus steel blade.
I was trying to make the point that what these guys are doing is different than what you are going to see called damascus steel at a local knife show.
I agree with your primary thesis. As evidence I offer my experience of many more years than I care to admit pursueing a doctorate on three continents all the while acknowledging that the degree was only an admission ticket to the higher ranks of academia. Now that I'm working, I much prefer having to know multiple fields and actually getting things done.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
SCA Blacksmiths have been playing with the folded metal style of blade, commonly called Damascene steel for over a decade now, probably more.
This is just another case of a scientist claiming to have discovered something that has been common knowledge for a while. And then patenting it to try to make cash - so much for the scientist part I guess.
I have read in depth instructions on how to produce folded steel weapons - and I have met folks who have done so and seen the results - wavy pattern on the blade and all. This guy might have discovered a refinement on the technique but he sure didn't discover anything new that hadn't already been rediscovered previously.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
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.
Sure, it can be 1000000X slower, or even 10^100 time slower, but still as N goes to infinity, the slowdown fact does not.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
It is. You can thank Dr. Jim Hrisoulis for a lot of the research these turkeys are trying to claim. http://www.atar.com/ is his swordmaking site.
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
Somehow I don't think it will be difficult to find prior art on this patent. :)
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...
I dunno about the differing hardnesses of steel, but it sounds plausible. Anyway, the big reason for deflecting with the back of the blade is two fold: One you don't notch it, and, two, parrying with the back of the blade tends to put the edge in position for a counter strike. At least in what I've seen so far of Japanese sword fighting work. Of course, your point could be the reason why the technique came out that way. Course, I'm still working with wooden practice swords
This is the sort of cutting edge technology that belongs on Slashdot!
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
"Sometimes I'd have to tell him, `I don't care if you've got a PhD, you don't understand what the hell's going on here,'" Pendray said.
Someone get this man a slashdot account.
...I'd also say that being beset by the Crusaders, then conquered by the Ottomans, and finally, turned into European protectorates also had something to do with their decline.
The more I see researchers struggle with things like Greek Fire, Building Pyramids, Damascus Steel, I wonder if we're really that much smarter than our ancestors.
If you get the chance, go see the file Himalaya.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Doh, I meant 'creation' not 'evolution'!
You conveniently left out that the fight, by some, is to INCLUDE the teaching of evolution.
"And like that
There is something seriously seriously seriously swrong with the moderation system used here.
......
I am no expert on metals or blades, however this looks like an extremely intelligent and useful post, with a lot of information. However as of now it's rated +3, Informative, and on either side (with my filter set to a minimum of 3) there are +5, Funny one liners that aren't really all that funny.
So someone intelligent gets +2, and someone spitting out a silly 1-liner gets +4.
Something's not right with this picture.
If God gave us curiosity
"Although Verhoeven and Pendray have patented their technique and received some funding from Nucor Steel Inc., they concede the technology in its current, labor-intensive form probably is not a moneymaker"
So they figured out how to do something that was done hundreds of years ago, and were able to patent it? Isn't there blatant evidence of prior art? Is it just me, or does this further the idea that the US Patent Office is full of morons?
Let's see ... we still fight over the teaching of evolution because so many Americans have a bizarre
...
unflinching adherance to a literal belief in Genesis. That's not the whole story but it's not a bad place to start
I always thought the fight was because so many Americans have a bizarre unflinching adherance to the belief that evolution and the Big Bang are proven scientific fact, when by definition they're not even provable scientifically.
Is anybody seriously arguing that we should be teaching the Biblical account of creation in public schools? Not that I've heard of. Catastrophism is certainly valid in a secular context, and even the young-earth theories can be discussed without necessarily talking about a Creator, yet these concepts are ridiculed simply because of the association with Bible-thumping brainless lunatics. Open your mind a little!
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
For a really interesting discussion of how swords were really used and how they evolved check out this link.
Bitter and proud of it.
Many months ago Sciam had a lengthy article about these guys' work. It went into detail about what they did and the difference between their steel and the other stuff. If I remember right one conjecture about why Damascus steel began to vanish is because other sources of iron became cheaper than the sources in India, and the Indian sources simply closed shop. And, the Damascus steel makers couldn't find the right iron. Gotta go dig trhough my stack of back issues and look it up.
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.
I know blacksmiths who have been making what they refer to as damascus steel blades for years. Most of it is made by heating and pounding large steel cables. I guess it isnt the same as the old amascus steel, but it definitley has the look.
-- free as in swatantryam - not soujanyam.
> Steel doesn't want to be free... people want steel to be free.
No... no... I think it's "People want to steal things that aren't free"
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I mean I can't count the number of times I've been in battle and needed to slice through falling silk in mid air... geesh, I wish I had one of those
~ now you know
"Although Verhoeven and Pendray have patented their technique and received some funding from Nucor Steel Inc."
Steel wants to be FREE, people, and Nucor wants to keep this technology to themselves to help further their globalized corporate profitmaking.
This is an outrage to the Open Source community, and I am hereby calling upon all Linux geeks to band together and produce their own Open-Source version of Damascus Steel. It's high time we show these people we are not going to tolerate their greedy ballyhooing at the expense of poor Dimitry and sweatshop workers in Malaysia. Write your congressman today and request, nay, DEMAND that the DMCA and CSS and DVDA be repealed so we can steal MP3's again.
Remember: Steel wants to be free!!
Free Dimitry!!
"Technically, a cat locked in a box may be alive or dead." -Kurt Cobain
The religious fundamentalism came later. The Mongols destroyed the great Islamic civilizations; Europe was saved only because tradition required all of the clan leaders to return to elect a new Khan, and the new leader (Kublai, who you might remember from the poem about Xanadu or Marco Polo's stories) wasn't as interested in world conquest as his predecessors. The Mongols were never defeated, they just went home.
The Key Role of Impurities in Ancient Damascus Steel Blades
Etymology from the OED, which sort of supports your statement...
Yes, that's from memory, and yes, I know how sad it is that I know that.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
The Key Role of Impurities in Ancient Damascus Steel Blades
Those camping bastards. Grrr.
Woot w00t w007.
it's been at least 75 years (more or less, I'm a bit lost on patent laws)
it should be part of the public domain.
No. Frog will use it and kill Magus/Janus
Muslims have seen many rewards from their love and pursiut of science, the"unflinching adherance to ancient religious law" you talk about is a misguidend CNN/hardcopy view of the orient that is highly prevalent and highly distorted.
While it may be true that many parts of the muslim world today are in shambles, Afghanistan's taliban, etc. This is not indicative of a falure in the religion, or of adherance to religion. Anyone with a rudementry understanding of Islamic law, or the Quran can point out the contradictions between Islam, and what is being implemented in Afghanistan.
Last, the "ancient religious law" you speak of is nothing of the sort. Islam has one of the most coherent and highly developed systems of law. Islamic law, and jurrice prudence has heavily influened the west. Concepts such as social justice, public utility, womens equity, equity, and tolerance were all popularized by muslims.
Hmmm.
What do they say about the earlier article in Feb '85 on the same subject, by researchers claiming to have solved the puzzle?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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
Sorry, but I was subjected to a number of info-mercials this weekend and this copy reads just like it...
It slices, it dices, it purees european knights at the flick of a wrist! How much would you pack for this? But wait! Act now and we'll throw in this handsome silk scarf! All for only 6 easy monthly payments of $19.95 Have your credit card handy and call 1-888-555-1234! Don't wait another minute! Buyers who contact us within the next 10 minutes will also receive this book: Greek Fire Made E-Z
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
For hundreds of years, some of the keenest minds in science sought in vain to tap the secret of how blacksmiths in ancient India and the Middle East fashioned a supremely tough metal known as Damascus steel.
[snip]
Although Verhoeven and Pendray have patented their technique...
Can you say Prior Art?
Buy Hex-Rated Stuff, fight the DMCA!
I forget the details exactly but the import ant thing is that this monument has been standing for hundreds of year, and it has NOT RUSTED a bit! -- this is in India's tropical climate! Corrosion problems cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars each year and I know of more than one civil engineer who would kill to find the secrets of those ancient blacksmiths.
:)
But paint manufactures might want them kept secret
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"
In fact they missed the "rational" revolution, although they had very brilliant scholars like Avicennes, Averoes et al, who began to laid it's foundation but never crossed the boundaries. The reason was that it was not conceivable to say that things may have a rational explanation and not simply made by god's will, this was perceived as a form of apostasy could lead you death sentence and still in many countries. This has not been simple in Christian countries too, remember Galileo and Jordano Bruno.
So... were they able to "slice a falling silk scarf in midair" with their new blades?
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
"None shall ever bear the cursed sword Masamune!"
Or something like that.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
...can you hear it? That's the sound of a few thousand rabid Highlander fanatics drooling over their own piece-together Damascus-steel Kurgan sword.
Or, for the ladies, a Damascus-steel Xena death-frisbee.
Robotiq.com is heavily tested on animals
That's one of the things that I find so interesting all of this. We have a PhD in metallurgy taking years to reverse engineering a piece of metal made several centuries ago. How did the ancient blacksmiths figure it out? Were they just plain lucky to get an ore with the right amount of impurities?
A few weeks ago, I read an interesting account written by Spanish invaders about the weapons of the inhabitants of Central America. Apparently, the natives had wooden swords that had pieces of flint embedded along the edge. It doesn't sound like much, but they could decapitate a Conquistador's horse with one hit.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I certainly encountered more than my fair share of professors in undergrad and in grad school who had tenure and all kinds of honors, but didn't understand how a real computer works. Case in point: Algorithm analysis. We analyze the performance of algorithms based on a model where every memory access can take the same amount of time. But anyone who understands modern virtual memory knows that's not the case. And it turns out that although that won't take an algorithm in polynomial time and move it into exponential time, an algorithm that on the surface is O(N^3) can actually be O(N^5) (according to one of the examples Larry Carter at the University of California-San Diego gave in a lecture).
In academia, people write papers on doing nifty things, while in the real world, people actually do them. It's kind of like the article below where a CS professor writes about DOOM and it becomes clear (at least to me) that he doesn't really know the first thing about what John C. actually does.
I'm not pissing on degrees; I certainly recognize the value of my degrees now that I have a job. But it took me a while to un-learn the habit I'd acquired in grad school of thinking ideas into the ground without actually doing anything with them. For a while I had to force myself to just DO things and worry about whether I was doing them "right" later. Only then did the education start to prove its worth.
I think it's common to think that people with Ph.D.'s are brilliant. They may be smarter than average, but getting a Ph.D. is more a matter of working VERY hard towards a goal than it is about being a genius.
Now, of course, there is only one. But before we get too full of ourselves and assume we'll remain the world's most dominant force forever, consider that our bizarre unflinching adherance to ancient religious law rivals that of fundamentalist Islams .
... we still fight over the teaching of evolution because so many Americans have a bizarre
...
Let's see
unflinching adherance to a literal belief in Genesis. That's not the whole story but it's not a bad place to start
You conveniently left out that the fight, by some, is to INCLUDE the teaching of evolution.
You make it sound as though we are fighting for the right to teach science -- it's the other way around. People are fighting to teach non-science, and losing!
"And like that
Years ago a team of Japanese engineers finally solved the puzzle of how Egyptians lowered a large stone into place, by positioning it on sand and metering out the sand below through holes until the stone was in place. Obvious, once you've seen it, but teams of other engineers couldn't figure it out for years. Ever wonder how they get so distracted from considering such an obvious solution? It's not that we're so well informed, we're too informed, to the point of distraction. Art of engineering is to find the simplest solution, not the most complex.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Just because something is irreducibly complex, doesn't mean it couldn't have evolved. I wish I could find the beautiful critique I read of Behe but I can't. The best way I can think to explain it is if you looked at two cards balanced against each other, you would say "that's irreducibly complex"(i.e. neither card could stand on it's own). But what if originally there was third object, that the two cards could balance against. Then, once the two cards were in place, you could remove the object and you've got irreducible complexity.
The metaphor here is that the cards represent some irreducibly complex system(something that, before all the pieces are in place, is useless), and the third object is something that was already there serving a different purpose.
And I wish I could elaborate further, but I'm about to be hit by lightning.
Actually, there are a very large number of people that advocate teaching the biblical account of Creation in schools. (And in fact, many of us are more than willing to pay $15,000 a year for private school to make sure it gets taught!)
There are indeed very good scientific reasons to consider young earth or catastrophism theories as scientifically valid. I also usge you to open your mind a little, if you're really not afraid of what you'll find. In fact, if one takes an objective look at the data, it quickly becomes obvious that Darwinian evolution is built on some of the worst "science" ever to walk under that banner. Whether you are for or against evolution, you owe it to yourself to understand some of the real scientific problems raised by the current evolutionary dogma. For a very fair assessment of how science undermines rather than supports evolution, I suggest uber-hacker Do-While Jones' excellent site devoted to the subject: www.scienceagainstevolution.org - you'll find a ton of mostly excellent articles that raise important issues in the archives of Disclosure, their monthly newsletter. Spend some time reading these - I particularly recommen Teenage Mutant Mammal Turtles, Let's Talk About Lucy, and the series on radiocarbon/radioactive dating methods. I think you'll be surprised...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.