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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.
Remember: Steel wants to be free!
Please...
Don't anthropomorphize steel. It hates that.
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
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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 =~
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."-
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!!!"
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.
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".
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.
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...
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.
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
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.
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
Etymology from the OED, which sort of supports your statement...
Which, oddly enough, is probably the most succinct description of the DMCA that I've ever seen...
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
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"
...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
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.