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Google Engineer Shows How To Forge Swords and Knives
An anonymous reader writes "Niels Provos, an engineer at Google working on malware and phishing protection, is showing on YouTube how to forge knives and Viking swords. The process is absolutely fascinating and follows the steps of Viking blacksmiths from a thousand years ago. It starts by taking small bars of metal that get heated and hammered together until they become a solid piece. He then shows how to form it with the hammer, heat treat and polish it. All the videos are narrated explaining the purpose of each step. Sure beats sitting in front of the computer."
.. who cares. Cool as heck!
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/secrets-viking-sword.html
I can own a +12 undead slayer. Can I forge this IRL?
This is one of those things I've wanted to try doing since I was a kid, but simply never had the space for. Time to buy a few acres out somewhere.
You only ever hear people with nice soft office jobs make these kinds of dumbass statements. This sort of thing might be fun as a hobby, but as a life it would suck. It is hot, it is dangerous and the pay would not be great.
No one really wants to do hard work for a shitty living, stop romanticizing it. I think it is an offshoot of the Noble Savage BS.
Probably more effective than AV.
And eliminates future malware, at least from that source.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I mean, if you work at Google in the anti-malware devision you've probably got a good idea about the types of exploits coming down the line. Now, if someone like that is acquiring skills they'd only really need if life as we know it were blasted back to the iron age...
Two conclusions I can draw from that video:
1. The stereotype of blacksmiths looking like body builders must be pretty accurate.
2. A good sword must have cost as much as a shitty car.
Unfortunately a very small number of gun deaths in the US are committed with rifles.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-12-18/american-gun-deaths-to-exceed-traffic-fatalities-by-2015
From a nested link in the link you posted, gun deaths outnumber blunt object deaths 17 to 1 in 2011. The other years in the article were similar.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-11
Oh noes, in a minute? That totally makes an objective difference!
I'm kidding. It makes no difference. Rifles kill well under 400 people a year in the US, and assault rifles way under that. It's noise.
But carry on with your emotional arguments at will...
If he was MAN, he would have hammered that himself with a hammer, not a hammering machine.
I was simply drinking coffee in Starbucks. Then someone told me you can actually brew the coffee at home. Start with a simple stove top percolator, he said. Then it became a cheap 10 cup presto coffee maker. Then came the French Press, then the "grinding your own just before brewing", roasting your own bean just before grinding just before brewing, espresso machines, pump based espresso not the wimpy steam pressure espresso, .....
Now I am driving 150 miles each way to slopes of the Smoky Mountains each weekend to tend a patch of coffee shrubs which I am going to harvest, dry, grind and brew. They are saying the next step is to feed the coffee fruits to some weasels and collect the beans from its other end, then to dry, grind and brew. No one told me this is where I am going to end up. So watch out.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Quote from the show:
ALAN WILLIAMS: The swords were far better than any other swords made, before or since, in Europe. And these must have been extraordinarily valuable to their contemporaries, because of their properties.
Except for the Damascus sword, which was fabricated in several places in the Muslim empire, including, famously, in Toledo, Spain, where to this date there is a blade making industry.
Not only that, but the Viking sword was merely an attempt to duplicate the quality of the Saracen sword.
that anyone who posts from a breibart site should just admit to everyone that they don't have a leg to stand on. It's much less humiliating and doesn't waste the grownup's time.
Quote from the show:
ALAN WILLIAMS: The swords were far better than any other swords made, before or since, in Europe. And these must have been extraordinarily valuable to their contemporaries, because of their properties.
Except for the Damascus sword, which was fabricated in several places in the Muslim empire, including, famously, in Toledo, Spain, where to this date there is a blade making industry.
Not only that, but the Viking sword was merely an attempt to duplicate the quality of the Saracen sword.
Not that it matters, but just to set the record straight, "damascus" steel, just like the "Arabic" numeral system, was neither invented in Damascus nor in Arabia nor in Spain. Both the numeral system and the steel was invented in India. It should be more accurately called Wootz steel. This steel making technique technique was mastered and perfected by ironsmiths in South India around 300BC. The original technique also died with the ironsmiths over time, and has was only recently replicated with success some years ago.
References:
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9809/verhoeven-9809.html
http://archaeology.about.com/od/wterms/g/wootz.htm
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647868/wootz-steel
The first article is the most informative and comprehensive of all.
To quote from the articles linked above,
"Wootz is the name given to an exceptional grade of iron ore steel first made in southern and south central India and Sri Lanka perhaps as early as 300 BC. Wootz is formed using a crucible to melt, burn away impurities and add important ingredients, and it contains a high carbon content (nearly 1.5%).
Although iron making was part of Indian culture by as early as 1100 BC (at sites such as Hallur), the earliest evidence for the processing of iron in a crucible has been identified at the site of Kodumanal in Tamil Nadu province, and possibly also at Andhra Pradesh. The term 'wootz' appears in English in the late 18th century, and is probably derived from ukku, the word for crucible steel in the Indian language Kannada, and possibly from 'ekku' in old Tamil.
Wootz steel is the primary component of Damascan steel. Syrian blacksmiths used wootz ingots to produce extraordinary steel weaponry throughout the middle ages. "
For the record, I'm not a steel expert by any stretch, but I do love Japanese cooking knives, especially AS sandwitched core ones, and was really disappointed to learn that my first flashy "Damascus" pattern knife was only chemically etched and not a true damascus pattern.
OK, so why are they going after "assault rifles" which kill very, very few people (think in the order of the number of people killed by lightening)? Not that we'll cave in to the gun grabbers on handguns either, but why the focus on such a tiny problem?
I'll tell you why - emotion and fear. The gun-grabber's greatest weapon.