I knew that.
“How’s your Rolex?” ping
That would stink, now wouldn’t it...
Either way, I bet not too many customers made it back to complain!
That’s just like a Viking.....bring a sword to a culverin fight.............
O.K., sword shattering like glass in battle is a bad thing. Got it.
“You really didn’t want to have that happen,”
I knew that.
__________
Former life?
I wonder if there has been any study of transition temperature of the material in the “good” vs “bad” swords. Viking swords were probably used at lower temperatures a good bit of the time.
Sword ping
Buying swords from a guy selling them out of the back of his wagon!
Historical evidence the Vikings had extensive trade with China....
If they used low carbon steel, quenched it, and didn’t temper it at all it would shatter. I found that out early on (14) in my knife making days. Of course the steel I was using such as railroad spikes and springs from rail cars were much better steel than they used.
It is an interesting curiousity that most ancient swords (those not found in graves) have been found in river beds. The reason for this is still a matter of much discussion and debate. I suppose that the simplest explanation is that the owners either drowned, or in struggling to save themselves from drowning they dropped everything weighting them down.
Everything about this article is wrong and stupid. Ulfberht swords are a well researched subject within Hoplology. His name was not in raised letters near the hilt. Rather, they were inlaid along the broad fuller of the blade. The inlays are supposed to be flush and when they fall out his name in actually evident in depressed letters.
The author also got the trade economics of the enterprise wrong. The original Ulfberhts were made of local bloomery steel produced in smelting stacks. It is the fakes which are made of Eastern steel, and not because the local contemporaries used import steel. Instead, it was the case that foreign counterfeiters were making fakes from their local variety of steel and exporting them like modern Chinese counterfeiters. They were not as litigious about trademark infringements back then.
He also misunderstands the physical evidence and gets the relationship between brittleness and carbon content reversed. Carbon content is a hardening factor in steel production and the absence of carbon leaves ferric alloys softer and therefore LESS brittle. This is especially the case with bloomery steels, as they begin as wrought iron, a material with a sort of ropey and fiberous grain structure.
Lastly, all steels blades are (and were) heat treated. That is the whole point of selecting steel as a blade material. That invariably consisted of heating and quenching the blade to harden it, followed by a tempering to draw out the brittleness. This typical blade of Northern European construction quite springy and flexible.
Modern reenactors and experimental archeologists have pain-stakingly reproduced these methods and are only just now beginning to approach the qualitative standards of past examples.
ping!
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Thanks decimon. |
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Damn it didn’t take Eagles fans very long, did it.
Excellent analysis of steel sword making. Thanks to all, I learned a lot.