Wednesday - October 20, 2010

Where ya bin?

Not much posting from me the past few days. What time I’ve had for internet surfing has been eaten up studying. Yeah, I went down another one of those digital tangents, and got deep into some seriously esoteric knowledge. It happens.

It all started when I read something about some Viking raid back in the late Dark Ages. And the memory that those guys used something called a “klondorf” sword popped into my head. And that got me Googling. Well, it turns out that it wasn’t “klondorf” it was “clontarf”, named after a long ago battle in Ireland in which the Vikings got whupped but good.

I was pretty amazed that the minute by minute details of that battle were still known, along with all the political squabbling, temporary alliances, and dirty deeds that lead up to it. It’s a colorful story in the best Irish tradition, and in the end there are no real winners. Oh sure, the battle itself was quite decisive. But afterwards the folks went right back to squabbling and dirty dealing, so nothing was really gained by it.

But it made me think of just how courageously mad and how physically strong these warriors must have been to go at it in the dirt with these massive choppers, protected by little more than a leather shirt and a wooden shield. So I looked into it, and found out some things that I thought were very interesting. And that’s when I got on the Express Bus to ride down Esoterica Street.

For starters, swords were much lighter than I realized. I was a fencer in college, and the foils, epees, and sabres we used all weigh only a few ounces. A pound at most, IIRC. That doesn’t count; that’s modern sporting equipment. But I’ve got some sort of cultural memory, fueled by Bugs Bunny cartoons and Errol Flynn movies in which the plucky princess can barely lift a sword in emergency circumstances to save her own honor ... these things had to weigh a ton, yes? No. Surprise! A broadsword, any broadsword, from the early kind the Vikings used right up until they went away in the early days of the Renaissance, only weighed about 2 1/2 pounds. The seriously huge ones, like the double handed Claymores, only weighed a pound more. Nor were they point heavy imbalanced cudgels; thousands of ancient swords are still around, and almost all of them balance within a hand-span of the hilt. And they were sharp. We tend to denigrate the skills of the ancients these days, poo-pooing their feeble efforts in just about everything. But we are wrong to do so. Vainglorious. These guys may not have turned out 5000 tons of chromaloy steel a day like today’s mills, but what they wrought, they wrought well.

Another thing that really caught me off guard was the flexibility these blades had. I’d never really thought about it, but if anything, I’d figured that they were all stiff as rocks; great clanging iron I beams with a bit of a sharp edge. Wrong again Sherlock. A properly tempered broadsword can flex nearly 90 degrees and still not take a bend. Try that with your fancy kitchen knives! This is a very long way from the smithing process used to make the Roman Gladius, which was a short sword that was very stiff. That one was built up out of bars of twisted wrought iron hammer forged together ... go and read Jack Whyte’s Camulod Chronicles series of novels for a very detailed explanation of that process ... plus it’s a great read, and a wonderful telling of the “coulda been” story of the shaping of early Britain behind the Arthurian legend. Well, read the first 6 novels in the series. The last few books aren’t as good; the series really ought to have ended with Metamorphosis with young Arthur, the newly crowned Christian high king, rushing off to his first major battle, Excalibur in hand.

Then I found out that the evolutionary history of edged weapons has been classified by this guy Ewert Oakeshott, who spent the better part of his life studying the things, and developed the typology used by everyone today that shows the kind of swords used, who use them, where, and when. He figured out the arms race of those days, how swords grew and changed across the centuries in response to different armor, different metallurgy, and different ways of fighting wars. Impressive as all get out, and about as esoteric a field of expertise as you could ever hope to find. Which makes it pretty obvious he was an Englishman. Well done, that man.

But I was still interested in the metallurgy aspect. The mining, the smelting, the smithing. I’m still looking into that, still learning. And I think this is the core issue that marks the difference between western swords, those knightly weapons of the Middle Ages, and their counterparts in the Far East, the Katana blades of the samurai. Europe has had iron mines since forever. And coal. And may have had coke ( as charcoal is to wood, coke is to coal ) in small quantities for a very long time. But when they smelted iron their results had either no carbon (wrought iron) or too much carbon (cast iron), and very little steel (just a bit of carbon). Ancient Japan got most of its iron ore from the beaches. They have iron sands. And no coal. So their smelting was done at a much lower temperature, which gave them a non-homogeneous result, but that mixed result had both kinds or iron and both low and high carbon steel in it. This in turn forced the smiths to take an entirely different path to smithing and making weapons. That lead to all that hammering and folding, that near-mythical forging knowledge and level of labor that was required to build those fabled blades. ( for a great, lengthy, but simple read on the history of Japanese steel making, read this. ) Following that path for a bit I learned that a typical Katana was just about the same size and weight as it’s European counterpart, but with a shorter, heavier, but equally flexible blade. Because it was made from mixed steels. And they had a much more forward weight balance, due to their long two-handed grip and not much in the way of a pommel. I had always thought things were exactly the opposite, that samurai swords were the utter peak of the swordsmith’s art in all things, balance included. Horrible snark opportunity: different strokes for different folks!

Tamahagane steel is made by building and firing a Tatara, the traditional Japanese sword-steel smelter. This charcoal- fired furnace produces a very pure steel from iron sand, and this steel ‘’Kera’’ or bloom can be broken and separated into high- and low-carbon pieces, which respectively form the ‘’skin’’ steel and ‘’core’’ steel of the blade. The skin steel is forged and folded repeatedly, to remove slag inclusions and voids and is then wrapped around the core steel before the resulting billet is forged into a blade. Careful heat treating, shaping and polishing reveals the tight ‘’Hada’’ or layer pattern of the blade and the white particles of the ‘’Hamon’’ or temper line. While this process results in the aesthetic qualities much admired by collectors it also produces a very functional blade, as the high carbon content of the skin steel makes a very hard edge possible while the softer core steel gives the blade its resilience and ability to absorb shock.

I took a left turn somewhere along this road and delved into modern swords. Yes, they are out there, and not just the wall hanger bit of crap you can pick up for $24.95 at the mall and use to impress your drunken friends with when cutting watermelons. No, I’m talking real swords. Razor sharp lengths of properly forged and tempered steel, built to slice off heads, chop through chainmail and stab through armor plate. Battle ready weapons, modern heirlooms. Toys for boys with way too much money. Swordmaking is not a lost art; the best of today’s swords are every bit as good as the ones built 600 years ago. Better perhaps, although the very best ones strive to be as authentic as possible, which can mean making a slightly lesser weapon than what current technology could actually produce. They come in every shape and variety and at every price point. So do samurai swords. But eastern or western, the real real deal will set you back between nearly one and a bit more than two thousand dollars.

I simply can not make up my mind. They’re all favorites!
Not that I have the cash to waste on toys like these. But it’s tempting. They speak to me. They call to me.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/20/2010 at 08:42 AM   
Filed Under: • Amazing Science and Discoveries • Fun-Stuff • History •  
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