Are there any known "lost arts"?

Factual Questions
101

I would think that “lost arts” can be broken down into 5 groups:

  1. We know a number of ways that the ancients could have done what they did, we just don’t know which specific method they actually used. For example, exactly how trireme rowers were arranged - there are several workable arrangements, but we don’t know for sure which arrangement the ancient Greeks used.

  2. We know how it was done in a general way, but are no longer willing to devote a lifetime to learning the detailed techniques, and also no longer have an existing base of experienced artisans who could shorten the learning period through training. For example, medieval swordfighting - the medieval warrior was good at it because he spent years learning from experienced specialists, and then went out and practiced in real battles.

  3. The “how could primitive Egyptians/Mayans/etc. have done that without modern equipment” lost arts. This is mostly failure to realize how much you can do with a large amount of workers, a lot of time, and simple techniques. A good example is the Iron Bridge in England, the first large metal bridge, where a BBC TV team showed that the perplexing question of how the large metal support beams were put into place without using complex machinery was easily answered through use of a simple wooden derrick, a lot of rope, and a large number of men working in carefully controlled unison.

  4. The “legend” lost arts, where the lost art never really existed (i.e. the huge designs marked out in flat areas of South America, which are only visible from the air - does this mean that the makers could fly? No, only that they knew some simple techniques for design layout. After all, if the designs were made for religious reasons as generally agreed, the makers didn’t need to see them as long as the gods could).

  5. And finally, there are almost certainly some real lost arts. It is likely, however, that all or most are in the categories of detail techniques (the exact shade of an ancient glaze) or obsolete techniques (we have developed an improved method of achieving the same result, so no longer need to know the previous method).

102

Isn’t there still some controversy about these instruments? I saw the show on NOVA, and I believe that the special varnish (made with ground diamonds) played a role as well…does anybody know if the exact composition of this varnish is known?
I also heard (from a stained glass artist) that we have lost the formula for some of the intense greens and blues that were characteristic of medieval stained glass…however, i would think that modern analysis would be able to uncover what elements were responsible.

103

ralph there are as many theories on why Strads are great as there as Strads, it seems. I’ve not seen a comprehensive analysis of the Strads varnish (though one must surely exist) and I know that there’s different theories about why it makes Strads sound so well. One of which was that it kept the wood’s pores open and another was that was the structure of the varnish had something to do with. A third was simply the age of the instruments. Another theory claimed to explain the stories of Stradivarious walking in the woods, thumping the trees to listen to for the sound the wood made, and selecting the wood for the instruments based on that. Another theory claimed that the instruments were made from old growth trees and that accounted for the sound quality. And those are just the theories that I’m familar with.

104

Actually, and it seems to me it has already been mentionned in this thread, such manuals did exist and some have survived until now. I wouldn’t know when they appeared. I would guess, from the look of the drawings showing the moves, etc… it included, that the one I saw pictures of dated back from the XIII°-XIV° century (wild guess…I’ve no particular competence concerning medieval drawings). I remember the author was a german trainer. I wouldn’t know who was expected to read this kind of book.

105

Highjack 1: Iron and steel
For historical reasons, there is a lot of confusion about iron, steel and nomenclature. I’m going to muddy the waters some more.

Firstly, there is the element iron, Fe on the periodic table. Lumps of high purity iron are difficult to produce, but can be achieved by electrolysis. Mechanically it is unremarkable, but it has some magnetic properties that can be useful. “Soft iron” was a fairly pure iron used for transformer cores, but special alloys that are superior and cheaper to make have superseded it.

Then there is iron that contains carbon. Wrought iron, cast iron, mild steel, steel, they all contain carbon. The production of iron from iron ore introduces carbon – typically modern steel makers will lower the carbon content to the desired level, rather than add carbon.

Mild and ultra-mild steel are very low carbon steels, the sort of thing automobile panels are pressed from. They also contain manganese, which makes them stronger and binds sulphur.
It is soft, easy to shape, easy to weld and spot-weld. It would be a terrible material for making swords.

Wrought iron is very low carbon steel with bits of slag left in it. It is not dissimilar in properties to mild steel, except that it contains slag stringers and no added manganese.
Ancient wrought iron was made in small bellows furnaces using charcoal fuel. It was a terrible material for making swords. Nevertheless, people did so. Apparently there are Roman accounts of Celts having to straighten out their bent swords on the battlefield.

(18th-19th century wrought iron was made by “puddling”. Some poor bastard would stir a vat of molten steel with a steel rod, while the carbon within it burnt off. As the carbon content falls, the melting point of steel rises and so solid lumps of low-carbon wrought iron would form on the steel rod. When he had a big enough ball of wrought iron on his puddling hook, he’d lift it out and start another one. Hell of a job. In fact, Hell might seem a relief.)

Then you have low, medium and high carbon steels. The definitions are vague. Low carbon steel may be steel with 0.2 wt% carbon or less in one text, 0.3 wt% in another. Either way, mild steel, ultramild steel and wrought iron are all technically low carbon steels. Medium may be 0.3-0.6 wt% carbon, high may be 0.6-1.2 wt% carbon, depends who you read. Medium-high carbon steels will make good swords if you heat treat them correctly. Ancient medium-high carbon steel was also made in small bellows furnaces.

106

Highjack 2 – ancient steel and swords

My area of semi-expertise is anglo-Saxon and Roman steel, found in the UK and dating from 500-1000 AD or so. Globally, things may have been different to what I’m about to describe. Feel free to educate me.

The Saxons made their steel in clay furnaces about the size of an oil drum or smaller, using charcoal as a fuel. The iron ore was a fine mass of various iron oxides. The furnace never got hot enough to melt the iron – the solid ore was progressively reduced to FeO by gaseous carbon monoxide. Much of the FeO was then lost in a slagging reaction with contaminants such as clay and sand. The slag melted and most of it ran to the bottom of the furnace.
The remaining FeO was reduced to steel by a gas-to-solid reaction with carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide also introduced considerable carbon into the steel.

What was left was a spongy mass of red-hot steel particles, bonded together like ice-cubes that have been left too long, with liquid slag still trapped within it and the carbon distributed very unevenly. That was called a “bloom”.

The bloom would be taken from the furnace and hammered, making it into a solid block and squeezing the liquid slag out of it in a spray of droplets.

The steel would have a varying carbon content depending upon where it was in the furnace. The ancient steelmakers had an appreciation of the different properties, and would either divide blooms into low, medium and high carbon portions, or tweak their furnaces to produce the type of steel they desired.

To get a fairly homogenous carbon distribution in a bloom, you have to find a way to “mix” it, despite it being solid. That could be done in a number of ways. The Japanese folded their katana steel 10-20 times, hammering it flat again between folds. (Doc Nickel – I’ve read katana steel typically has 1000-1000000 layers, that would correspond to 10-20 foldings. Clearly some people have become confused between layers and folding operations.) I don’t know if folding has some additional benefits by creating an aligned microstructure as Una suggests – I haven’t really thought about it.

The Saxons “mixed” their steel in a different way – by welding several strips together to form long blocks, and twisting them up like a barber’s pole. That has become known as pattern-welding because you can produce nice herring-bone patterns along your sword blade with it.

Doc Nickel describes the classic five-part katana blade – low carbon core, medium carbon “cheeks” and back, high carbon edge. The higher the carbon content, the harder the steel will become when heated to cherry red and quenched. Quenched carbon steel is like glass – hard but extremely brittle, and it will crack spontaneously if left for too long. It has to be reheated (“tempered”) which reduces its hardness but decreases the brittleness. Get it right and you could have a sword like a spring with an edge like a razor.
The Saxons also used high-carbon steel for their blade edges, considerably earlier than the Japanese. I have some nice pictures of blade microsections with a martensitic edge and a ferrite-pearlite core. The highest edge hardness I measured was 690 Vickers – not sure what that is in Rockwell C, but I think it’s in the 50s.

107

Highjack 3 lost arts, and what can we do today?

When I was researching Saxon blades, I performed a few experiments to see if I could duplicate some of the structures I found. The things I tried were:

autotempering instead of quenching the whole blade down to room temperature in water, I attempted to do a quick quench and pull the blade out again while the core was still hot, and allow the hot core to temper the outside. That would vary the quench severity from outside to in, and the tempering temperature from inside to out. I failed miserably.

case carburisation I packed a piece of mild steel in charcoal in a fired clay box and heated the lot in a tube furnace to see if I could diffuse carbon into the outside layer. I failed miserably.

differential quenching I packed a blade in clay with the edge protruding, so that it would be directly exposed to the water when quenched and hopefully harden more than the rest. This was apparently done with katana. Again, I failed miserably.

My experiments were rudimentary but made a point – it takes time and skill and practice to develop the techniques to do these things. And since we don’t have to do them that way anymore, we have lost the techniques.

As for making modern swords better than the best katana – we could, but we’d do it differently. Una wants to use 440C, which is a martensitic stainless steel, very hardenable, useful for bearing races among other things. I’d prefer start out with less of an advantage – say a 0.6% plain carbon manganese steel, like Una’s leaf spring.

First we mask the part that we’ll use for the blade edge with molten wax, and electroplate copper all over the rest of it. That copper acts as a carbon diffusion barrier. We clean off the wax, put the sword into a carburising furnace, and diffuse the edge up to 0.8-1.1% carbon. The katana smiths had to weld on a high carbon piece of metal for the blade edge – we don’t.

Then we heat the thing above its critical temperature and quench it – into molten lead, not water. Hold it in the lead while the microstructure transforms to bainite. This is the process applied to masonry nails, and they are hard enough, tough enough and strong enough to be hammered into brick without bending or breaking.

But we want more! So we laser-harden the blade, each zap instantly heating a small spot above its critical temperature and allowing it to self-quench. The katana smiths may have been expert at achieving different thermal histories on the same piece of metal, but they couldn’t come close to what we can do.

How much better that a fine katana would such a sword be? Maybe you could bend the thing into a hoop and it would spring back. Maybe you could smack it into an anvil all day and shave with it at the end. But in terms of a practical, fighting difference, I doubt it’d convey any advantage at all. It wouldn’t cut through other swords or armour any better than a katana would.

108

Through existing manuscripts from the time. As I mentioned earlier, there ARE groups currently trying to revive this martial art through out the world.

They do, though not as many as we would have liked.

Most knights would have been of noble blood. As such they would have been well educated. Moreover, they would have trained in the sword through a either a master in the art, or in any of the highly reputable academies of the time (especially later in the middle ages/Renaissance).

And that’s how knights and swordsman learned this skill. Through verbal and instructional drills from masters of the art. This is how many things were taught (and continue to be taught). From one generation to the next.

You do not know the subject well enough to conclude this. There ARE many treatises on how the ancients used these weaponry, both from the middle ages and the renaissance. Heck we even know how the romans (severla hundred years before) used their weapons on the battlefield and in personal combat. To say otherwise only speaks on how little you know of the subject.

Even Una Persson would say that this statement is false. Thaty we have better steel, better ways to manufacture it, and better ways to do what we want of it, certainly. That it is better as a material to make swords out of… that’s debatable.

109

There are several german treatises on swrdsmanship, but you may be referring to Hans Talhoffer’s Fechtbuch which coverls longsword fighting in detail, and is actually one of the sources several study groups use for longsword technique.

110

Matt Thank you, that was very informative.

It also reinforces my position, that even with today’s technology, our best efforts in creating some ‘supersword’ would provide little or no advantage to a man on the battlfield using said blade.

Which goes to say a lot about ancient swordsmiths.

111

Adding a couple of interesting (to me, at least) points:

A vintage-1980s text my wife had in her paleoanthropology courses made the fascinating comment that there were more people alive at the time of writing who could chip flint into a Paleolithic spearhead than there were when it represented the acme of durable technology in the later Paleolithic. I.e., more people were taking courses in paleoanth. and in consequence learning to make such spearheads than had mastered the art when it was the means of survival.
Based on information garnered from a Heathen friend who was acquainted with people making swords on the medieval techniques, one of the elements of their methodology was to always hammer and quench the blade-in-the-making aligned with magnetic north. This supposedly helps to cause the microstructure of the blade to be more uniform, minimizing brittleness and maximizing retention of sharpness. Someone with a better knowledge of ferrous metallurgy than I can probably comment as to whether there’s anything to this in terms of alignment of the fine structure of the metal.

112

Just to throw another iron in the fire, I remember reading years ago a theory that the “real” secret to Damascus steel was in the way the iron was quenched. Supposedly, the swords were quenched by running them through the belly of a handy slave, which just happened to be at the optimal temperature for that sort of thing.

I tend to doubt this was really the case (that the swords were quenched in such a way, or that doing so would actually be produce a better sword), but you never know…

Barry

113

Let me make a GQ nitpick here, Kinthalis. I feel that even if you are 100% correct on every point, your argument might be helped by giving some examples of scholarly references, both contemporary and not, on this. I think a lot of people also would be interested in learning more, and thus would benefit as well - especially if any translations had been scanned or entered onto an online resource. Please take this in the spirit in which it is intended - if you think someone is wrong about a point you specialize in, please try explaining to them in detail why you feel you are correct, and maybe try referring to some other resources? I certainly know I would love to find some online references on ancient swordplay and actual battle techniques or schools. Especially if there are scans of woodcuts and illustrations…hmm…public domain art…(drool)

[QUOTE]

Well, not quite. I read what he said as being along the lines of “due to the limits of their technology, precision, equipment, basic resources, and impurities in raw materials, etc. ancient smiths did an amazing job with what they had, and should be honored for that. Nowadays, due to our incredible amount of accumulated research, advanced processing methods, high level of precision and repeatability in experiment and practice, quality control, purity and consistency of the stock metals, and so forth, what really limits our ability to make better swords is more the material itself.”

I would add to support your position, however, that due to the dearth of current knowledge worldwide on how swords are intended to be used for actual steel-to-steel combat, the design and making of such swords may suffer from limitations. We may be limited by the metal, in some aspects, but we also are limited by the lack of experience in what designs and performance characteristics are required of a good sword - which goes back to what I think we concluded on the second page, but I could be mistaken.

At least, that’s what I think we’re saying. :confused:

114

Poly

Haven’t heard of the magnetic north thing before. I’m 99.9% certain it would be of no benefit whatsoever.

For the quench-and-temper heat treatment to work, you have to heat steel above its “critical temperature”, which is about 800 deg C or 1470 deg F. That temporarily transforms it to a different crystal structure called austenite, which isn’t magnetic.

When you quench, you force the crystal structure to “snap back” to something like its cold configuration, but so fast that the carbon doesn’t have time to get back into position. This gives a very hard structure called martensite, with the carbon “frozen” into the “wrong” gaps between the iron atoms. The residual stresses in the metal are enough to crack it if it isn’t tempered. I can’t see Earth’s magnetic field exerting a lot of influence compared to that.

godzillatemple

I’ve heard of the “human quench” as well. I don’t think it’s related to Damascus steel in particular, but there’s nothing like a bit of human sacrifice to add colour (and smell, in this case!) to superstitious rituals. Somebody somewhere probably did it, but I think it would give an inferior quench compared with plain water.

I would love to know what exactly the ancient smiths thought they were doing when they used metals of different carbon content and heat-treated it. Their paradigms would have been interesting!

115

You’re absolutely right! I’m a relative newbie on these forums and hardly ever post on GQ except to ask a question :wink:

So here are a couple of references:

“Talhoffers Fechtbuch” 1462
Deals with longsword technique and grappling combat.
Web link to one of many studies on this manuscript: http://www.aemma.org/onlineResources/thalhoffer/thalhofferHome.htm
I believe there is also a publiched english translation… yep here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1853674184/kampaibudokai/102-0939163-1876136
Also on that last link: a list of many contemporary studies on the subject.
“Fiore De’ Liberi Flos Duellatorium” 1409
Swordplay, dagger and wrestling combat.
Web link to a study:
Online Library: Fiore dei Liberi c1409

As mentioned before there are many derived books and works from the middle ages to the rennaissance, into the classical period and even more contemporary treatises by accomplished modern masters.

IIRC, the oldest known European fighting text is a German sword and buckler manual -MS I.33- written c. 1295.

Later, works from the great Swabian master Johannes Liechtenauer c. 1380’s were used by German masters of the art.

The writings and teachings were continually expanded on by several others covering such topics as sword techniques with the langeschwert, zwei-hander, bastard swords (armored and unarmored), as well as combat with polearm, staff, dagger, buckler, rapier and unarmed wrestling and grappling.

116

With reference to ancient/medieval/Renaissance manuals of arms and similar writings, you need to be careful about the accuracy of the information. Many of these documents are know known to have been written by authors with little or no practical experience with the subject, and may not correspond very well to actual practices. As well, in some cases, the techniques described are intended to support a particular theory of the author’s, and may be wholly imaginary.

An added factor is that, beginning in the Renaissance, theory and style began to increase in importance as the practical requirement for everyday expertise in battle decreased. Later manuals of arms are often elaborated far beyond practicality for display purposes. Many “sword and musket” period firearm drill manuals are like this, with dozens of additional steps added to the basic motions for loading and firing. A modern example would be the rifle drill teams organized by some school cadet corps, who produce an elaborate and showy display, but with little connection to real-life rifle drill.

117

You are correct bookeeper, but your point has beent aken into account by modern authors and translators. Indeed it is a task to sift through those manuals which are truly helpful in recontructing the art.

But there is plenty of text, as well as several sources to collaborate what the masters were saying. Moreover, in practise, the art has been shown to be an effective and deadly martial art.

Certianly by now these people would have realized if any of the teachings made any practical sense (and they do!).

I would always recommend any one interested in this or any subject to do their homework in order to avoid any texts that may be misleading or innacurate.

118

I don’t think so because I made a google search about it, and the drawings don’t look at all like the ones I remember (but my memory could be at fault).

By the way,here’s a site displaying some of the “Fechtbuch” 's drawings.

119

-I don’t doubt that some have been folded that many times. My point, though, was basically at what point do they stop being “layers” and start being “crystal grain structure”?

A sword blade a quarter-inch thick with a thousand layers would have layers 0.00025" thick, or about one-sixteenth as thick as a sheet of paper. That’s larger than the austentite/martensite grains themselves, but not by much.

And a million “layers”? Each layer would be 0.00000000025" thick, which is a couple of orders of magnitude smaller than the carbon/iron grain, and not too far off from the size of an iron molecule. That’s well past “layers” and deep into the realm of “homogenous”. It’s also past our ability to count “layers” that thin.

Now, the difference here is use. If the “cake” is being folded in order to be hammered directly into a blade, fewer layers preserves the soft-iron/hard-steel benefits, and chances are, it won’t be folded more than three to five times.

If the smith is intending to make a bar of homogenous hard steel, he’ll fold it more to better disperse the carbon.

The idea and technique may be the same, but the desired end result is different.

[quote]
Supposedly, the swords were quenched by running them through the belly of a handy slave, which just happened to be at the optimal temperature for that sort of thing.

[quote]

-The mideval Japanese smiths were purported to test new blades on the bodies of live or executed convicts and prisoners.

More realistically, I have a book on metalworking, and the author mentioned that a smith in outback Africa somewhere, would forge a gurkha type knife (you’ve seen them, curved forward , with a large, bulbous upper portion, almost like a mutant boomerang) and while it was still red hot, would chop it partway into a gourd. The fruit had a shape and curve that nearly matched the blade, so the edge would harden first, while the spine cooled slower, so it would be softer.

120

Oops. The hamsters are out to get me it seems…

-If it was less likely to bend (and stay bent) less likely to dull, less likely to break, and held a sharper edge, I’d say all those are decided advantages.

Mano-a`-mano swordfighting, of course, being more than just a match of sword technology. Obviously, in duel between Musahsi vs Carrot Top, the quality of each’s weaponry is pretty much irrelevant.

Musashi, point in fact, tended to duel with bokken, or wooden training swords, as often as live steel.