I’m watching an episode of Weapons Masters on The Military Channel tonight and they are doing swords. Specifically Samurai Swords. During the beginning part of the episode both of the main characters agree that steel is the only material to consider. My question is…why? Given all of the modern composite and alloy materials out there, is steel really the only choice to create a sword that is strong and flexible enough to withstand the wear and tear of battle? I realize that there is really no point in creating a super sword today…but, given all of the materials out there, is steel really not only the best but the only viable material?
As I mentioned on that thread, steel just so happens to have the qualities required for the weapon, and no other material that I’m aware of can do a better job.
Steel (when properly treated and forged into a quality weapon) is light enough to be agile in combat while still providing enough mass to impart the required force to deal serious damage to an enemy, hard enough to hold a keen edge well, and tough enough to flex and take a beating with minor damage.
Of course different weapon types, different metallurgical approaches, and finally different engineering solutions yielded blades that differed in those qualities (I’d personally take a medieval longsword over a Katana for it’s better range, durability and versatility but Musashi might disagree with me ).
The only way we could really make swords meaningfully better today is by taking advantage of modern steel processing. Back then, out of a badge of 100 you might get 30 crappy blades, 40 serviceable ones, 20 decent ones, 7 well made specimens, and 3 truly exceptional swords. Today we could probably make all 100 truly exceptional, though I’d imagine it wouldn’t be cheap.
Especially since there really isn’t much incentive to make high-quality swords any more. Most swords made nowadays are purely decorative, and might be useful as a clumsy sort of club, but wouldn’t even rise to the standard of those 30 crappy blades.
If you want to see a fascinating special about samurai swords, supposedly the finest sword make, check out this link. I couldn’t find the actual video, but this interactive site is the same thing.
In a nut shell, the SS was the perfect combination of the strengths of different types of swords in one. To make a sword sharp and hold an edge, hard, brittle steel was required but could break easily. If softer steel was used it was flexible and less prone to break, but wouldn’t hold an edge well. Enter the SS. Due to an incredibly complex process of almost alchemistical metalurgy, the created a blade that was hard brittle steel on the cutting edge and as the blade went out to the back edge the metal became softer and softer enabling a great degree of flexibility. So basically, you had the best of both worlds in one.
The good old Samurai sword seems to have almost mythical status, in fact their proess of manufacture had a good deal to do withthe fact that they were often made from less than stellar quality steel due to the poor quality ore.
Yes they were made well, but, they were designed for a purpose, and other swords developed in other places were better suited to their roles than the Katana would have been in the same role.
I have seen disclosure dye use on Saxon and medieval swords, and these are not simple one peice designs, some are very sophisticated, strong, and light.
Many folk are surprised when they pick up a Katana, they expect them to be much lighter, and when you compare them by weight to European swords, there is often very little in it.
This isn’t really very accurate. I suspect the episode wasn’t very well researched or objectively examined.
The Japanese Dai-to of the 17th century (What people typically associate with the terms Katana or samurai sword) was a great engineering solution to the Japan’s problem of the inferior quality of it’s iron, and the outdated metallurgical techniques available to them. But in order to achieve the goal of forging a decent blade, some compromises were made.
The softer steel backing of the blade and the harder edge are great solutions, but what you end up with is a very rigid blade that will take a set (bend and stay bent) if it experiences too much stress when used. It also added to the weight of the weapon, the end result being that a Dai-to would have been shorter than the European equivalent (the longsword) but weighed about the same.
Europeans had a similar problem way back in the migration era and they solved it in another way: They braided strands of harder, carbon enriched steel and iron in a technique called pattern welding. This netted them blades strong enough to hold an edge and yet springy enough to deal with the stresses of combat.
By the 9th century however, Europeans had advanced in metallurgy enough so that they could create high carbon steel of much greater quality and the time consuming technique died out since it was now possible to forge blades with the same properties.
Back when I was a young pup, I worked in a machine shop for a spell. We primarily made molds and dies for the injection-molded plastics industry.
On several occasions, we made some parts out of a metal called Monel (maybe Monelle?). It was hard as hell and had a pleasant bronze/coppery color. The shop foreman swore by the stuff, and claimed it would make a knife or a sword that was superior to steel (meaning high carbon steel, not that bullshit stainless) in every way AND it was corrosion and rust resistant.
After I quit that job, I never heard mention of the stuff again. Anyone heard of it?
Here’s the vid that was on History Channel. According to this documentary which goes through the process from beginning to end, the steel is of a very high quality. The sword in incredibly sharp and holds its edge and the softer steel gives it a very high resilience rate. Some of the great antique ones go for 3-400,000 dollars.
For now I’m going to have to go with this documentary until I see something that convinces me otherwise.
This has been discussed at length before on this forum, with many posts and many links.
The conclusion on each occasion that this has been discussed has always been the same, Japanese swords were made from inferior metal, they were a solution to a problem but their status is over exagerrated, Euorpean swords were often a match and in some ways exceeded Japanese items.
Its also worth reiterating, Japanese swords did not tend to face the same range of functions or range of types of warfare and would not have been suited to deployment in such scenarios.
Which ones? I have a couple of Albions, but purely for decorative reasons - I’m fascinated by them, but not sufficiently motivated to actually take up a martial art.
The great risk there being that he just might decide to do the disagreeing with a boat oar?
CMC fnord!
Ooh, can we hope this thread devolves into a argument about the mystical properties of wootz and Damascus and how fullers allow blood to flow more freely and keep the blade from getting stuck too! :smack:
Also, [thread=497268]What’s the best metal to use for making a sword?[/thread] and [thread=359910]Forging aluminum like iron?[/thread].
Steel is strong, linearly elastic up to a well-defined limit, capable of being alloyed and heat treated in a wide variety of ways to enhance it for different uses (fracture toughness, shear resistance, corrosion resistance, surface and thru hardness, et cetera), is easily weldable and readily forged, it has a long history of use to characterize its properties and formulations, and its major constituents are cheap and readily available in the Earth’s crust. As a structural material and especially one that has to hold an edge, it is nearly ideal.
While everybody thinks of composites as being all high tech and cutting edge, in fact many primitive construction and structural materials are actually composites. Grass-mud construction, woven baskets, and anything made of wood are all composite substances. (Wood and wood-like plant substances are nothing more than carbon-based fibers in an organic polymer matrix–nature’s composite material, and quite a good one.) However, composite materials, while often suitable for one particular type of application, often have significant drawbacks. Polymer-matrix fiber composites, for instance, are often very strong per unit weight in the long fiber direction but are mediocre to poor in compression and absolutely suck in interlaminar shear and flatwise tension (pulling the fibers apart). There are a few materials like tungsten, beryllium, and some of the other refractory metals that could be considered “advanced materials” in terms of the mechanical properties and exotic processing methods, but for 99% of structural applications either steel or aluminum fits the bill better than any other material (and aluminum is often overused in many applications by engineers who latch onto its strength vs weight capability and neglect the other deficiencies of this material.)
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