Unless most people in the area are still in the Bronze Age.
That would imply that the name of the sword is considerably older than the rest of the story, though.
In the fifth century, when Arthur supposedly lived, most swords were brittle iron. A steel sword that could bend elasticly would have been like magic.
Do the Gaelic caled and the Latin chalybs share an Indo-European root?
Good point. I should have checked the dates of steel.
I don’t know.
They did have steel back then, but it was rare. Getting high quality steel was extremely labor and material intensive, so most things made of iron were lower quality wrought iron.
Not true. Most swords would have been a pattern-welded core of wrought iron and steel, decidedly not just “brittle iron”. And these would often have steel edges added.
And that’s not accounting for any remaining actual Roman blades which would have had higher-quality steel.
Brittleness is a characteristic of cast iron, not wrought iron, in any case. And cast iron (in Europe) postdates the fifth century - by a lot. Wrought iron is malleable. The inferior iron-only cheap sword of the period was one that bent and didn’t hold an edge, not one that snapped.
Getting steel that was both hard enough but not brittle was difficult in pre-industrial times.
Which is why swords were expensive.
Thus the practice of laminating hard, but brittle steel with tough, but not as hard steel. Seen in Damascus blades, Japanese swords and Scandinavian knives (and probably other blades as well)
That’s a common misconception about Japanese sword steel. Yes, there’s the same forge-and-fold technique as in Damascus steel but there are so many layers, as many as 30,000, you might as well consider the steel as homogeneous, not dual-phase steel.
This site is comparing knives but swords were the same.
Damascus knives are built around balance. The idea is not to chase extreme hardness or razor-thin edges at the cost of strength. Instead, Damascus blades are created by forge welding multiple steels together so that hardness and toughness work as a team rather than competing against each other.
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Japanese knives are built with a very different mindset. Precision comes first. Japanese blade makers focus on achieving the cleanest possible cut with the least amount of effort. The steel is hardened to very high levels, allowing the edge to become extremely thin and sharp.
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Damascus knives use a combination of steels, usually high-carbon steel for edge retention paired with tougher steel for flexibility. When these steels are forge-welded correctly, the blade gains both sharpness and resilience. The knife bends slightly under stress instead of chipping or snapping.Japanese knives usually rely on a single high-performance steel. Traditional options like White Steel and Blue Steel focus on purity and sharpness. Modern versions may use stainless steels like VG10 or SG2. These steels are incredibly sharp but less tolerant of abuse.
In simple terms, Damascus steel is designed to absorb stress, while Japanese steel is designed to cut with maximum efficiency.
It is? So, these cites are wrong?
What is rather interesting, though, is that the Kobuse, Makuri and Gomai blades are said to use a hard steel wrapped around a core of softer steel, while the Scandinavian whittle knife is the other way around (softer steel wrapped around a core of hard steel). Which preserves the keen edge even when the knife has been sharpened until the blade is just a few millimeters tall
I’d heard that the “secret” of Damascus steel wasn’t some intricate forging process but that it started with an inherently better source metal:
Today’s smiths make damascus blades by laminating two different steels, folding and forging the material many times, and often etching the final blade to highlight the pattern.
One of my Japanese kitchen knives is a laminate, with VG10 steel in the center, forming the edge, and damascus on the sides. No particular technical advantages, but it’s pretty…
Those are all layers forge-welded onto the core. The folding is all done by then, unlike Damascus. Sanmai, the hard steel sandwiched between two layers of more ductile steel, is commonly done today by blade smiths, and on your sinosword site, maru is indeed, one homogeneous piece.
Yes… And?
Damascus is two steels layered and folded multiple times, a laminate. The Japanese blades - except maru - are three or five layers, also a laminate. The Scandinavian whittle knife is three layers, also a laminate.
I sincerely don’t understand what you’re arguing against.
“We would like to once again apologize to Dr. Jones for last year’s mistaken announcement. We should really have double-checked the envelope for this award in particular.”
Something of a hijack, but most of the folding in Japanese swords is to get close to homogeneous steel out of what starts out very mixed wrought/almost cast iron. That is what makes the layers you can see on the blade. The sanmai, etc. construction isn’t visible unless you break the sword or polish through the outer layer (which sometimes happens with very old/worn blades).
Nor do I. The legend people have is Japanese blades were superior because of their many laminated layers, same as Damascus. The truth is the layers were so many and so thin – microscopic – it is effectively homogeneous and the true layers were only a handful, three for sanmai. Any folding and stretching it back out are done.