Now for that other sword, Nimcha?

tom hyle · 19th March 2005, 01:45 AM

Basically it's the same as water buffaloe, but different in colour, varying from golden to various browns and orange and some dark greenish shades. It is often said that the paler green is from heating, and that the green horn available to N American cutlers in the early 20th was from Germany. In N American folk lore green horn is over heated (an explanation for the term greenhorn referring to an inexperienced person, such as would overheat the horn, for instance; I don't, BTW, buy this explanation for "greenhorn", but it is the common one), but it was clearly a deliberate affect with the German stuff. I don't know if it was supposed to affect the horn's qualities in some way, other than the heat making it flexible while hot (useful with "scales" but not so much with forming a "block" type handle), or if it was done to uniformize the look, much as occurs when the steam is forced into wood before it goes into the drying kiln in the modern industial process.

19th March 2005, 01:45 AM	#7
tom hyle Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Houston, TX, USA Posts: 1,254	Basically it's the same as water buffaloe, but different in colour, varying from golden to various browns and orange and some dark greenish shades. It is often said that the paler green is from heating, and that the green horn available to N American cutlers in the early 20th was from Germany. In N American folk lore green horn is over heated (an explanation for the term greenhorn referring to an inexperienced person, such as would overheat the horn, for instance; I don't, BTW, buy this explanation for "greenhorn", but it is the common one), but it was clearly a deliberate affect with the German stuff. I don't know if it was supposed to affect the horn's qualities in some way, other than the heat making it flexible while hot (useful with "scales" but not so much with forming a "block" type handle), or if it was done to uniformize the look, much as occurs when the steam is forced into wood before it goes into the drying kiln in the modern industial process. Last edited by tom hyle; 19th March 2005 at 01:48 PM.