Hello Everyone, new to the board

pbinns · 28th December 2006, 12:32 PM

"PRINGELRII" !!!!!!

Hats off to you sir ! (exposing a very bald head in the process)

Thanks for your input Geoff, much appreciated, I will now with some confidence not before held, do one with a steel blade. I am getting the hang with the welding, but certain things are letting me down, the blade polishing by hand being one of them. Would you be prepared to tell me how to do this art ? it opens the surface steel grain if I surmise correctly ?you could talk to me privately if you wanted.

I love the herringbone silver/copper hilt overlay you do ,again any info on this would be greatly appreciated, that sword looks excellent !! you are a craftsman that much is certain.
all the best paul.

Jeff Pringle · 28th December 2006, 07:44 PM

Thanks, Paul, and I completely agree with you that we can learn much about how blades were made long ago by looking at pre-industrial crafts that survive to this day.
I think the important part of hand-finishing is that it does not smear the surface, you can have relatively open or closed grain depending on the way you go about it. If I can organize my thoughts on the subject, I'll send you a pm.

I just ran across a doctoral thesis that looked at the metal in a Merovingian blade (as well as a katana, keris, wootz bar and a couple sabres

) -
Here's the part that ties into this thread -

7.3.1 Bajuwarian Spatha
The fragment of a Bajuwarian spatha stems from the collection of the Landesamt fur Denkmalpege (Munich). The sword was found with others at an ancient burial site close to Aschheim north east of Munich and is dated from the archaeological context to the 6th Century AD, i.e., to the Merowingian period. A part of the fragment was cleaned by the author to get down to the bare metal and then etched for 10 minutes in concentrated sulphuric acid (Figure 7.3). The etching pattern indicated that the sword is built in a sandwich structure, with four bars on each side of a bridge, which is connecting the edges in the centre of the sword. The four bars on each side of the bridge are twisted pair-wise on a length of several centimetres (compare Sachse (1994, p.24)).

Despite the patterned surface, which would indicate two phases, the CEMS spectrum of this piece (Figure 7.9) shows only _-iron with a magnetic field of 33:0T and a gaussian broadening in the outer line of 0:02mm=s. The broadening is about three times smaller than the usual broadenings obtained in backscattering, which is mainly due to the absence of saturation effects in the CEMS method. However it still indicates that this is very pure iron that is practically free of carbon.
In electron micrographs one could clearly see ferritic areas with grain boundaries only and areas with very small inclusions of less than a micrometer linear size. Electron microprobe analysis showed the inclusions to contain reasonable amounts of phosphorus, probably in the form of Fe4P. The amount of these phosphorus containing inclusions is, however, by far too small to be detected in the Mossbauer spectrum. In the electron microscope the inclusions made up about 1/25 of the area of those regions, which showed such inclusions at all. Micro-hardness was measured at about 118(9) for large ferrite grains, 150(6) for ferrite with grain boundaries and 152(8) for ferrite with inclusions containing phosphorus. The overall hardness of the sword would therefore mainly be determined by the size of the ferrite grains, which is also infuenced by the presence of the inclusions. The visibility of the pattern on the surface corresponds to different etching behaviour of the inclusion-free and inclusion-containing areas. Probably steels with different phosphorous concentrations were welded together to obtain the pattern.

From
"Non-Destructive Mossbauer Spectroscopy in Archaeometallurgy"
by Andreas Kyek, a google search should find it as a pdf file...

pbinns · 29th December 2006, 03:26 PM

Thanks for that research Geoff, much appreciated, it reveals a lot to me .

...... so metallurgical technospeak aside.. that tells me that the core of this weapon was quite pure low carb iron and that the PW contrast was due to phosphourous containing iron welded (piled) with a purer iron without any phosphorous inclusions in it.

so far so good... I wonder what would happen if you bent said blade over your knee ? So much pure iron in it would surely dictate a set (ie remained bent) blade after say 5 inches out of true over the 30 inches of the blades length ??. Being hammered so thin at the tip for a good cut would mean a susceptability to incur this type of deformation in use. Easiest way to stop this is to make a thicker non flexable blade ?? any comments ?

Jeff Pringle · 2nd January 2007, 04:55 AM

Quote:

...... so metallurgical technospeak aside.. that tells me that the core of this weapon was quite pure low carb iron and that the PW contrast was due to phosphourous containing iron welded (piled) with a purer iron without any phosphorous inclusions in it.

Yes, but I wonder if they missed a higher-carbon edge material, there's another 6th C. Merovingian blade in the first chapter of "A History of Metallography" by Smith that has phosphoric iron in the patterned area, but martensitic steel at the edge.

Quote:

I wonder what would happen if you bent said blade over your knee ? So much pure iron in it would surely dictate a set (ie remained bent) blade after say 5 inches out of true over the 30 inches of the blades length ??. Being hammered so thin at the tip for a good cut would mean a susceptability to incur this type of deformation in use. Easiest way to stop this is to make a thicker non flexable blade ?? any comments ?

They seemed to like thin, flexible blades - and probably both knew how to cut with them to avoid unnecessary bending, and didn't mind a little bending - compared to breaking, at least. I'm pretty sure there was a wide variety of metal content, too - have you seen this article?

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom...eich-0508.html

It says, about some Merovingian swords:
"...The four other swords sampled were of Iron Age date and revealed similar heterogeneity and complexity (1922.07.0026, 1924.02.0309, 0310, and 0311). The one sword with a low carbon content (i.e., 0.2%) was ferrite with varying amounts of pearlite (1922.07.0026). Two of the three swords (1924.02.0310 and 0311) with higher carbon contents (i.e., 0.5%) displayed a banded, ferrite/pearlite structure indicative of piling and air cooling after having been raised to temperatures in excess of 900ºC. These two artifacts had an average hardness of 257.8 Hv. One of these swords also possessed a high phosphorus content (1924.02.0311). The remaining high-carbon sword (1924.02.0309) was a clearly superior weapon, with a martensitic grain structure indicative of quenching and a hardness of 711 Hv (Figure 5). It showed no evidence of piling."

So maybe things were similar today and 1500 years ago, lotsa crap and a few really nice blades mixed in. I haven't gone back-checking to see if there is a time factor in the above analysis, 'iron age' can be a pretty big spread, so if the lower carbon stuff was earlier than the higher carbon we could surmise some technological advance.

pbinns · 2nd January 2007, 11:15 AM

Thanks Jeff, that article was very informative. the phosphoric iron was good enough for low quality axes knives etc but was selected out (or included in when banded and piled with good iron for PW cores) for the higher quality stuff that was heat treated. It points to the diversity of smiths skills and the economic considerations both when in use and when depositing grave goods as possibilities for these various quality differences.

My appreciations for sharing this research with me, although England is full of museums (some would say it IS one big museum ... and will shortly being appointing a Head Curator rather than a prime minister) information like this needs to be sought out carefully from the ivory towers of academia. A bloke smelling of quenching oil and with burn holes in his shirt is not guaranteed an audience in the British Museum!!!.Besides, Im lazy when needing to look things up.

I agree totally with your comments re flexability of blades. Before chrome vanadium heterogenous blast furnace space age steel people did not expect a blade to be bent like a car ariel. If the sword is used edge on and not slapped flat on the sword should not be subject to too much bend stress.

Like you say the only failure that really matters is a sword snapping, which these should not do. Besides in this period a lot of the real fighting was done with spears, swords would come out when the sheild wall broke and the pursuit began, I would think.

Thankyou once again for your assistance matey.. if you are ever in England you must visit. please keep in touch regards paul

28th December 2006, 12:32 PM	#1
pbinns Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 10	"PRINGELRII" !!!!!! Hats off to you sir ! (exposing a very bald head in the process) Thanks for your input Geoff, much appreciated, I will now with some confidence not before held, do one with a steel blade. I am getting the hang with the welding, but certain things are letting me down, the blade polishing by hand being one of them. Would you be prepared to tell me how to do this art ? it opens the surface steel grain if I surmise correctly ?you could talk to me privately if you wanted. I love the herringbone silver/copper hilt overlay you do ,again any info on this would be greatly appreciated, that sword looks excellent !! you are a craftsman that much is certain. all the best paul.

28th December 2006, 07:44 PM	#2
Jeff Pringle Member Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 189	Thanks, Paul, and I completely agree with you that we can learn much about how blades were made long ago by looking at pre-industrial crafts that survive to this day. I think the important part of hand-finishing is that it does not smear the surface, you can have relatively open or closed grain depending on the way you go about it. If I can organize my thoughts on the subject, I'll send you a pm. I just ran across a doctoral thesis that looked at the metal in a Merovingian blade (as well as a katana, keris, wootz bar and a couple sabres ) - Here's the part that ties into this thread - 7.3.1 Bajuwarian Spatha The fragment of a Bajuwarian spatha stems from the collection of the Landesamt fur Denkmalpege (Munich). The sword was found with others at an ancient burial site close to Aschheim north east of Munich and is dated from the archaeological context to the 6th Century AD, i.e., to the Merowingian period. A part of the fragment was cleaned by the author to get down to the bare metal and then etched for 10 minutes in concentrated sulphuric acid (Figure 7.3). The etching pattern indicated that the sword is built in a sandwich structure, with four bars on each side of a bridge, which is connecting the edges in the centre of the sword. The four bars on each side of the bridge are twisted pair-wise on a length of several centimetres (compare Sachse (1994, p.24)). Despite the patterned surface, which would indicate two phases, the CEMS spectrum of this piece (Figure 7.9) shows only _-iron with a magnetic field of 33:0T and a gaussian broadening in the outer line of 0:02mm=s. The broadening is about three times smaller than the usual broadenings obtained in backscattering, which is mainly due to the absence of saturation effects in the CEMS method. However it still indicates that this is very pure iron that is practically free of carbon. In electron micrographs one could clearly see ferritic areas with grain boundaries only and areas with very small inclusions of less than a micrometer linear size. Electron microprobe analysis showed the inclusions to contain reasonable amounts of phosphorus, probably in the form of Fe4P. The amount of these phosphorus containing inclusions is, however, by far too small to be detected in the Mossbauer spectrum. In the electron microscope the inclusions made up about 1/25 of the area of those regions, which showed such inclusions at all. Micro-hardness was measured at about 118(9) for large ferrite grains, 150(6) for ferrite with grain boundaries and 152(8) for ferrite with inclusions containing phosphorus. The overall hardness of the sword would therefore mainly be determined by the size of the ferrite grains, which is also infuenced by the presence of the inclusions. The visibility of the pattern on the surface corresponds to different etching behaviour of the inclusion-free and inclusion-containing areas. Probably steels with different phosphorous concentrations were welded together to obtain the pattern. From "Non-Destructive Mossbauer Spectroscopy in Archaeometallurgy" by Andreas Kyek, a google search should find it as a pdf file...

29th December 2006, 03:26 PM	#3
pbinns Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 10	Thanks for that research Geoff, much appreciated, it reveals a lot to me . ...... so metallurgical technospeak aside.. that tells me that the core of this weapon was quite pure low carb iron and that the PW contrast was due to phosphourous containing iron welded (piled) with a purer iron without any phosphorous inclusions in it. so far so good... I wonder what would happen if you bent said blade over your knee ? So much pure iron in it would surely dictate a set (ie remained bent) blade after say 5 inches out of true over the 30 inches of the blades length ??. Being hammered so thin at the tip for a good cut would mean a susceptability to incur this type of deformation in use. Easiest way to stop this is to make a thicker non flexable blade ?? any comments ?

2nd January 2007, 11:15 AM	#5
pbinns Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 10	Thanks Jeff, that article was very informative. the phosphoric iron was good enough for low quality axes knives etc but was selected out (or included in when banded and piled with good iron for PW cores) for the higher quality stuff that was heat treated. It points to the diversity of smiths skills and the economic considerations both when in use and when depositing grave goods as possibilities for these various quality differences. My appreciations for sharing this research with me, although England is full of museums (some would say it IS one big museum ... and will shortly being appointing a Head Curator rather than a prime minister) information like this needs to be sought out carefully from the ivory towers of academia. A bloke smelling of quenching oil and with burn holes in his shirt is not guaranteed an audience in the British Museum!!!.Besides, Im lazy when needing to look things up. I agree totally with your comments re flexability of blades. Before chrome vanadium heterogenous blast furnace space age steel people did not expect a blade to be bent like a car ariel. If the sword is used edge on and not slapped flat on the sword should not be subject to too much bend stress. Like you say the only failure that really matters is a sword snapping, which these should not do. Besides in this period a lot of the real fighting was done with spears, swords would come out when the sheild wall broke and the pursuit began, I would think. Thankyou once again for your assistance matey.. if you are ever in England you must visit. please keep in touch regards paul