steel in african weapons

[ausjulius]

Originally Posted by LOUIEBLADES

ausjulius

You must realize that if one does not wear too much more than a loin cloth and carries a cow hide shield than Iron spears and daggers do not need to be tempered to a high hardness do accomplish their intended work.


Lew

come now tell that to the dayaks... :P

or the celts, many didnt wear much atal when they fought,,,.. but they had tempering and lamination techniques equial to those used in the middle ages..
as to the heat,, india is as hot or hotter than africa,, and ... welly ou can see armour is very common there...
and has always been etheopia is not arctic nation as plate and chaim armour had exsisted ther ein abundance for a very lond time ,
yemen and oman ,, body armour was very common up untill the late 17th centuary.. heat and armour dont have much relation....

metal working skill and armour do.
steel availability does..
warefare techniques do..

so this i find facinating..
the quilted armour comes form the middle east and arived very late..
the crude untreated leather vests ive observed before,

but this is far more primative than the armour used in the pacific for exsample, which was realt quite advanced...........
and rememebr in the pacific they lacked even leather let alone metal

this realy makes me wounder if there was any form of metal brestplate used..... or any other for of armour or any metalic helmets..
gauntlets ect ect..


it so odd that people had mastered iron productin so well but never advanced the metal craft further.

i do wounder has there been much research into iron use in africa, i wounder how long iron weapons have been made in large numbers there, and how long swords have exsisted there..

and what the previous styles were like.. and if bronze or copper were used before that to produce swords .....

i wounder how long these styles have exsisted and what sort of swords were before, .

[Lew]

[QUOTE=ausjulius]come now tell that to the dayaks... :P

or the celts, many didnt wear much atal when they fought,,,.. but they had tempering and lamination techniques equial to those used in the middle ages

it so odd that people had mastered iron productin so well but never advanced the metal craft further.

ausjulius


From what I know the Celts and middle age swords were mostly spring tempered to between 45-50 Rockwell and the laminated blades consisted of a central core which had an outer edge of harder steel welded around the core. I saw no evidence of a differential heat treat or the use of san mai or clay tempering techniques as found in Asian blades. You also must take into consideration that there was a great deal of trade going on of ideas and goods between India,Persia,Central Asia,China and North Africa which may not have reached Central Africa the Congo and South Africa. So the Bantu smiths forged blades in very primitive forges consisting of a hole in the ground a basic bellows and a stone anvil. What they produced worked just fine for their type of warfare and there was no need to fix what was not broken. There was an arms race of in Asia and MidEast and Europe that atributed to the evolution of better arms and manufacturing techniques which in the end produced superior steel bladed weapons which now we see today. As far as the use of armor is concerned the Mid East was hot and dry as was Rhajistan in India so wearing metal armor or chail mail may not have presented as much as a problem as in central Africa were you can have the same heat but with 90 percent plus humidity and the humidity would not only kill you faster via heat stroke but would cause the armor to rust faster.

Lew

[Tim Simmons]

Personally I do not get this fascination with hardness. You can hurt or kill somebody with a plastic Biro. This one of my most favourite African pieces. Quite modest but so masterful. Tempered more than enough to damage a soft bodied creature. Just look at the beautiful forging like a sculptor working in a soft wax or clay. To me wonderful and perfect.

[Lew]

I must Agree with Tim hard edge tempering on blades is not relevant if you are not using it against hardened armor. Below are a few examples of beautifully made central African daggers. The two on the left are quite springy stiff with thicker steel blades as a matter of fact the second from the left has some lamination present and reminds me of some older Celtic small swords that I have seen. You all should know that the choice of weapon that has killed more people in Africa in the last 100 yrs is the machete which is spring tempered.

Lew

[ausjulius]

[QUOTE=LOUIEBLADES]

Originally Posted by ausjulius

come now tell that to the dayaks... :P

or the celts, many didnt wear much atal when they fought,,,.. but they had tempering and lamination techniques equial to those used in the middle ages

it so odd that people had mastered iron productin so well but never advanced the metal craft further.

ausjulius


From what I know the Celts and middle age swords were mostly spring tempered to between 45-50 Rockwell and the laminated blades consisted of a central core which had an outer edge of harder steel welded around the core. I saw no evidence of a differential heat treat or the use of san mai or clay tempering techniques as found in Asian blades. You also must take into consideration that there was a great deal of trade going on of ideas and goods between India,Persia,Central Asia,China and North Africa which may not have reached Central Africa the Congo and South Africa. So the Bantu smiths forged blades in very primitive forges consisting of a hole in the ground a basic bellows and a stone anvil. What they produced worked just fine for their type of warfare and there was no need to fix what was not broken. There was an arms race of in Asia and MidEast and Europe that atributed to the evolution of better arms and manufacturing techniques which in the end produced superior steel bladed weapons which now we see today. As far as the use of armor is concerned the Mid East was hot and dry as was Rhajistan in India so wearing metal armor or chail mail may not have presented as much as a problem as in central Africa were you can have the same heat but with 90 percent plus humidity and the humidity would not only kill you faster via heat stroke but would cause the armor to rust faster.

Lew

you must inspect viing and cletiv wepans more closely, you will be rather surprised of the quality of the blades, ..
on the viking swords for exsamples there is some seaxs and sowrds that surpass even the most complex japanese blades......

unfortunatly there is proably ot a great deal of willingness of the museams in europe to let people mess with so valuable items,

shrilanka and southern india are,, not hot and dry, they are humid and whet and armour abounds, as in vietnam and southern china.. for exsample..
hell the spanish wore it in south america for quite some time,

id say cultural and technical nothing to do with heat,
kiribati it very how and humid, but there exsists very complext body armour.. this has to be as hot as the steel arounr of europe.

technology and culture dosnt have much to do with heat.


but still there must have been something even alittle of metalic body armour ,,
and remember the africans had contact with europeans and arabs for along time ,look how old angola is and remember the portagese were using armour in africa not a regualr basis as were the dutch thers many acocunts of this ..

i wounder if there was not some basic metal armour or chest plate developed at some point in this area, it is very surprising,, '

[Lew]

ausjulius

I really can't explain why since you have put holes in my hot and humid theory . Most of the swords I have from that region of Africa are under 24 inches long the symetrical ones are made more for stabbing rather than hacking. Maybe they preferred spears to swords as their main battle weapon they are easier to produce and do not need to hard be tempered? It could be just a cultural thing or maybe they did not have access to large amonts of good quality Iron ore? All I know is that their weapons were very effective for what they were designed to do. I think if you studied how these tribes fought, battle tactics and such it may shed some light on the subject. From what I can remember Zulus for years fought by having there warriors take turns throwing light weight spears at each other from a distance until Shaka came up with the larger heavier bladed stabbing spears and close quarter combat tactics similar to what the Romans used with their gladius and shields.

Lew

[ausjulius]

Originally Posted by LOUIEBLADES

ausjulius

I really can't explain why since you have put holes in my hot and humid theory . Most of the swords I have from that region of Africa are under 24 inches long the symetrical ones are made more for stabbing rather than hacking. Maybe they preferred spears to swords as their main battle weapon they are easier to produce and do not need to hard be tempered? It could be just a cultural thing or maybe they did not have access to large amonts of good quality Iron ore? All I know is that their weapons were very effective for what they were designed to do. I think if you studied how these tribes fought, battle tactics and such it may shed some light on the subject. From what I can remember Zulus for years fought by having there warriors take turns throwing light weight spears at each other from a distance until Shaka came up with the larger heavier bladed stabbing spears and close quarter combat tactics similar to what the Romans used with their gladius and shields.

Lew

yes i think heat was not it..
i would say cultural..
from what i understand the african iron mostly has alot of impurities in it so i guess this is where the chipping and bent or soft blades and such comes from..

yes it appears clubs , spears and sheilds were the main desired items in combat in this area.
im interested if the ruling classes took part in combat or were they only observing, as generaly a refinment of weapons and the use of armour comes in a society where this is common, (people incharge dont like to get hurt )


still im interested about the tools they used ,
does anyone have any pictures of the equiptment of a 19th centuary blacksmith of this area?

(ah also speeking of the celtic and viking weapons and the lamination,i have sp[oken some time back to somebody who was involved in examining these ill look to get a picture of the blade, i belive some were polished and the laminations shows)

[Lew]

Look at this


http://www.newscientist.com/article/...can-forge.html

http://books.google.com/books?id=phg...m=11&ct=result

[fearn]

So far as short blades vs. long blades, I think the problem is the size of the anvil. I know that two-handed swords (either European or Japanese) were hard to make, and hard to temper properly, because they were often too long for the forge. If you've got a small forge, short blades are much easier to make.

Ditto with complex shapes and tempering. Something with complicated curves and cutouts is going to heat unevenly, and it's going to be hard to temper evenly. I would expect perhaps spot hardening (as on a kukri edge) at best.

One problem we haven't discussed is the issue of history. Most of the African blades we see are post-colonial in origin, and most (not all!) were not produced for war. Here's an analogy. Imagine that the only European swords you saw were produced around 1900. How would you judge European sword culture? Probably, you'd figure that swords were minor and ceremonial weapons, as all the blades you could find were badly made (compared to, say, a 14th century sword) and poorly used. Because Africa doesn't have a great historical record, it's somewhat hard to judge how good African swords were or could be. All we see are the modern ones.

Just a thought,

F