unique patterned blade

[Philip]

The blade consists of a homogenous, high-carbon center plate (which forms the cutting edge when exposed by grinding the V-shaped edge bevel) flanked on each side by "cheeks" of the pattern-welded laminate. I'm still trying to figure out how the alternative fern-leaf patterns were done. A previous post mentioned the likelihood that such a pattern might be susceptible to lateral stresses, compared to simple linear lamination. The beauty of sandwiching a hard steel core between laminates is that you get a lot of structural support, and are free to do wild patterns like this on the outer plates without fear of sacrificing strength.

This tripartite assembly is widely used in the Orient. It's called sanmai in Japanese, sanmei in Chinese. I've seen it on Moro campillions and krises, on mandaus, and so forth.

What the photos don't show on this hanshee is the heat treat details. When viewed from a particular angle, this blade has a slightly darkened zone along the edge, just over 1/2 in. wide at most. The smith heated up the edge portion in his forge, and then quenched it in water. The dark zone represents the crystallization of the steel into the molecular structure which makes the edge harder than the rest of the blade, which stays somewhat softer, avoiding the tendency towards brittleness.