Yatagan Beauty from Balkan, help needed
 

Hi,

When dreams become true, here is my dream Yatagan :)

A Yatagan which was a present to an Austrian k&k-Officer, he served in Bosnia around 1900.

One side has an inscription, I hope, someone can translate the text. Thank you in advance. I found out, that the text starts with a number, probably a year, 1229 which equals 1814. The blade itself is older than the inscription, because on the other side are remains of a Koftgari and decoration in the middle of the blade (picture 8 & 9).

The steel is flawless and high quality. The steel below the silver inscription looks like very fine wootz, which turns slowly into pattern welded steel. I never saw such a type of steel before. It was a big surprise, to see this pattern after the treatment “What, :eek: How did he make this?” (this is no chevron blade), picture 4.

The back of the blade is decorated with hundreds of tiny drillings, which forming a sinuous line (pic 10).

The blade is twisted around 10 degree to the handle and my first impression was “omg, what a disastrous restoration”. But a few days later I found out, with the hand in the right position this unusual shape is very ergonomic. The heel of the hand must simply be located between the ears.

This is one of the few blades in my collection, which I define as my personal legendary blades, so I hope for benevolent comments and it would be very useful to see some other Yatagan blades.


Special Greetings to Detlef, your Solor Sword Stick is definitely my next job and finished before Christmas.


Thanks for reading and best wishes for everybody,
Roland

more impressions

Hello Roland,

since I've had the opportunity to hold this great yat in my hands I can confirm the most unusual blade construction but will let the experts for this nice swords the precedence to comment about this.
Will phone you at weekend.

Best regards,
Detlef

The blade is of laminated steel with some impressive heat treatment "clouds". The first picture shows the blade in the best light. The other pictures seem to be photoshopped or taken under different light.

Very nice and interesting yataghan, congratulations. I do not think there is wootz in the blade. To me it looks like it was forged from many (as in hundreds) of layers, somewhat similar to what we see on some Japanese blades.

You would get the best answers from resident forum swordsmiths, like Jeff Pringle.

Sincerely,
Teodor

Agree with Rsword, this is laminated/layered steel, not wootz.

The steel used in this yatagan reminds me of the steel used in a Japanese sword, which is the result of folding and tempering.

I'm sorry, but these are no heat treatment "clouds", these are ultrafine layers of steel (there are structures inside the clouds).

Yes the other pictures are taken under very bad light conditions, it is completely dark, when i'm back from work. And i forgot to correctly adjust the white balance of my cam, thats all.

Thank you for this picture. The yatagan has almost identical structures. I would say, both blades are very fine laminated.

Roland, the structure of the metal looks exactly what one could find in some traditionally made Japanese sword. In a Japanese sword the temper line at the edge is created when the hot blade is quenched in water, sections of the blade are coated in a clay mixture, when the hot blade is quenched the metal coated with the clay cools at different rates creating the different looking patterns (differential heat treatment, simplified version). This method was not just used by the Japanese, other cultures used it as well. From the pictures you provided your yatagan blade looks like it could have received a similar treatment, there could also be a completely different explaination.

It could be the result of treating with acid to reveal a damascus pattern. I have noticed that some sellers are doing this in hope of increasing the value of the sword, but not everybody knows how to do it. I have seen many times overetched blades advertised as "having steel activity" Too much acid ruins the blade.

Forgive my ignorance, but in the second to the last photo in the original post, the blade's rotational alignment seems to be off center. Is this common for Yatagans? Also, is there a more specific term for this, I've been trying to search google, but to no avail.

Thanks,
Leif

Leif here is what Roland said about alignment of the blade, I can not remember seeing this on another yatagan.

I have a Yat with a blade that looks constructed just like this one. Honestly, you don't often see this in Yat's; usually they're Turkish ribbon construction.
Not this crazy-pattern mechanical Damascus.

Rick,
As a layered/laminated steel, it is a mechanical Damascus in a way, but not a typical one. There's no methodical attempt to manipulate steel into a particular pattern. This is a random mix, and the result of impurities that happened to be. There are many blades like this, especially Ottoman blades because they used all sorts of different types of steel. not all were designed or supposed to be etched.

This type seems to be rare and it is not easy to see. Here is another example.

Alex,

Can you explain please, what you try to say with " result of impurities"?

This blade is completely flawless and very controlled forged.

Each side has its own pattern.

One must see the steel with his own eyes to understand the construction. My pictures are definitely not detailed enough.

Good question, Roland
I may used the term "impurities" incorrectly as your blade shows some linear layering - a form of deliberate mechanical manipulation of different steels. Please see THIS POST for better example of what I meant by "impurities", i.e. pattern that is not formed intentionally. As you know, true wootz is a result of different impurities that were part of the ore, not added/manipulated to form the (mechanical) pattern. With examples above, the pattern is formed due to different steels used in the mix.
Question to metallurgists: does the fact that "Each side has its own pattern" indicate accidental/random pattern formation, any particular technique, etc?