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...... 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.
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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.
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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 ?
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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.
