Zig-Zag Ladder Pattern

[Jeff D]

Originally Posted by Richard Furrer

I think the blade may be good....at the very least it is still rare..even if it were altered in our generation.

Ric

Hi Ric,

Actually I would say the blade has been vandalized. Rare only in that most modern dealer would never alter an old wootz blade.
I have a question. Has this blade even been reforged? I can't tell if it has a smooth surface, and in fact the light seems to reflect unevenly around the scars. It evens out at the edges where the scar is less pronounced from the polish. Could a very superfical, tapered groove leave this pattern? The wootz swirls seem to end at the groove rather than run with the grooves as seen on the forged patterns.

Great discussion!
Jeff

[Jeff Pringle]

I think we are looking at a level surface in those photos, and there is some optical illusion going on from the way the ladders were done.

Does anyone have a photo to post of a different blade, with hopefully a different provenance, that has 'normal' ladders that look similar to these in some way?

[Jeff Pringle]

I located the blade for ’04 with the angle grinder zig-zags, as you can see there is a similarity to the way the ladders look even though the underlying character of the wootz is quite different, it is something I don’t recall seeing in an antique blade.

[Mark]

Here are the remaining photos from the auction. 12 is the maximum you can attach, so I couldn't add them all to the first post.

[Mark]

Let me see if I am understanding what people mean by the blade being modified. Are you saying that the blade was forged without the zig-zags, then sometime later they were added, either by grinding in the lines and reforging the blade flat or .... how? Forging little wootz bars onto the surface of the blade?

What catches my totally inexpert eye is that you can trace the watering pattern right through the lines, which are defined (at least to my eye) simply by a disturbance in the sworls. Would that change in the pattern happen with grinding? I can't envision how it could be done by adding metal.

Also, while I think everyone is agreeing that the surface of the blade is essentially flat and the pattern not raised, there is a slight pinching of the glare of reflected light in some of the photos (e.g., the first two below) that corresponds to the peaks and valleys of the zig-zag - it is not an even reflection along the blade such as you'd expect from a flat surface, in other words.

Final observation - some of the zig-zags are actually arcs (third photo below, right side). Does that mean anything? When I think grinder, I think straight lines unless you're using something more like an engraver, so making that turn strikes me as a tricky thing to do by grinding. Would the curve result from the post-grind reforging?

[Gt Obach]

if you grind the grooves in ... early on... then they seem to have a nicer more organic feel.....

but if you do them close to final forging... it looks more like that blade...

-- to do that sword... just use a dremel with a wide stone... to cut the shallow channel... and forge flat in a very reducing atmosphere..
-- if the sword was a heavy saber... with spine around 5mm ... then no problem at all.. lots of room for pattern..

deep prior rust spots would be left as they are... and would come back after regrinding forge scale off.

by the way... ladders can even come out when forging the blade with a very narrow fullering tool... used to draw out the barstock...

nice sword
Greg

i think Jeff's idea is good

[rand]

Talked with Leo by phone before the Butterfield auction and Zig Zag pattern was a topic as I had sent him photo's of one, was a shallow curved shamshir, with wootz wrapped over an iron core, there were many areas where the wootz was worn enough to show the core, the zig zag pattern was a shallower angle pattern than this example. Leo never had an example of a zig zag pattern but knew of them, can remember him having the opinion of them being very rare. Can also remember us specualting that the iron core was possibly an early type of manufacture, but there was no research for this.

Congragulations on getting an example of this....

rand

[ALEX]

Originally Posted by Jeff Pringle

I think we are looking at a level surface in those photos, and there is some optical illusion going on from the way the ladders were done.

Does anyone have a photo to post of a different blade, with hopefully a different provenance, that has 'normal' ladders that look similar to these in some way?

Jeff,
Here's an authentic blade with Shah Abbas/AssadAllah cartouches. The blade has Kirk Narduban/Ladder pattern and when viewed under an angle - the ladders appear "raised" (Sorry, the quality of the picture does not represent it that well). I have not seen many swords with similar effect, and this is to demonstrate that this is not an illusion per se, but a real and natural effect on some Kirk patterned blades !

[Jeff Pringle]

Marvelous, Alex – that’s what we need, those are certainly tighter ladders than you run across in run-of-the-mill, everyday wootz. Now if you had a higher-resolution version of the photo, we could really start comparing. Without that, I can give an opinion that the AA blade’s ladders seem less sharply defined when taken in total, and perhaps more importantly - notice they have a light/dark (or dark/light, depending on which direction you read your wootz), two stage influence on the light reflecting from the blade surface, the zig-zag blades have a three stage dark/light/dark reflection on many rungs, depending on the angle of incident light.
Imagine a semi-circular trough cut into the wootz, and a more squared-off trench, the first leans more towards a left side, right side reflection, the latter towards left side, bottom, right side.
But hopefully we can scare up more examples, to bounce opinions off of.

Rand, I don’t suppose you kept a copy of one or two of those photos you sent to Figiel a decade ago, that could be digitized and posted?

To further answer Mark’s questions:
Yes, grinding & reforging creates that squeezing of the bands, and the bands can have an effect on reflected light like the grain of a figured wood like curly maple, the closer the blade is to final forged shape when the design is cut the more pronounced the effect.
Angle grinders and similar abrasive devices have a small contact patch with the item being ground into, so it is possible to cut curved lines – but later forging can also make a straight line curve as well.
Too many variables!

[rand]

Originally Posted by Jeff Pringle

Rand, I don’t suppose you kept a copy of one or two of those photos you sent to Figiel a decade ago, that could be digitized and posted?

Hi Jeff,

Will look to see if I still have a copy of the photo, have never thrown away any letter/photo communication from a collector. Last time I moved I found some letters from Leo and read them again, he was acutely interested in damascus steel and very well read on the subject and was always fun to chat with him on the phone.

The zig zag patterned sword definately had an iron core with wootz steel wrapped around, there were spoltches of the iron core showing where the wootz was worn away. The zig zags were very precise and evenly spaced as you see on better ladder patterns, it was a single line zig zag of exactly forty rungs on each side and the shamhsir had a very shallow curve.

rand