English blades

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

... In forging steel in places in Europe there were instances of adding horseshoes which were from combat horses which had seen battle, and other similarly venerated items. Clearly these associations were irrelevant, but the iron from the horseshoe itself added carbon or whatever component was necessary to the metal forged and its quality...

News for me Jim. I had it as a fact that great Spanish barrel makers used ground beaten horseshoe ends to make excelent gun barrels but, such esoteric part on them having seen battle, i was not aware of !


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