English blades

[urbanspaceman]

The issue I was opening for debate is that Wootz may not have been tempered.
This seems like a contradiction to everything we have come to understand about blade forging.
Are there any blacksmiths or metallurgists out there?
I think if it was to be tempered and quenched then the temperature will have had to have been very accurately controlled, so some form of clock was a must, or great accuracy in the colour of the metal, which I thought was how the Japanese did it.

[fernando]

Sorry to get carried away, Keith.
Would your question find some answers over here ?

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=3377
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[Jim McDougall]

Sorry Keith, I missed that perspective, and had never thought of the quenching step not possibly a factor. One thing I had heard of wootz is that it could be quite brittle if necessary skills or elements were missed.

[urbanspaceman]

Hey Fernando, thank-you for that link: I was able to absorb about 50% of it before my brain imploded. The metallurgy involved in blade-making is simply too vast to take on board without devoting full-time to it.
What is apparent is that not only was Damascus steel often brittle but so was Wootz.
Solingen blades as well as Toledo and Italian were not... but English blades were never acceptable until much, much later.
As late as 1705, a local businessman - Cotesworth - was running the Shotley Bridge works, and he tried to fill a large government order by buying from English smith John Saunthorp who was selling at a shilling a dozen cheaper. Complaints immediately rolled in, with the expression: "they stand like lead!"
Not long after that, there was an exodus of workers from Shotley Bridge to Birmingham and Sheffield; plus, at least two local landowners had apprenticed sons to the Germans; two of their descendants - Ernie and Walter Johnson - were working for Mole in Birmingham who actually loaned them to Wilkinson in 1884.
So by the first quarter of the 1700s the secrets were well and truly spread amongst English smiths in Birmingham and quality accordingly enhanced.
Without accounting for Spain and Italy I can definitely declare that the Germans were possessed of secrets that made them world leaders. Those secrets remained hidden until about 1730.
Does anybody now know what those secrets were?

[fernando]

Originally Posted by urbanspaceman

The issue I was opening for debate is that Wootz may not have been tempered.
This seems like a contradiction to everything we have come to understand about blade forging.
Are there any blacksmiths or metallurgists out there?
I think if it was to be tempered and quenched then the temperature will have had to have been very accurately controlled, so some form of clock was a must, or great accuracy in the colour of the metal, which I thought was how the Japanese did it.

Looks like the form of clock was both time spent speaking out prayers and verses, probably to support a skilful eye for colour checking. We may see that both 'techniques' were (also) used in Toledo, as written by various authors.

The synopsis

The fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries marked the greatest splendor of this industry and it is when the Guild of Sword smiths began to be constituted, artisans from all over Europe and even from the East came to Toledo to learn from those artisans the “secrets” of the manufacture of the inimitable blades, that raised the name of Toledo and its Tagus to a height that no other city has been able to reach through the centuries.
The fame of the old Toledo steels lies in the mastery with which some craftsmen handled the tempering, without any technical knowledge or instrument capable of measuring, even remotely, the appropriate temperatures for said treatment. The temperature was known by the color of the red-hot steel and the time of immersion in the water, through prayers or verses alluding to the trade. The people attributed this quality of the temple to the waters of the Tagus river in which the swords were tempered.

... and the unavoidable legend.

Legend has it that the first tempered steels were developed by mere chance in Toledo, Spain, where the royal armory was concentrated in the middle ages. Swords, armor and metal parts in general were manufactured there. Through a mixture of cruelty and servility, the royal blacksmith came up with the idea of ​​skewering a prisoner of war (probably a "Moor" or sympathizer) captured in the wars against Arab domination. No need to explain that this cruelty made the blade of the sword to be heated "to red" to commit the "symbolic act" "ritual death" or "baptism of blood" and the result was overwhelming, the sword was hardened or TEMPERED using the body of a man as a refrigerant for the process, in front of the discovery, The surprise and after the surprise, all the nobles ordered their Toledo sword, so they were left without slaves to sacrifice and by dire analogy and contempt for the enemy, the slaves were replaced by pigs that died in a tempered process of swords until someone thought of that that of having to kill someone or an animal to temper the steel could be a superstition and they tried to do it with water, oil, with the same results and so it is until now on the west side of the planet.

[urbanspaceman]

Hello Fernando.
What an astonishing and revelationary treatise on Toledo.
Toledo was always the most famous of course: as an individual, completely unconnected with the blade world, I was always aware that Toledo was famous for its blades.
Actually, the ubiquitous cup-hilt rapier letter-opener has been apparent all of my life; and the cocktail sticks too. Spain was ultimately exotic for the early 'sixties hoi-polloi here in Blighty, and those mini rapiers were only equalled by the sombrero or maracas.
All that aside - although it is a precious document and I am grateful to you for bringing it to my attention - it further explains why we Brits never excelled in blade-smithing. Why buy our steel from Spain (or Solingen) when we could buy ready-made blades.
Wars put a stop to commerce with Spain a lot of the time, so Solingen became the go-to shop for swords.
I think I am answering my initial question here but anyone out there who knows better - could you please enlighten me.

[fernando]

Mind you Keith, i am no Spaniard; it is just that proximity (country, language, common antique weapons and of course friendly relation) makes it easy for me to go a bit deeper into these Toledo issues. I do happen to have a couple 'Iberian' cup hilt swords in my micro collection but, no Toledo letter openers, Mexican sombreros or Latino maracas .



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