Hybrid kris for comment

[kai]

Hello Xas,

For example, stolen railroad tracks- 1084 steel, if I researched correctly- was mentioned by several historical references to have been used by pandays in the mid to late 1800s (mid- from foreign trade, late- exclusively in Luzon) and sold/bartered as "quality steel." This steel source became even more popular during the American era (early 1900s-preWW2). Parts of certain ship vessels made of steel were also cannibalized for trade. In these cases- if such steel sources were used to make swords, won't the end product qualify as monosteel?

Yes, if a sword would be fully made from these common sources of modern steel with limited forging, the resulting blades would be monosteel. 1084 steel is an especially good choice in a low-tech setting since quenching will be successful under a fairly wide range of process parameters; also the hardened blade can still be easily sharpened and will not be prone to breaking. 1095 steel could yield better edges/hardness if quenched correctly but this is more difficult. Thus, 1084 is a good choice for longer blades in a rural setting.

If monosteel would be folded onto itself several times in a traditional SE Asian blacksmithing forge, it might exhibit (non-contrasting) laminations again.

In many cases though, this precious steel would have been only utilized as the central layer of steel for the later edges of the sword and sandwiched between 2 layers of laminated mild steels made from salvaged other materials (cheaper and less likely to break due to lesser carbon content).

BTW, leaf springs from Japanese trucks continued to be of laminated steel (IIRC even after WW2).

Regards,
Kai

[xasterix]

Originally Posted by kai

Hello Xas,


Yes, if a sword would be fully made from these common sources of modern steel with limited forging, the resulting blades would be monosteel. 1084 steel is an especially good choice in a low-tech setting since quenching will be successful under a fairly wide range of process parameters; also the hardened blade can still be easily sharpened and will not be prone to breaking. 1095 steel could yield better edges/hardness if quenched correctly but this is more difficult. Thus, 1084 is a good choice for longer blades in a rural setting.

If monosteel would be folded onto itself several times in a traditional SE Asian blacksmithing forge, it might exhibit (non-contrasting) laminations again.

In many cases though, this precious steel would have been only utilized as the central layer of steel for the later edges of the sword and sandwiched between 2 layers of laminated mild steels made from salvaged other materials (cheaper and less likely to break due to lesser carbon content).

BTW, leaf springs from Japanese trucks continued to be of laminated steel (IIRC even after WW2).

Regards,
Kai

Dear Kai:

Thanks very much for the deluge of info and learnings! Really good stuff. One really needs to do legwork (in this case, metallurgy knowledge) to connect the dots and figure out the hows and whys of PH+Moro tradblade construction.

[JBG163]

Polished or not, flaws can help identify if it comes from bloomed steel, that was forge folded. Also some part of structure can be seen sometimes, such as layers, quench, pattern welded, even without polishing/etching. So please, dont hesitate to share close up picture in order to get more responses

[kai]

I fully agree, Julien! Sharp and well-lit close-ups would be great.

Actually, Jose's piece seems to exhibit enough activity making it a candidate for possibly being laminated...

Regards,
Kai

[Battara]

I'll try to get pics this weekend.

[Ian]

There is frequent mention of homogenous steel in the comments above. The adjective homogenous requires some thought, being a relatively recent alternative to homogeneous, which indicates uniformity of composition or structure.

There is a concise discussion of homogeneous versus homogenous in the Gammarist web site:

Homogeneous means (1) of the same or similar nature, and (2) uniform in structure or composition. Its corresponding noun is homogeneity.

Homogenous, whose corresponding noun is homogeny, is a little-used biological term whose old sense has mostly been lost. Today, it’s primarily a variant of homogeneous in general usage, though it still has uses in science, where spelling it any other way would be considered an error.

Though some careful nonscientific writers continue to try to keep the words separate, it is a lost cause in popular usage. And the change is not new; people have been using homogenous in place of homogeneous throughout the English-speaking world for at least a century, ... so trying to preserve the distinction is probably a losing battle.

https://grammarist.com/usage/homogenous-homogeneous/

Using this now accepted meaning of homogenous, then homogenous steel would be steel that is produced with a uniform chemical composition and microscopic structure.

If we take this homogenous steel and then fold it on itself several times by heating and forging, do we still have homogenous steel? I would argue that the faces of the various layers when heated and exposed to air would have different chemical and structural characteristics from the subsurface steel, thus introducing heterogeneities (at least at the microscopic level) to the various layers of steel.

I think the only way to preserve the homogeneity of the original steel would be to forge a blade without laminations. Even then, the homogeneity would again be lost through any differential heat treatment/quenching.

Using various steels of different composition to start with, and then forging them into each other, obviously introduces much greater heterogeneity to the final product than starting with a homogeneous stock.

[JBG163]

Homogeneous steel in my opinion, have an uniform structure and composition. So it can correspond to only modern steel, or steel coming from High furnace (cast iron that is heated to lose carbon and make steel).

Japanese sword of extremely good quality, are almost considered homogeneous steel. The bloomed steel, heterogeneous at the origin, is so much folded that it's almost homogeneous.

But, all the blades coming from bloomed steel are forge folded, and considered heterogeneous in composition.

[xasterix]

Originally Posted by kai

I fully agree, Julien! Sharp and well-lit close-ups would be great.

Actually, Jose's piece seems to exhibit enough activity making it a candidate for possibly being laminated...

Regards,
Kai

Here's some pics...I only used the "macro" mode on my mobile phone camera though, and the shots appear somewhat dark even with adequate lighting...hoping they'll still offer clues.

[Battara]

There is another possibility that occurs to me years later - could what I have be hippo ivory, because the grain structure is not elephant.

[JBG163]

Hi XasteriX ( )
In my opinion, some of the visible flaws would indicate a forge folded structure.
Did you do the etch on it ? (it seems to me from the quench line quite discernable on your above picture that it was etched).
I think it could be worth to open a window on some part and to etch it again. Could show us more.

[David]

Originally Posted by Battara

There is another possibility that occurs to me years later - could what I have be hippo ivory, because the grain structure is not elephant.

Can you show us some close-ups of the pommel. It could be hippo or possibly whale tooth. I was just remarking about your original statement as seacow because i don't believe dugong tusks have enough girth to be able to carve such a pommel from it. It certainly looks like some kind of ivory though. Close-ups might help answer your question.