I was sent here from r/wicked_edge. I hone SR's and I'm interested in the history of their steel. Specifically, what's changed in the way SR manufactures formulate and treat their metal? ie carbon content, tempering, etc
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I was sent here from r/wicked_edge. I hone SR's and I'm interested in the history of their steel. Specifically, what's changed in the way SR manufactures formulate and treat their metal? ie carbon content, tempering, etc
We have had that question - in a variety of forms and as you pose it - a number of times. It is far too tedious to write it all out afresh each time the question crops up, so I suggest you do a little googling of the archives - general googling of the web doesn't hurt much either, and visiting a library with a good section on steel is very good, but not done much these days.
Only take answers from those who know what they are talking about - mere opinions will not cut the mustard, and lots of people have some very odd ideas regarding steel and the various forms of it used in razors, such as:
double shear steel
cast steel (same as crucible steel);
warranted steel (not a type, just a guarantee that it was good);
acier fondu (same as cast steel, therefore just crucible steel);
silver steel (with real silver, not the bright tool steel it is nowadays);
india steel (from the indian form of steel known as wootz, made in a crucible, thereby the original cast steel as it predates the others which are a re-discovery of it);
silver steel - a form that does not contain silver, marginally harder than ordinary razor steel of the time,
low carbon steel - generic razor steel.
There are many other steels that were used. Some were called 'boutique' steels because they were pretty much small scale in production, like a small shop or boutique. Sheffield became the worlds centre for steel production and the creation of boutique steels.
There was also - supposedly - a particular form of iron that was considered to take and hold such a keen edge that it was used to make razors from. It sounds like heresy, but it happened.
You also need to know the alloys that went into it and the ways of making it - puddling furnace, blast-furnace, bessemer converter, siemens electric arc furnace and many more.
I have only given you a few generalities, so you can imagine the scope of the work that lays ahead of you, and the importance of not being swayed by personal opinions and beliefs but adhering to facts.
Good Luck!
Regards,
Neil
Thanks Neil, this is fascinating, and more than I expected. Looks like I have my work cut out for me...
You are a straight razor user and just found this place, blasphemy I say! Welcome aboard!
Wikipedia can give a star
History_of_steelmaking
Damascus_steel
Wootz_steel
~Richard
Welcome to SRP. Since you're already honing razors one of the coolest aspects, from my point of view, is honing razors from the different eras and observing whether there are differences in the way they respond to the rocks. More often than not we don't really know what the composition of the alloy is, but it is still an interesting aspect of the sport. Great info Neil as usual.
Take for account all the different steels that Neil mentioned, and all the different cutlers, with most having their own tempering methods. Take all of them plus you can also add stainless steel to the mix.
Your left with quite a few different steels, many manufacturer claimed in their advertisement that they had better steel better tempering then the other guy, that their razor will hold an edge longer then anything out there, some even claimed that they will never need honing...
Marketing existed then as it does now, and there is plenty common off the shelf steel with names like 'damascus' where it is just plain steel. Snake oil is of all times. And in that era, knowledge of chemical metallurgy was almost non existent, so what you got varied from batch per batch, depending on which alloys happened to be in the ore.
I wouldn't be too sure about that...Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
As far as I am aware it was a golden era, a time when great strides forward were taken in this field. It would not be untoward to insist that it was a time of scientific revolution
Luminaries like Newton and Lavoisier (the father of modern chemistry) sparked it off and Francis Bacons analytical or empirical method provided a means of meaningful experimentation and comparison. Robert Boyle refined that method (Boyle's Law) and the list of names to which we owe much of our modern existence goes on and on: Tycho Brae, Gallileo, von Loevenhoek, Louis Pasteur, Lord Kelvin, Michael Faraday, Herscell, Priestly,
Most of the above innovators and pioneers represent inter-related fields, metallurgy being just one. To get more specific we must enter the realm of the iron and steel masters, men such as Abraham Darby, Wilkinson of iron coffin fame, Roebuck of the Carron Ironworks, Benjamin Huntsman, Matthew Boulton, David Mushet, Robert Forester Mushet, Henry Bessemer, Samuel Osbourne, etc, etc, etc.
So metallurgical knowledge was almost non existent? In a pigs eye, it was!
Regards,
Neil
I wonder if the "flaws" in the steels produced at the time actually helped when it comes to a shaving edge !
As has been discussed before the sharpest edge does not necessarily mean the best shaving edge. Maybe the imperfections in the steel produced at the time is the reason allot of people like the feel of vintage razors over the feel of new razors......just a thought :)
It could well be Mike - interesting thought. No doubt inconsistencies were numerous (as they still are today despite all the care and control processes) and I have no doubt that certain 'flaws' in steel begat edges that appealed to a lot of people skin and shave-wise. That and the fact that machine made has usurped hand made, hand-forging has almost virtually disappeared except among small groups, notably enthusiasts, the types of grind once favoured having given way to other hollows, etc, etc, etc all played a part in finding 'niche' products that appealed to many.
If you demeaned the art of the japanese forger/smith and booted all its folk-lore, mysticism and sheer nonsense into touch in such a cavalier fashion then there would be an outcry of anguish here, but try to promote the western culture in the same sort of terms and it gets ripped to shreds and hardly anyone raises a dissenting voice.
The past can speak for itself - household names like Rogers, Wade & Butcher, Taylors, Wilkinson, etc, etc, etc all stand as razor/steel/edged implement makers on their own merits. If they and older counterparts like Cadman, Heiffor, Sheppard, Lund, Osborne, Mappin Bros, etc, produced rotten products then history would have passed them by and we would not be discussing them now.
Regards,
Neil
lol so true. It always puts a smile on my face when people talk about tamahagane like it's some kind of magical super steel. In reality its production was born out of a necessity to refine a starting product which would, by and large be considered slag by today's standards :) If you point this out to any tamahagane worshipers though, you are a heretic. That and the fact the katana itself would be virtually useless on the battle fields of medieval Europe against plate wearing knights !Quote:
Originally Posted by Neil Miller
I believe you'll find precise, repeatable alloy production(s) described here. Great stuff if, not exactly, razors - close enough, though.
Japanese foundry and steel/alloys
Viking sword Ulfberht
I dunno Mike, Huntsman made some very clean stuff considering all the industrial "handicaps" of Old Sheffield compared to the modern day. Most modern smelters could not come close to the purity of his crucible steel in his day. I will also allow that compared to modern alloys, his steels were just about as simple as steels could get.Quote:
Originally Posted by mike1011
Yes and no. They understood carbon and iron. But I am willing to bet that they didn't fully understand the influence of, or knew how to measure percentages of tungsten, manganese, etc, which do play an important role in the alloying properties. A quick google search shows me that alloying only became understood and widespread around the turn of the century, well past the golden age of straight razor manufacturing. So anything made before 1900 (give or take) was made with at best a crude understanding of the theory of metallurgy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neil Miller
Not really. At least, you won't hear me cry. Tamahagane is basically crud. It's one of the least efficient ways of making steel. The only reason it was done, is that that was what they had to work with. The real 'magic' of tamahagane is that a smith would be skilled enough to take a bunch of high carbon iron slag, and turn it into a homogenized bar of pure (more or less) steel.Quote:
Originally Posted by Neil Miller
Btw, I don't want demean the quality of the steel of those days. I just wanted to point out that they didn't necessarily understood the theory of what they were doing, or how the alloys worked or the dendritic structures of crucible steel. The guy making the ulfberth swords knew how to make good swords and could repeat the process with a good degree of consistency. But he simply did not have the chemical knowledge or the modern day tools to understand WHY his swords were so good or WHAT caused them to be such.
:hmmm:Then how did they arrive at the conclusions they did without a basic understanding of metallurgy? You can not tell me that they just happened to stumble on the correct combination of materials AND the use of the crucible not knowing what or why.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
Hoo K,
The quality of the basic iron ore used in India, Central; and western Europe and the UK was almost always of a high grade and many other elements were in the basic ore. Knowledge was only needed to extract, by process, the best performance of that ore. The crucible steel of the late 18th century was similar to Wootz and was a great way to mix and controll the amount of carbon in the steel. ( the basis fo hardenable steels)
That meant the India sword smiths and those of Damascus had a leg up on the surrounding areas...until the best ore they used was used up.
The Swedish ore is of the highest quality available even to this day. Both sides of WWII had flights to and from Sweden carrying the ball bearings necessary for the survival of often overstressed equipment. And it was the basis of the knife and razor manufacturing throughout Europe and the UK.
Also the Japanese were happy to etch and stamp their razor with "Swedish Steel."
Your studies may disagree,
~Richard
I think stumble upon is the correct response. I would also like to give human beings credit for being keen observers and very capable of remembering the steps needed to reproduce a process, observe for changes and adapt their processes to improve success. But it all starts with a happy accident, a eureka moment what ever you wish to call it. We can laugh at them today, but yes, they pulled it off.Quote:
Originally Posted by guitstik
An earlier comment about why some blades were better does really depend on one critical factor that does not apply today. The smiths then did not have global internet to share knowledge, nor did they have efficiency in logistics for supplies. The local ore source was often the point of legendary blades and the best smiths would be gathered there by what ever warlords ruled at the time. We know this to be the case in the demise of wootz/ukku/bulat, it was highly dependent on a naturally occurring alloy of vanadium. Similarly stories are told of old sources of iron sands in Japan that are no longer mined at the original sites, that produced legendary blades. The Japanese have also been quite happy to use Swedish steel whenever they can, even in preference in some tools.
The Ulfbert blades were likely forged on a base material from Frankish era steel smelts. For the day, the Franks made some of the best cleanest stuff ever seen using ancient techniques. No one can be certain how to reproduce it, and some of us, like Ric, are taking their best educated guesses about how they did it (and Ric's pretty close). I'll readily admit that tamahagane or Viking or Roman steels could be incredibly simple (read unmarketable and boring) compared to modern alloys, but they were good steels not total crap.
In the beginning, they stumbled upon, then consistently replicated and refined. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it, and KISS" applies.
That's exactly what happened. Crucible steel was already made centuries before alchemists came up with the fire, earth, water, air, spirit model. Before people even knew about molecules, let alone atoms or the periodic table of mendelev, those people were heat making crucible steel. They knew how to get iron from ore, and eventually made the link between charcoal and iron to make steel, but not more than that.Quote:
Originally Posted by guitstik
According to Wikipedia, wootz originated around 300 BC. So no, no basic understanding of atoms, chemical elements, or alloying.
Bruno - I am afraid that we will have to agree to disagree.
You keep mentioning 'they' - but 'they' are still around and it makes no difference to the collective wisdom available. 'They' may work in steel and not know much about alloys etc outside of what they have been trained to do, but that does not make this age ignorant. 'They' might drive cars and be totally ignorant of basic mechanics and the workings of the internal combustion engine, but we are not defined by 'they' but by what we collectively know, even if that wisdom is known intimately to only a few.
Let's put the kybosh on your 'pre 1900' theory.
Benjamin Huntsman, born in 1704 became an established locksmith, clock maker, surgeon and oculist. He became disatisfied with the German steel he was importing for watch springs and pendulums, so began experimenting - in secret. He came up with crucible steel, but could not sell it in England because of jealous competition so it sold instead to France as the Acier Fondu we are all familiar with. He contributed so much to metallurgy that he was asked to join the Royal Society, but he thought that would interfere with his extensive secret experiments, so he declined. He moved to Sheffiled and continued experimenting - in secret. From the story of Walker, the freezing 'beggar' in the snow-ridden night given sanctuary by Huntsman's men, we are told that the secret lay in coke for fuel, the ore, and the flux, which appeared to be bits of green glass. So, its carbon and iron. That is what makes steel.
We then find that the ore came from one of Sweden's best known mines - Dannemora (only shut in 1992) and that it is a very pure iron ore. Why is it pure? Because of its manganese content. So, we have an alloy, and an ore, the results of a great deal of secret experimentation. Not wishful thinking or the clumsy serendipitous accident of a fool. How about the flux (of which a great deal, some positive, some negative) has been written. What is a flux - why is it necessary. It purifies the iron by allowing impurities from it (the ore) and the fuel to fuse and melt and form slag. Again, it is the result of many experiments. Why do some people disbelieve all this, particularly the exact nature (and some even doubt the presence) of the flux? Because the very extensive research was done in secret, and no manuals or printed matter remain.
How about the iron man, David Mushet, born in 1772?
His father had a small foundry where he was permitted, and after many experiments into iron he managed to make steel from wrought iron at the famous Clydebank Works. In 1801 he opened his own works - the Calder Iron Works. Here he made the local 'wild coal' also known as black band ironstone into good iron - it was previously considered useless. By 1805 he had submitted a lot of work to the Philosophical Society and gained such a reputation that he was acknowledged as a leading expert in iron and steel.
He then moved to England, the Forest of Dean, and Whitecliff Iron Works and the Darkhill Iron Works. He became a director of the British Iron Company. His experiments, started at his fathers foundry, then continued at night in his own time when he first became employed were copious. His essays on iron and steel and its component parts were widely published and considered 'the word' on the subject. He retired in 1845 and left his son, Robert, to carry on the work...
Robert Forester Mushet, born 1811, took over management of the Darkhill works in 1845. In 1848 he was at the Forest Steel Works and in 1862 the Titanic Steel Works. If his father was called The Man of Iron, then surely Robert his son was The Man of Steel. Like his father, he experimented all the time, and particularly with alloying agents. In 1848 he was handed a whitish lump, and recorded for posterity here are his words:
... "Being familiar with alloys of iron and manganese," says Mr. Mushet, "I at once recognized this lump of metal as an alloy of these two metals and, as such, of great value in the making of steel. Later, I found that the white metallic alloy was the product of steel ore, called also spathose iron ore, being, in fact, a double carbonate of iron and manganese found in the Rhenish mountains, and that it was most carefully selected and smelted in small blast furnaces, charcoal fuel alone being employed and the only flux used being lime. The metal was run from the furnace into shallow iron troughs similar to the old refiners' boxes, and the cakes thus formed, when cold and broken up, showed large and beautifully bright facets and crystals specked with minute spots of uncombined carbon. It was called, from its brightness, 'spiegel glanz' or spiegel eisen, i.e., looking-glass iron. Practically its analysis was: Iron, 86…25; manganese, 8…50; and carbon, 5…25; making a total of 100…00."
Getting a sinking feeling, Bruno? Then how about one of the most remarkable series of alloy experiments, carried out by Stodart and true Renaissance man, Michael Faraday?
Michael Faraday, born 1791, although a mere blacksmith's son was one of the most influential scientists ever produced by England. The list of his scientific achievements goes on and on and can fill books, but we shall only concern ourselves with the series of experiments he undertook with James Stodart, famed cutler and maker of razors using wootz.
The two built a blast furnace, and Stodart made ingots under Faraday's direction. The work was summarised in a paper called "Experiments on the Alloys of Steel [...] by Stodart & Faraday" and after analysing wootz and finding it to have a minute portion of alumina and silex and to be very pure, they used it as the base to add alloys to. They also made their own iron from steel and subjected it to minute scientific analysis, commenting on the presence of alumina and tellurium and measuring down to a grains accuracy - there are 7000 grains to one pound. The woots was forged, formed and remelted lots of times, always presenting its peculiar damascen appearance after acid had acted on it. They had analysed wootz, which they had from Bombay, India, and now they made their own. They analysed iron from meteors finding nickel in it, 3% nickel content from arctic meteors and 10% from Siberian meteors. They took various samples and an average nickel content was just under 9 per cent, so they made their own 'meteoric' iron.
Some of the alloying agents used were:
nickel,
platinum,
rhodium,
silver,
gold,
copper,
tin.
The paper was published in 1822, works had been underway for years before this. Some leading cutlery firms started using silver steel, among which were Green, Pickslay & Co who called their metal Peruvian Steel after the silver mines in South America where the silver came from. Adam Padley, another fine cutler and razor maker later took the Peruvian name for his own.
I hope that helps people to understand that although we are collectively wiser now (I sometimes doubt this when I see gangs of kids in hoods with their pants half way down their ass talking like people from a continent they have never visited) the intelligentsia of that time was as inspiring as ours is now. They certainly did not set out in pure ignorance and stumble upon their greatest inventions - these men were true scientists, working in controlled surroundings, analysing and reporting on what they found in the true scientific manner.
If it does not help - tough. :banghead: Your loss.
Regards,
Neil
It does help. I don't have a sinking feling because I am not emotionally invested in the argument. Live and learn. I can admit when I am wrong. When I looked up alloying on wikipedia, it also said 'Mangalloy, an alloy of steel and manganese exhibiting extreme hardness and toughness, was one of the first alloy steels, and was created by Robert Hadfield in 1882.[21]'
Which lead me to believe that alloying on industrial scale was not done before then. A quick check of the various alloying elements and when they were first discovered: tungsten (1781) vanadium (1801) and manganese (1774) also shows that alloying could not have been understood before then. Or rather, perhaps alloying as a principle was understood, but not the various elements and their effect, before the 1770s, since they were not even discovered.
So you're right about the timeframe for straight razor manufacture. Those looking for / needing the scientific knowledge would have found it. Everything before 1700s however is logically still a stumbled upon process, helped by observation and experience, but without scientific underpinning.
That's very gentlemanly of you Bruno - you will have to adjust that "Bruno Is Always Right" emoticon now...
For the record, I confined myself to the 1800s, purely because you stated 'pre 1900' - moving the goalposts now to 'pre 1770' is a bit annoying, but even the drowning grasp at a straw, or so I am told.
'Stumbling upon something' is the story of the modern world - nearly everything that enriches our lives can be traced - if you want to go far enough back - to stumbling upon something.
I guess that 'life' was stumbled upon this planet and that is tracing all we are back to an accident. A happy one though. I consider myself very lucky to become emotionally invested in things, even simple things - it enriches my life. Sterile, cold, analytical existence is not for me, so I guess we are destined for very different heavens - if either of us is heaven-bound, that is...
Regards, and thanks for graciously acknowledging your error,
Neil
Getting back on topic .......... I've always been fascinated by the investigation into the receivers failing in 1903 Springfield rifles in WWI . It was discovered that the smiths heat treating the receivers were not using pyrometers even though they had access to them. They were going by the color of the metal and that was found to vary substantially depending on whether it was overcast or sunny. Interesting stuff.
True. I HT by color, and found out one day that on a bright sunny day, this is very error prone. Best is when it is overcast, or there is no direct sunlight. In the direct sun I've found it very difficult to judge color accurately.Quote:
Originally Posted by JimmyHAD
Fascinating thread! So much going on hundreds of years ago. Neil, I appreciate the information of these men of steel, their accomplishments and contributions! :tu
I might recall wrongly here but I'm pretty sure the program where that chap recreated an ulfbert blade came to the conclusion the steel they used was likely to have been imported from the middle east.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Blue
Still, the Middle East 800-1000AD was and is a far cry from the 1700's when it was (re)discovered.Quote:
Originally Posted by mike1011
There is no wrong recollection because there are none alive who can tell us what was the truth. The best suppositions (and Ric and others operate carefully in that domain) are that there was some fluidity in trade in Europe that had to have overlap with Asia and the Middle East. Frankish steels were prized above wootz for the simple reason that they would survive a Russian winter. For that program, Ric used essentially a South Asian type of smelter with the most basic of materials.Quote:
Originally Posted by mike1011
There are copper mines in the Great Lakes Region of North America attributed to the Grecian era when bronze was the most highly prized metal. I believe we'd be very surprised to find that trade was far more active than we know. Good materials undoubtedly generated more income because of scarcity and reputation.
It certainly is :) the program on the Ulfbert said the steel used in them blades would not be seen in Europe again for another 1000 years...........it boggles the mind really, well it does mine !Quote:
Originally Posted by guitstik
@Mike Blue - I'm confused (easily done) are you saying the ulfbert steel was made by the Franks or just the steel produced by the Franks at that time was prized ?
Lifted from Wikipedia
There are a lot of stories about the Franks, that the steel production was associated with the lifetime of one monastery and the craft quality there only lasted a couple hundred years. The quality of the steel is recorded in several ancient Islamic texts. It was sought after by Arab purchasers as blades and raw material. I hope the wiki quote helps.Quote:
The name[edit]
"Ulfberht" is a Frankish word whose meaning is not known.[1] The inscription "+VLFBERH+T" used Latin letters. The most common hypotheses are that it was the name of a swordsmith who passed his craft on to apprentices or family members, that it was the name of a group of craftsmen.[1] The word is possibly a compound of the elements Ulfr 'wolf' (old Norse) and beraht 'light, bright, shining' (old high German, old Saxon).
There are several variant spellings on the Ulfberht swords, of the more than 166 found by archeologists. Dr. Alan Williams (an archaeometallurgist who works at the Wallace Collection, a national museum in London.) has looked at 44 Ulfberht swords, and made a key discovery in the metallurgical composition of the swords and the connection between the two different spellings. 9 of these 44 were found to have the very high carbon steel and were spelled in the "+VLFBERH+T" manner.[4]
+VLFBERH+T Swords spelled in this manner have a higher carbon content (crucible steel) making them stronger and more flexible than the iron swords of the day.
+VLFBERHT+ Swords spelled in this manner, and other variants, have a lower carbon content making them considerably weaker and brittle. Dr. Williams hypothesizes that these swords may have been copies or cheap knockoffs of the real "+VLFBERH+T" swords.
Another historical influence on how widespread and how rapidly the craft of smithing moved across the planet has to do with war. Warlords are always looking for weapons. The local blacksmiths in a conquered area would likely be swept up and their lives traded for making more weapons, if not hamstrung or worse. Smiths working together had to share skills and a homogenizing effect occurs. Those skills then expand across a territory. Just as easily an area of local talent could be wiped out by an enemy hoping to disable weapon production. The result then is that knowledge is lost.
What fascinates me most is how the knowledge keeps popping up again in disparate places.
Loving this thread. Thanks to everyone who contributed.
I have read that there are accounts of invaders sparing local blacksmiths and simply put them to work for their own needs because blacksmiths were just too useful and valuable to waste.
It makes sense especially if the blacksmith is good. More / better weapons to give an advantage on the battlefield would be something any self respecting war lord would jump all over :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
England dominated the battlefield for a time with the Longbow. Imagine a Viking army all kitted out with an ulfbert (the genuine ones not the copies made in Taiwan ;)) now that would have been a terrifying prospect for an army to face.
Enjoying this thread :)
One of my neighbour's ancestors, a certain John 'Boy' Smith, came from Africa and was spared when his village was invaded by slavers for much the same reason...Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
Regards,
Neil
What happened to the OP?
If only everyone saw us as that valuable today!! :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
If wars were still fought with swords you would be :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Adam G.
I think it was Einstein who said "I know not what weapons world war three will be fought with, but world war four will be fought with sticks and stones" If however there any blacksmith about you can add straight razors to that list :D
Indeed, nowadays if you're an expert in nuclear, biological, or cyber weapons you're really valuable. Some things haven't changed much.Quote:
Originally Posted by mike1011If wars were still fought with swords you would be :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Adam G.
As a related example - there are a number of first rate scientists who suddenly disappear from the publication stream - their work gets 'classified' and some bits show up only decades later.