Originally Posted by
Mike Blue
Smelting steel is a little more complicated than that. It is an entirely different subject to study even while the result of the work is the subject of discussion.
I propose my comments to focus the discussion and not allow a wandering collection of arguments that appear connected, but in reality are distractions and do not logically support each other.
"every single European sword" is a collection of a large number of blades. No one article discusses them "all". There simply isn't enough resource or access to the entire collection to say this. Each article, even the C. Johnson piece only discusses a representative sample. I know Craig very well and would defer to him nearly every time, especially in this area, as he supports several of the items I have brought to it. It makes me very glad to see him putting his work into print so to speak.
It is true that hardness is variable amongst all these sample blades. The metallurgists and archeologists all have their opinions about why. The martial skills people contribute their opinions from the working tool perspective. Craig suggests several reasons that do not appear in your discussion. Blade construction chemistry is one reason, but he also mentions that the smiths had different incentives to produce blades in the manner they did that are unrelated to the values that modern smiths and customers have. This is a critical observation. We apply our modern mythology to these "great" swords/tools and are disappointed when we find they are relatively ordinary compared to what can be produced.
Still, not "every" blade tested was disappointing, nor uniformly soft. What may be more interesting is that the average values, the most common number of swords are in the middle of the hardness range and the middle of the carbon content range. Old Japanese katana are researched thoroughly and routinely found to be between 0.60-0.70% carbon. This despite the fact that their steel production, for it's day, produced tamahagane carbon contents in the 1.4-1.6% range. Some part of the smithing technique reduces that carbon content. It seems the Europeans were producing blades with similar chemistries. The Japanese use this carbon content as a means to develop the hamon. This portion of the art quality of their blades is highly valued even though the resulting carbon content is sneered at by so many who believe you must have a high carbon content in your blades. It ain't necessarily so, if a wider view is adopted.
But none of Craig's sample (I hope you looked at more than one sample.), the one we have to discuss, does not have carbon contents approaching 1%. But you need to specify why it's better, or the exact quality of the blade that somehow makes that different. An unhardened bar of 1% steel might or might not be tougher (avoiding fracture) than a lesser steel. A hardened high carbon steel could be much more likely to fracture than otherwise. But none of the conditions of heat treatment or other aspects are raised here and it's difficult to respond without them.
There are other collections of representative samples to which authors had access. No one to date has proposed putting all this data into one file for comparision purposes. Statistically a larger sample size is preferred.
From a combat perspective, I suspect the customers had a large portion of influence over blade construction. Sure they wanted a beautiful pattern welded, name inset ala Ulfbert, but they wanted a blade that did not break during a fight. A broken sword is a distinct disadvantage fighting against another fellow armed with a bent but still intact weapon. More soldiers on the field were likely armed with a wider variety of spears for this very reason. Again this depends on fighting techniques too, martial styles. Some groups favored axes and were feared for it. There are Chinese discussions of old swords that for all modern purposes were merely iron clubs used by the good fighters, and the death act was accomplished by squires or follow-on foot soldiers.
Perhaps fighting technique is more important than the weapon itself.
Wootz forges like butter, compared to modern high carbon tool steels. Most of the low alloy, ultra high carbon steels do. Visit a smith's shop who works this material and discover this for yourself. Ric teaches classes in both smelting and working the material. It would be well worth your visit.
Any blade at Rc 60 (any tested value) will be the same hardness regardless of blade chemistry. There may be other characteristics like stain resistance or toughness that are affected by chemistry. Hardness is merely one value to be studied. Wootz is not inherently harder because it's wootz. It has to have the smith heat treat it. Depending on their methods or understanding that could turn out to be legendary or ordinary. The material itself is not magical.
There are plenty of afficionados of this sort of discussion all over the net. The specialize in their era and I have little hope of summarizing all the periods involved. My personal inspection of multiple horse-mounted blades from different cultures and different era, generally supports the lack of sharp favored over sharp. If you consider an older culture where armor was likely, the sharp edge would not survive contact with materials designed to resist it, or it would stick in the material and injure the arm of the cutter. As a blunt club, it could break bones even through the armor, unhorse the rider and leave him hors de combat for the fellows with the spears. A more thorough discussion of the martial skills involved would help but is a distraction from the OP.
There are better studies available from WWII. The Spirit of the Sword: Iaido, Kendo, and Test Cutting with the Japanese Sword
Nakamura Taisaburo Taisaburo contends that the sword was not the problem but the techniques used in cutting that were at fault.
As long as we can add to the understanding and not split the discussion, I'm in favor of whatever contribution occurs. I hope this helps.
