Barbarian Tech

[Pete]

I was watching Barbarian Tech on the history channel the other night and they showed a sword being made.

I've viewed the Japanese way of making swords with the repeated folding, and folding and folding.

The Dark Ages Reenactor melted raw Iron into bars, took three bars, welded them together using the forge and hammer, sharpened, polished and added the handle. The carbon to make steel came from the coke in the forge. He said one could be turned out with about 60 hours of work.

Quality control must have been a bear back in the old days. But the swords got the job done.

Pete

[Bill Harsey]

Pete,
That sounds like very traditional Norse sword making.

Carbon content of steel while forging is controlled by what kind of fire the steel is heated in.
All forge fires "back in the day" were made using charcoal and the carbon migration from fuel to iron at high temperatures made it possible to add enough carbon to steel to make it strong and tough. This was still a very long process.
A reducing atmosphere (fuel rich) will slowly add carbon and an oxidizing atmosphere (O2 rich) will take carbon away. The smiths had to know what they were doing even if they couldn't explain it.

[Pete]

The History Channel has a number of good shows on it. While the story line drags a bit on most shows, a minute recap after commercials, just about every show from the bronze age to the middle ages shows something "made" with metal.

Even the story about, I think, the Jamestown settlers had an interesting tidbit. Since they didn't know what they would need in the new world they took a metal smith and stock metal. What they needed on a given day he would make.

While the reenactor made a number of items on the show, I found the punching of holes and joining two pieces with a rivet to be most interesting.

The most impressive? Any blade after it is finished, polished, handle and decoration added.

Pete