Hank Reinhardt's The Book of the Sword (5 page)

Metallic sword and knife-making doubtless began when ancient man discovered little green stones on the ground which, when heated sufficiently, yielded copper. This liquid metal then was poured into molds to form axes and knives. These tools were soft, but could be work hardened by hammering.

Later, these early smiths learned how to alloy tin with copper to make bronze and with zinc to make brass. Both these alloys produced weapons of superior strength and hardness. But there was a far better metal on the horizon.

Iron is one of the most useful metals known to man. It is also one of the most common elements on the planet. In its pure state iron is only slightly harder than copper. But iron is a reactive metal and will combine with many other elements. With the addition of other elements, the properties of iron change drastically. Rarely is iron found that does not have some impurities mixed in with it. Of all the impurities, none is quite so important as carbon. But I get ahead of myself.

No one knows who first discovered iron, or where. In the past it was believed that the Hittites were the first, but that is being challenged as more and more information becomes available. At the time of this writing, the first makers and users of iron are not known.

More than likely the discovery was an offshoot of the bronze industry. It is quite likely that iron was discovered while mining for tin and copper. Probably this new metal was initially discarded and considered to be just trash. It was possible that it took quite a while for anyone to pay any attention to the material. However, once its abilities were realized, it quickly supplanted bronze as the ideal metal for swords and other weapons.

When you compare the different properties of bronze and iron you can see that it took a great leap to make iron into something useful. Bronze can be cast easily; it can be annealed by heating it up and plunging it into cold water, and thin sheets can be easily worked with a hammer. Iron behaves differently. While it will work harden and thus crack under the stress of cold forging, it has to be heated to be annealed, and then must be cooled very slowly. If it were quench-hardened, as they would do with bronze, it would not soften. If by some chance there were some carbon present, it might get very hard. In short, its behavior was quite different than bronze or copper.

But don't think that once iron was discovered bronze was dropped immediately. Far from it. Just as bronze weapons coexisted with Stone Age ones, so too did iron weapons coexist with bronze ones. Bronze continued to be important in the accoutrements, fittings, guards, pommels, etc., not to mention that maces could still be made from bronze. Even today, brass is still used for modern gun cartridge cases.

Although it took a great deal of time, someone finally figured out that iron could be quite useful, and then iron weapons began to appear. The Iron Age is generally considered to date from about 1400 BC. But this is a date used more for convenience than for anything else. We are already aware that copper was discovered a lot sooner than was thought, and that might be true for iron as well.

The Hittites are frequently given the credit for the discovery of iron, and many believe that the brief Hittite Empire was created by their mighty iron weapons. This is highly doubtful. First, there is no direct evidence that the Hittites used iron in abundance. Second, early iron swords were not much better than their bronze counterparts. Although lighter than bronze swords, they would bend just as easily. It probably took some time for methods to be discovered that yielded a steely iron. In the clash of armies it is quite doubtful that this small advantage would have been sufficient to insure victory and conquest. But it is undeniable that at about this time iron weapons and artifacts begin to appear.

You also have the very likely scenario that the discoverers did not run out and share the information with their neighbors. Undoubtedly the first iron weapons were more curiosities than decidedly better weapons. But in the forging of the blades under heat, some of them absorbed some carbon, and thus came out much tougher than bronze.

Man's nature has not changed in a few thousand years, and when the ancients learned their smiths could make a better blade, they tried to keep it a secret and sell their iron weapons at a premium. After all, the swords were stronger, tougher, lighter, and could be made longer, and, it was felt, be more effective.

It is human nature to keep your foe at a distance if possible. It is widely believed that a longer sword can give you an advantage. (This is only partially true. History shows us that a shorter weapon, used properly, is better than a long one. Consider the Greek phalanx and its twelve-foot-long spears versus the Roman short sword, the short Zulu assegai battling the traditional long African throwing spear, the Spanish sword-and-buckler men against the Swiss pikemen, and even the long rapier against the small sword.) Since the iron sword was a better product, why not get top dollar for it? Although this is just supposition on my part, I have a strong feeling this is what happened.

Restricting the flow of knowledge can only last so long, and in the end the knowledge of iron working spread over most of the world. Although the knowledge of how to smelt the iron and forge blades was pretty common, the ability to make fine swords was not.

There were many "secrets": secret formulas for smelting the iron, secret formulas for forging, and above all, the secret of properly tempering the blade. Smiths all over the world were pretty successful at restricting
this
knowledge. There was also a lot of mystery to this art, real and imagined. This "mystery" coupled with "the grass is always greener" concept, led to the legends of Toledo, Damascus, Japanese, and Persian swords, and the fabled Indian wootz steel (of which more below).

In a pre-industrial society, the ability to work iron and produce weapons and tools was considered almost magical, and its practitioners were linked to the gods themselves. Although the degree of reverence varied from culture to culture, the blacksmith was a powerful figure, and the blacksmith who produced weapons was even more important. This was true in many societies. Even the practical Romans had Vulcan, the crippled smith of the gods. Indeed, this crippling of the smith may have had some basis in fact. Both the Norse god Weyland and the Roman Vulcan were lame. Obviously this could be simply borrowing from one religion to another, and I am certainly not an expert on mythology. Certainly it is a good way to keep a good smith from running away. But we can read, and see, the importance of the smith in early societies. In Japan, Persia, China, Europe, and even in tribal Africa, the smith was of great importance and highly valued.

It is easy to see how this can happen. Consider taking a lump of metal and changing it into a shining sword blade that is capable of cutting through flesh and bone, and even mail. The whole process can appear magical! Since nothing was known of chemistry or metallurgy, even the practitioners themselves could think of it as magic!

Let me add something here on a personal level. I do not believe in magic. I am a hard core realist, and might best be described as a pragmatic empiricist. Having said that I am also forced to admit to having witnessed things I simply do not understand.

I have seen Jim Fikes, a blacksmith living in Jasper, Alabama, at this time, forge and temper a knife; while others, using the same steel and methods, do the same thing, at the same time. Then testing time comes around. Jim's knife holds an edge much longer, and can be made sharper, than any of the others. This is not hearsay, but it is true, as I was doing the cutting. I made the effort and cut the material as identically as I could, and the results were amazing. I still don't believe in magical swords, but I can be persuaded that there could have been knives and swords that were amazing.

There was one important reason that allowed this "mystery" of making a sword or knife to continue and flourish. The reason was very simple. The makers themselves did not know why the swords they produced were good, mediocre and a few really bad. These last they threw back into the pot to be re-melted and re-forged. What they did know was that if they used ore from a specific place, and did certain things by rote, taking a specified time to do it, and in a certain manner, they frequently came up with a good sword blade. And rarely, a truly superb sword blade appeared. But they did not know why.

The real secret to this was simply carbon content in the iron. But since the science of chemistry and metallurgy had not yet been developed, no one knew it. The average person is quite surprised to learn how late it actually was before the impurity, carbon, was proved to be what turned iron into steel. Some recent discoveries in England have shown that very high quality steel was produced in England in the "Dark Ages" (circa 476–1000 AD). Hamwic was a Saxon port that is under modern Southampton. Much of it has now been excavated, and a very interesting discovery was made. Several blooms of very high quality steel were found, plus several knives with high quality steel edges. These blooms are homogenous steel, with about two percent carbon. Properly forged, this could produce exceptional quality blades.

Shortly before this discovery, another one equally fascinating was announced. It seems that a monastery, abandoned when Henry VIII split from the Catholic Church, was also a metal producing factory. This is not unusual in itself. But what is unusual, is that the process they used was identical to the Bessemer process that was invented by Sir Henry Bessemer in the 19th century, and was in use in manufacturing until quite recently.

In 1740, Benjamin Huntsman, a maker of watch springs, found that he could produce much superior steel by melting the steel, allowing the slag to rise to the surface, and then skimming it off. This is much the same technique as was used in producing Wootz steel of India. But carbon wasn't discovered until 1774 by Swedish metallurgist Sven Rinman. In 1786 French chemist Guyton de Morveau showed that the substance isolated by Rinman was carbon, introduced into the iron, that turned the iron into steel.

As early as 1540 AD an Italian had suggested that steel was the "pure" form of iron, and to achieve this purity the iron was heated up and charcoal, leather, and other such substances added to help burn out the impurities. Since charcoal and leather both contain carbon, he was on the right track, but going in the wrong direction. It was the impurities—sulfur, phosphorus, nitrogen, hydrogen, total oxygen, and sometimes carbon—that frustrated steel production. Modern steelmakers grapple with these impurities today, but with a clear understanding of what they are fighting. The ancient blacksmith could only fall back on empirical knowledge gained from trial and error.

Let us take a look at iron and what it can and cannot do. Hollywood, popular fiction, and our own wishful thinking have given to swords properties and abilities that simply do not exist in the real world. Martial arts movies have the hero jumping straight up for twelve feet, and sword films depict blades cutting down large trees, shearing through metal and stone with ease, hitting other blades edge to edge, and never showing a scratch.

Samples of Peter Fuller's modern reproduction plate armor and helmets
Photos by Peter Fuller.

Iron is malleable and not too heavy. It can be worked cold, and in thin sheets can be made to take on all sorts of shapes (witness plate armor). Iron is chemically quite active, and will combine readily with many substances. When heated to a cherry red it becomes plastic and can be shaped easily. Work hardening will add a small amount of toughness to iron. But if it is hammered cold too much, it will begin to crack, and even when work hardened it will not have a great deal of toughness. If you add carbon to the iron, the crystalline structure changes. And so do the properties of the metal.

Now this certainly isn't a book on metallurgy, but understanding the basic material that is used to make a sword, and its properties, is important to understanding the weapon, and how it was, and was not, used.

Carbon is the principal alloying element in the manufacture of knives and swords. Although other elements can be added, and will produce some minor changes, it is carbon that makes the most difference. Today we can add chromium and produce stainless steel, add various other trace elements like molybdenum and vanadium, and produce tougher, stronger and better blades. Some of these trace elements were in the various legendary ores, and they produced swords that were better (forging and tempering being equal) than other blades made from bog iron ore or ore with none of the valuable trace elements.