I know this is a topic discussed before, but I thought I'd bring it up again due to some new insights I've recently had. Since I've recently picked up forging, I've been wondering about the finish of ancient iron artifacts. Modern reconstructions tend to either go for crisp, clean finish or raw unfinished.

I've just been working on an early iron age knife, and I was surprized at how deep into the metal the corrosion goes due to the forging, and just how much metal has to be ground away to remove all the traces of forging and get a clean finish. I realize there's probably a lot of factors involving the corrosion (oxydizing of the fire, time spend forging, forging temp, type of steel etc. etc.). But if this level of corrosion is in any way indicative to what the original smiths may have been faced with before the arrival of power tools and metalworking files, then creating such a fine finish is quite a daunting task.

So that brought me to the question, how far did the ancients go in finishing their forgings? How far was the average knife or sword finished after forging in say the iron age, Roman period, migration period etc.? There would have been a lot of variation of course. But my guess is that a great majority of tools and weapons that were made may have been finished just far enough to make them functional. There probably also were a lot of pieces with a mostly cleaned surface. But considering that removing the last 10% of the marks generally takes 90% of the work, I'd guess a lot of pieces with a lot of attention to a nice finish would still have various spots here and there. It would be very hard to distinguish these marks from the corrosion after deposition on originals though. Though if the surface is still in a good condition, the shape and nature of forging marks could potentially help recognizing them.

Looking at some ancient pieces, I could pick out some examples with the surface preserved that indicate that they were left in forged state, with hardly any grinding done on them. Below you can see an iron age knife and leather knife. Both still clearly show the hammer marks on them, which means that little to no grinding was done on them.

Another example is a migration era sword. This sword is hardly more then a bar of iron with an edge thinned down and a fuller (crudely) hammered into it. The raw shape of this blades make it highly unlikely that much grinding work has been done at it as well.

I realize of course that these are probably the low end pieces. There's definate examples of very finely finished pieces. Especially in patternwelded swords f.e., there was an enormous amount of grinding work involved. So by that time, I assume the grinding methods were either just efficient enough to make it worthwile, or they didn't mind spending huge amounts of manhours on a blade (and as a result also having a low production quantity).

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Iron age knife and leather knife

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Sword from the Netherlands, 450-600AD

I participated in many, and sometimes overheated, discussions about this topic. The main reason the discussions become heated is that there is no easy answer to this question.
But I can tell you a few points describing my view, developed while working as an archaeologist and as an producer of a wide variety of historic replicas.

I think that most tools weren't polished at all, apart from being sharpened. An axe for example oxidates far more easily in a polished state than it would with the original stable oxidated surface it obtains during the forging.

If you look at weapons it becomes far more complicated. Where was the weapon made? For what exact purpose was it made (apart from killing people ;) )? When was it made? And, very important, for whom or what kind of person was it made?
There are few unpolished blades today. Those few were produced exactly the same way as a more polished blade, just the "decoration" was left aside, which give those pieces a very primitive appearence. How many pieces like that existed in proportion to highly polished pieces we do not know, since those simple blades were not preserved in an armoury. But even blades that appear highly polished today may have been unpolished once. Many blades today were or are part of a collection and sadly most collectors like their blades shiny, so they polish them until the original surface is destroyed. Almost the same happened to the pieces preserved in armouries, but most of those were not subject to such a thorough modern grinding, so the original surface can still be judged. Tools in a laboratory, like a binocular, are very helpful to discover small areas on those blades which still show the original surface.
Most blades I had a chance to look at, mostly german ones, still showed some pits from the forging and scratchmarks from polishing (whether those marks are part of the original surface is almost impossible to say). Most people are not able to see a difference between the pits from the forging and the pitting the blade developed while rusting. A blacksmith however will see the difference.
Many reenactors today prefer highly polished blades for reasons I do not understand, since I prefer to see the blacksmiths "mark" on a blade. Granted, those modern highly polished blades a far easier to clean. ;)
It is also important to remember that the chrome content in old steels was not as controlled as it is today. Chrome is more a natural impurity than a controlled part of the steel. So, historical blades appear more grey than silver when polished.
Of course there are written historic soures which talk of a mirrorlike appearance, but you have to remember that those writters did not know such mirrors as we have today.

Highly polished historical blades, just like modern ones (if strictly handmade without any kind of electric tools), are of course much more expensive than less polished ones. Then, just like today, only someone with a bigger purse could afford such a blade. It is not just the size of the blade which decides its prize, but mostly its finish.

For example:
I recently made a short blade for a Katzbalger (around 60cm). The blade itself took me 4-5 hours to forge. A very simple polish will take a whole day, a more thorough one with some scratchmarks left may take up to 3 days, for a mirrorlike appearance I will have to work on it for weeks.


Greetings from Kiel, Germany

Hi guys,

I just wanted to state that I find this subject very intersting. I have a question regarding some of the best preserved medieval swords. Specifically I am thinking of the Sword off St. Maurice Turin which appears in the photos I have seen to have a well ppreserved blade though I know there are other blades out there which are well preserved. Does the steel on this blade appear more gray than modern steels? How would one go about commissioning a blade with a more gray finish if this indeed is closer to the historical appearance?

Jeremy

I know that japanese blades (swords and others) got repolished when resharpened, but the culture has a wide assortment of old swords in their native state. Its not hard to think that the same wouldn't apply for any well used european blade. But I second the long list of variables that would come into question. If its about new swords-do it how you like it, but if its about how they were done, again I'm sure the smith said, "Well, we'll do it how you like it."

Hi all

This subject is particularly important to me as well,a s it is a non-neglectible part of my PhD studies - and as I recnetly took up playing with hot metal too ; and, as it has been said already, this question remains unanswered.

Though yet I must add, if that was not already the case, that we should be weel aware of the changes the preservation of archaeological objects can have put on them - either conservation of a parlty decayed artifact, or museum preservation/cleaning and the like.

I believe that grinding/finishing was an important part of the weapon-making process - something which has been vastly overlooked by academics so far. Unfortunately, at the moment I am on holidays, which means my papers are not at hand, but strong evidence suggest that most weapons - swords, mainly, were given quite a thorough finish (including burnishing).

I have seen quite a number (never enough, though ;) ) of peices in several museums in Europe. And my conclusion at the moment would be that finishing was generally brought to a very advanced state. However, people then woudln't go mad at a small scracth mark remaining - even on high-end artifacts like those I have seen in Vienna for instance.

Fab

Things to consider -
Back 'in the day,' time/labor was cheap and steel was expensive, so getting something polished up was less costly than today, perhaps more desired to show off the material?
The Japanese polishing system is a bit of frozen 1000 year old technology, so we know what they were doing with a fair degree of confidence in that part of the world.
Ethnographic edged tools (made for working, not tourists) with original finish might give some indication of acceptable finish standards in pre-industrial society; if you can extrapolate that back to the mind of the medaeival metalsmith who may have been working with a similar attitude, you get your blades polished, but not to the degree evidenced in the Japanese sphere. I expect the Japanese polishing system has aquired some extra attention to detail due to it's milllennium-long frozen state, but that's just a guess.
The royalty/high-end market ALWAYS wants polished to a high degree!
Just a few thoughts... :D
Jeff

I just made it back in town and it looks like this thread is doing very well.

During the Celtic iron age most swords were one of the highest status items, so it is only natural that the finish is going to be of that same quality. One thing that is often over looked with this is that the quality of workmanship for a sword is going to be consistent for the blade, hilt, and scabbard. You probably aren't going to find too many examples of a very high quality blade and scabbard, but a rather crude hilt. Like Peter mentions with being able to see a difference between the work of a local blacksmith and a specialized weapons smith. There is going to be some differences from one to the other in terms of social status of whom it is being made. Swords are probably going to be at the top of the list along with maybe some more ritual knives, daggers, and such. Many spears would have been up in this level of quality. Spears and maybe every day use knives are probably two things that would probably have one of the widest ranges in quality and finish.

If I can get them to post, a gentleman from our Kelticos website posted some good line drawings of polishing and sharpening stones in the following thread.

http://www.kelticos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=170




One of the things that hasn't been brought up is some of the different ways of finishing a piece. While a finely polished piece was probably the most common, we do see the iron age celts being themselves and decorating in all manor of ways. Navarro shows us some great examples of blade etching. Another thing we see is texturing both on the blade and in fullers. A number of Port style double fullered blades have a range of texture in the fullers, while others are polished to the same level as the blade. Filework is another thing we do see a bit of even. This usually seems to be to create a series of fine parallel lines over the entire surface of the piece. One of the most impressive pieces having this is a spear with a prominent mid rib, so it wasn't even like they were fining a flat surface. The thing is that there are probably even more example of this type of thing that we just haven't noticed yet or can't be seen in its current state.

Shane