[Joel Chesser]

Good grief, My Best Friend and I share vary near the same love for things of the middle ages, he goes for the legends sagas etc, and castles, and i go for the General History but mainly swords. How we we ever found each other i will never know, it must have been a God thing.
Anyway getting on target, we have considering for a long time starting blade smithing, starting with daggers and knives, not historically accurate yet, and eventually working up to swords. Now that we have both gotten jobs and have some cash i think it's time to start work. Only one BIG problem, as Patrick Kelly put it in his features article, Ground or Pound?
I am up for both, start with grinding, and move on from there. He however, is strictly pound and considers anything else to be heresy and not a true sword. Frankly I think he is full of it. My problem is convincing him that he is wrong wrong wrong, that ground is just as good. he things it's not historically accurate etc etc. Can any one give me some information, maybe a couple of scans proving that in Europe in the Middle ages grinding swords was done?
It would be of great help to me on my quest to change his mind, ( currently that quest is looking VERY dismal.)
Thanks for all help

[Scott Byler]

Nothing much to say about the grinding... I'm sure I've seen some drawings of water powered grinding wheels, so some stock removal was done. And in fact, stock removal of once sort or another is pretty much always involved in finishing out a blade. I'm going to stay on the fence here, though, and say you are both pretty much right... Either method is pretty good. I like forging, as moving hot metal speaks to my primitive side a bit more than just grinding. However, stock removal is fine and dandy with me. I don't carry any contempt for it.

Maybe you should set up and allow your friend to do the rough forming and you do the finishing... That way both get to do what makes you happy...

[Nathan Robinson]

You already mentioned Patrick's article, Ground or Pound. It has a period illustration in there. I am clearly biased, but I think this is the best single resource on the 'net regarding this issue.