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Maciej K.
Industry Professional
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 Posted: Tue 09 Sep, 2014 8:55 am Post subject: Early longsword 13-14th cent. |
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This is my interpretation of early longsword from late 13 - early 14th century, based on some examples
(Musee del`Armee and some Polish museums originals).
Overall lenght 1066mm
Grip lenght 160mm
Blade width 53mm
CoG c. 90mm
Weight 1250g
Materials: spring steel 52HRC, brass, leather, wood...
Medieval Swords - www.artofswordmaking.com
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Niels Just Rasmussen
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| Posted: Sat 13 Sep, 2014 8:11 am Post subject: Re: Early longsword 13-14th cent. |
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| Maciej K. wrote: | This is my interpretation of early longsword from late 13 - early 14th century, based on some examples
(Musee del`Armee and some Polish museums originals).
Overall lenght 1066mm
Grip lenght 160mm
Blade width 53mm
CoG c. 90mm
Weight 1250g
Materials: spring steel 52HRC, brass, leather, wood...
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Another very nice looking blade... 
It looks like you have given it a quite prominent fuller.
A) How much weight difference do you reckon it gives in the end. At 1,25 kg now, what would it have been without the fuller?
Not being an expert in smithing or steel I have a question, since you often see that high carbon steel are preferred for sword blades; whereas stainless steel (high chrome content) are suited for knives (to brittle for swords).
B) When you say it's “spring steel“ I seem to see from the net that it has normally nickel as a main ingredient.
So how does it compare to “normal high-carbon steel“ you see as preferable for swords (whatever normal high carbon steel that is - since Vanadium, Chrome, Nickel & Molybdenum can be added beside the Carbon).
Is it that spring steel with nickel makes for very good flexing blades (and so are good for sparring) whereas original battle blades are stiffer? So original battle blades are more lethal on the thrust, but also greater breaking risk?
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Maciej K.
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Sun 14 Sep, 2014 11:27 am Post subject: |
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actually I don`t know what different could be weight without the fullers... I suppose that will be plus about 150-180g
but it depends on many things - blades without the fullers have different geommetry, proportions...
the spring steel I`m using now is AISI 6150 - this is chrom-vanadium steel, very good for sword blades and with right tempering process is flexible and hard enough.
| Quote: | | Is it that spring steel with nickel makes for very good flexing blades (and so are good for sparring) whereas original battle blades are stiffer? So original battle blades are more lethal on the thrust, but also greater breaking risk? |
I think with my experience that this is very possible and youu are propably right - but - remember that there was many kinds of steel in medieval periods or places... we know various kinds of steel and quality original swords.
look here - http://www.myArmoury.com/feature_bladehardness.html
there is an interesting article by Craig Johnson about the hardness and other things. he comapres also modern steel and original blades.
Medieval Swords - www.artofswordmaking.com
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Luka Borscak
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| Posted: Sun 14 Sep, 2014 12:15 pm Post subject: |
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I like 6150 steel. Del Tin uses it and I always thought it has a great combination of flexibility, toughness and edge retention if heat treated well.
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Lafayette C Curtis
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| Posted: Mon 15 Sep, 2014 4:01 am Post subject: |
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"Spring steel' is a fairly broad term. AISI 5160 -- the steel used by Albion and many other high-end smiths/manufacturers -- is a spring steel too, so there's nothing inherently wrong in picking (the right kind of) spring steel for a sword. War-swords of Oakeshott's type XIIa or XIIIa (as this sword seems to be) weren't particularly stiff either. If anything, I think modern manufacturers tend to make them too stiff, especially when the blade is forged or ground to a flattened diamond cross-section (rather than lenticular as the original swords historically were and as this particular reproduction seems to be).
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Niels Just Rasmussen
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| Posted: Mon 15 Sep, 2014 7:23 am Post subject: |
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| Maciej K. wrote: | actually I don`t know what different could be weight without the fullers... I suppose that will be plus about 150-180g
but it depends on many things - blades without the fullers have different geommetry, proportions...
the spring steel I`m using now is AISI 6150 - this is chrom-vanadium steel, very good for sword blades and with right tempering process is flexible and hard enough.
| Quote: | | Is it that spring steel with nickel makes for very good flexing blades (and so are good for sparring) whereas original battle blades are stiffer? So original battle blades are more lethal on the thrust, but also greater breaking risk? |
I think with my experience that this is very possible and youu are propably right - but - remember that there was many kinds of steel in medieval periods or places... we know various kinds of steel and quality original swords.
look here - http://www.myArmoury.com/feature_bladehardness.html
there is an interesting article by Craig Johnson about the hardness and other things. he comapres also modern steel and original blades. |
Thanks for your reply Maciej.
So spring steel doesn't have to contain nickel, but can be chrome-vanadium or other alloys that makes the steel flexible.
So I see from the Craig Johnson article that these 4 types are the most common for modern swords (1045, 1075, 6150, 5160) and from his graph that most modern sword are in the hard end compared to a wide range of variation of medieval blades.
Found the steel numbering codes here for any other beginner to this like me:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/aisi-sae-st..._1449.html
The first two ciphers indicate the type of alloy: 10 indicates plain carbon steel, whereas 51 indicates low Chrome content and 61 indicates low Chrome & Vanadium content. The last two ciphers indicates the carbon content, so 0,45%; 0,75%; 0,50% or 0,60% in the 4 most common types above. [middle to high carbon steel]
So what criteria do you choose when you want to make a replica for using “plain carbon steel“ 1045, 1075 or when to use “spring steel“ 6150, 5160? It there any difference in smithing on how easy it is to work with?
I seem to have heard that Manganese alloys are use in factories for ultra hard durable metal, but that doesn't seem to be used in swords, perhaps because it is utter non-flexible?
| Lafayette C Curtis wrote: | | "Spring steel' is a fairly broad term. AISI 5160 -- the steel used by Albion and many other high-end smiths/manufacturers -- is a spring steel too, so there's nothing inherently wrong in picking (the right kind of) spring steel for a sword. War-swords of Oakeshott's type XIIa or XIIIa (as this sword seems to be) weren't particularly stiff either. If anything, I think modern manufacturers tend to make them too stiff, especially when the blade is forged or ground to a flattened diamond cross-section (rather than lenticular as the original swords historically were and as this particular reproduction seems to be). |
Interesting. So maybe we just have a modern tendency of making the blades all in the top quality end of the spectrum with hardness and stiffness. Well when we pay we want a good product (it's probably just comparably cheaper for us to get an elite blade than it was back then).
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Luka Borscak
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| Posted: Mon 15 Sep, 2014 8:59 am Post subject: |
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Stiffness has nothing to do with the steel used to make a blade. Stiffness is the result of blade cross section, length, width, thickness, distal and profile taper. Material and heat treat is responsible for hardness and toughness.
Last edited by Luka Borscak on Mon 15 Sep, 2014 9:00 am; edited 1 time in total
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Niels Just Rasmussen
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| Posted: Mon 15 Sep, 2014 9:28 am Post subject: |
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| Luka Borscak wrote: | | Stiffness has nothing to do with the steel used to make a blade. Stiffness is the result of blade cross section, length, width, thickness, distal and profile taper. Material and heat treat is responsible for hardness and toughness. |
OK, so whether you use “Spring Steel“ compared to “plain" carbon steel, it has nothing to do with the flexibility of the blade.
I got carried away by the name then... 
So the material only affects hardness and toughness. But isn't toughness also factored by the stiffness?
A more flexible blade will less likely break than a very stiff blade? But perhaps you mean toughness in the way it can withstand edge damage......
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Luka Borscak
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| Posted: Mon 15 Sep, 2014 1:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Niels Just Rasmussen wrote: | | Luka Borscak wrote: | | Stiffness has nothing to do with the steel used to make a blade. Stiffness is the result of blade cross section, length, width, thickness, distal and profile taper. Material and heat treat is responsible for hardness and toughness. |
OK, so whether you use “Spring Steel“ compared to “plain" carbon steel, it has nothing to do with the flexibility of the blade.
I got carried away by the name then...
So the material only affects hardness and toughness. But isn't toughness also factored by the stiffness?
A more flexible blade will less likely break than a very stiff blade? But perhaps you mean toughness in the way it can withstand edge damage...... |
I'm not sure if a more flexible blade is harder to break. Flexible blade is easier to bend to a certain degree than a stiff one, but if you put the same pressure to a stiff and flexible blade, the flexible one is going to bend very far and I don't know if more pressure would be needed than to break a stiff blade. Anyway, strength of the blade and pressure needed to break or bend a blade so much that it won't come true anymore is a different thing than flexibility. Hardness is responsible for the ability to hold edge longer when used and toughness is ability to be pressured with more force and don't break or stay bent.
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Niels Just Rasmussen
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| Posted: Tue 16 Sep, 2014 3:38 am Post subject: |
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| Luka Borscak wrote: | | Niels Just Rasmussen wrote: | | Luka Borscak wrote: | | Stiffness has nothing to do with the steel used to make a blade. Stiffness is the result of blade cross section, length, width, thickness, distal and profile taper. Material and heat treat is responsible for hardness and toughness. |
OK, so whether you use “Spring Steel“ compared to “plain" carbon steel, it has nothing to do with the flexibility of the blade.
I got carried away by the name then...
So the material only affects hardness and toughness. But isn't toughness also factored by the stiffness?
A more flexible blade will less likely break than a very stiff blade? But perhaps you mean toughness in the way it can withstand edge damage...... |
I'm not sure if a more flexible blade is harder to break. Flexible blade is easier to bend to a certain degree than a stiff one, but if you put the same pressure to a stiff and flexible blade, the flexible one is going to bend very far and I don't know if more pressure would be needed than to break a stiff blade. Anyway, strength of the blade and pressure needed to break or bend a blade so much that it won't come true anymore is a different thing than flexibility. Hardness is responsible for the ability to hold edge longer when used and toughness is ability to be pressured with more force and don't break or stay bent. |
Thanks Luka
So flexibility of the blade (how easy it bends) is the result of the sword geometry and smithing process, whereas hardness is the ability of the sword to hold an edge and how sharp you can make it & toughness is basically how much pressure you can put on the blade before it breaks.
So what makes spring steel useful is maybe it's good ability to return to original shape if flexed? [heard that katanas stayed bend if you put lateral pressure on them].
For instance titanium has a fantastic ability to bend back into shape, but can't get a sharp/hard edge?
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Luka Borscak
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| Posted: Tue 16 Sep, 2014 3:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Niels Just Rasmussen wrote: | | Luka Borscak wrote: | | Niels Just Rasmussen wrote: | | Luka Borscak wrote: | | Stiffness has nothing to do with the steel used to make a blade. Stiffness is the result of blade cross section, length, width, thickness, distal and profile taper. Material and heat treat is responsible for hardness and toughness. |
OK, so whether you use “Spring Steel“ compared to “plain" carbon steel, it has nothing to do with the flexibility of the blade.
I got carried away by the name then...
So the material only affects hardness and toughness. But isn't toughness also factored by the stiffness?
A more flexible blade will less likely break than a very stiff blade? But perhaps you mean toughness in the way it can withstand edge damage...... |
I'm not sure if a more flexible blade is harder to break. Flexible blade is easier to bend to a certain degree than a stiff one, but if you put the same pressure to a stiff and flexible blade, the flexible one is going to bend very far and I don't know if more pressure would be needed than to break a stiff blade. Anyway, strength of the blade and pressure needed to break or bend a blade so much that it won't come true anymore is a different thing than flexibility. Hardness is responsible for the ability to hold edge longer when used and toughness is ability to be pressured with more force and don't break or stay bent. |
Thanks Luka
So flexibility of the blade (how easy it bends) is the result of the sword geometry and smithing process, whereas hardness is the ability of the sword to hold an edge and how sharp you can make it & toughness is basically how much pressure you can put on the blade before it breaks.
So what makes spring steel useful is maybe it's good ability to return to original shape if flexed? [heard that katanas stayed bend if you put lateral pressure on them].
For instance titanium has a fantastic ability to bend back into shape, but can't get a sharp/hard edge? |
In short, yes, but I think this is the ability of most high carbon steels heat treated properly. And since english is not my first language I'm not sure which carbon steels are classified as spring steels and which not. I don't know much about titanium. 
Katanas are easier to bend because of differential hardening, but I won't go into that, I'm not very knowledgable there...
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Lafayette C Curtis
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| Posted: Thu 02 Oct, 2014 10:51 am Post subject: |
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| Niels Just Rasmussen wrote: | OK, so whether you use “Spring Steel“ compared to “plain" carbon steel, it has nothing to do with the flexibility of the blade.
I got carried away by the name then... |
When you think of spring steel for swords, don't think about the springs found in an office-worker's everyday life -- the kind found in paperclips, for example, or inside some pens. Think, instead, of the large leaf springs used in vehicle suspensions, especially lorries and some old-fashioned automobiles. These are bars of metal that'd be very difficult to bend with human strength, and their springiness only becomes apparent under the heavy load of the vehicle's weight running over bumps and irregularities at high speeds.
| Quote: | So the material only affects hardness and toughness. But isn't toughness also factored by the stiffness?
A more flexible blade will less likely break than a very stiff blade? But perhaps you mean toughness in the way it can withstand edge damage...... |
It's not that simple. A stiffer blade may easily be just as tough as a more flexible (or, to be more accurate, elastic) blade -- this means that they'd break upon receiving the same amount of force (or, to be more accurate once more, stress), but the stiffer blade would have bent less (to a human eye's subjective viewpoint) before failing at that level of stress.
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Encho Yakovchev
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| Posted: Thu 04 Dec, 2014 1:33 am Post subject: |
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Maciej,
Thank you for sharing your work with us - all your swords are beautiful and I absolutely love the finish and small imperfections that give them the hand-made look and character.
I am also very found of what I assume is another one of your long swords - the second left with type K pommel here: http://mieczesredniowieczne.pl/repliki/opole4/
Can you share specs, more images (or link to images) and which museum sword it was based on?
Thanks!
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Craig Johnson
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Wed 10 Dec, 2014 5:26 am Post subject: Hardness |
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Hi Guys
In an effort to increase accuracy in the use of these crucial concepts you are discussing. A wanted to mention that hardness is defined as the resistance of a smooth-faced material to scratching and abrasion. It does not necessarily connect to the other characteristics you are discussing directly. I.e. if some piece is very hard it can also be very brittle and weak, or conversely if something is very soft it can still be brittle and weak.
If you want to geek on it a bit check out this article in the features section Sword Blade Hardness
Best
Craig
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