[Malcolm A]

Hello one and all.
I was watching an archaeology program on UK TV the other day; "Meet the ancestors"
It's not one I normally watch but the trailer suggested a sword was being made so I eased myself in to my intensive care bean bag and watched.
Basically it was about a Saxon burial site found in an US Air Force base in England.
A large burial was found with a warrior and horse complete with sword, shield and spear remains.
The program makers decided to have a replica sword made by an expert who used what he considered was the methods used in Saxon times to get a chevron effect in to the blade. Multiple rods of iron which had been twisted into rods etc etc. Pattern welding? Whatever he did, at the end of the process he had produced an aessthetically appealing sword.
The maker made a remark which surprised me, namely that it had taken 6kgs of metal to make a 1.5kg blade.
Hence 4.5kg was "lost", presumably not into thin air. Scale coming off during hammer work I wuold guess.
Has anyone [eg actual swordsmiths] ever found this to be the case?
Has anyone found information in their researches to back this up?
Any information would be welcome.

[Eric McHugh]

What!!! 6 kilos! I don't think so, that is pretty silly if you ask me. While it is true that you lose material in the forgewelding process, and it is true that you lose material when you grind, I think that 4.5 kilos in an incredible amount of steel lose...what a waste. I think that these people were masters at using limited resources and they would never have allowed 75% of the starting material to be lost.

With that said, I am a fairly new smith at this kind of thing, and I could be way off, but the guys I learn from would never do something like that.

[Malcolm A]

Yep, it did seemed kinda silly to me too.
I dare say that the guy, not being a regular sword maker [as far as I know] wasted material needlessly.
I would have guess that 3kg starting material would have been a top figure but that s PURE guess work.
Any other guesses or real numbers would be appreciated.

[Paul Mortimer]

I believe that the blacksmith concerned is one Hector Cole. He also made the sword replica of the Mound 17 sword found at Sutton Hoo now on display at the Sutton Hoo Visitors' Centre. He does have some other, to my mind, very strange views concerning pattern welded swords from the 7th century that I don't agree with. One seems to be that such swords were made without fullers and the other is that the pattern would have been hardly visible. He is capable of some fine work but pattern welding is not something that he does a lot of.

Here is his web site:

http://www.hectorcoleironwork.com/About-Hector.html


Paul

[Dan Howard]

It is possible that we don't know as much as we think we do about ancient smithing techniques. For example, In Iron for the Eagles, David Sim did some experimenting with Roman bloomsmithing techniques. He found that if the bloom was consolidated by simply hitting with a hammer then he had difficulty obtaining a billet that was more than 25% of its original weight. If he constrained the bloom in a type of clamp (diagram on p66) then his yield went up to around 90% of the original weight.

He also lists results for forge welding billets and found that during the barsmithing process the original billet lost 20% of its weight and around 85% of its volume. (pp70-71).

We haven't even started to make a blade yet. He goes on to describe how to make a pattern welded gladius and says that considerable material is lost during the 110 hour process but doesn't say exactly how much is lost.

Based on this one might conclude that Cole isn't too far off the mark.

[Steve Grisetti]

When y'all are using the term "lost", you don't really mean "waste", do you? Don't you mean "removed"? I am sure that some of the material removed in the fabrication process would, indeed, be "waste" and not practical/economical to recover. However, with presumably scarce raw materials, the craftsman would try to recycle every possible ounce of material.

[Scott Byler]

I'm not a patternwelder, though I've done a small piece or 2 before... As a beginner you can eat up a huge amount of metal to make a very small blade. I'd assume that the amount would drop off as expertise grows, but it is still going to be a factor, at least in hand work. I've been advised more than once that to be effective in modern times it is really a boon to own a powerhammer or some type of press... Otherwise there is a large loss of material and much longer time to work.

In his book the Complete Bladesmith, Jim Hrisoulas states that he'd used 'upwards of fifteen pounds of steel and iron' to get a single 26 inch katana blade in one traditional style... I've at least read similar numbers over the years from various other makers, which I'd quote if I could remember just who. I expect that complexity of the pattern has a lot to do with just how much metal is needed. I imagine the range runs from very little to a whole bunch, depending on starting materials and tools available, and probably other less easily named variables...

[Jeff Pringle]

It’s not that the mediaeval smith lost that much material going from steel to sword; most of that is lost during what is essentially a refining process, taking the material from the smelter and turning it into useable steel.
For instance, from “The Craft of the Japanese Sword” by Kapp & Yoshihara:
4-7 pounds folded six times, to 2 ¼ - 3 ½ pounds, “foundation forging”
3 ¼ - 5 ½ pounds folded another six times to 2 – 3 ½ pounds, “finish forging”
Then you get to make the sword!
The process is the same in old Europe, except there they were working with smaller, more individual smelters instead of the large, communal Japanese Tatara furnace. And the missing material almost certainly went back into the smelter on the next run, so it’s not totally lost.
As I don’t weigh the material that comes out of my smelter with any consistency, I can’t say how much I lose between smelt and sword – but it’s on the order of 50% at least.

[Dan Howard]

[Jörg W.]

In the book "The Celtic Sword" (Radomir Pleiner with contributions by B. G. Scott; Clarendon Press Oxford 1993) they describe forging trials. they took blade-shaped blanks (made to dimension similar to excavated onces) that they believe were common trading goods. so the refining process were not done by the blade smith. they suspect that these blanks already had the right weight for a specific type of sword.
as model they took a La Tene period sword, 720mm long (including hilt-tang of 100mm), 47mm broad, 4-5mm thick.
first try was to make a flat lenticular blade. the blade-shaped blank weighted 654g and was 260cm long. heating temperature was 900-1000°C. forging took 22 heats and 2.5h. result was a blade of 740mm (from point to tip of hilt-tang) weighting 510g. so the loss was 22% of metal caused by continuous reheating producing hammer-scale through oxidation.
second try was a midrib blade. the bar weighted 643g and was similar to the one above. it took some more time to forge and so loss of metal was 27% resulting in a 670mm long (777mm overall), 45mm wide and 4-4.5mm thick blade of 470g.

they suspect that most metal would have been lost during production of these sword-shaped bars from spongy blooms with its entrapped slag. in addition they made only unfinished blades without grinding and polishing. so the overall loss should have been much higher.

the book is very interesting. maybe you can get one in a good library. see also myArmoury.com Bookstore.

[Mark Eskra]

I'v heard a lot beign lost to the grinder, what with fullers, edges and such...they weigh it point down?or flat?