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Matthew Bunker
Location: Somerset UK Joined: 02 Apr 2009
Posts: 483
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 Posted: Tue 10 Jul, 2012 1:06 pm Post subject: |
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Perhaps the bump seen on solid rings that were previously thought to beindividual wire rings that had been hammer-welded shut is actually the seam where a sheet of iron has been rolled up and welded shut with the edges overlapping.
"If a Greek can do it, two Englishman certainly can !"
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Justin H. Núñez
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| Posted: Tue 10 Jul, 2012 1:36 pm Post subject: |
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So WETA was more authentic when they used tubing for rings for their LOTR mail than everyone thought?...  
"Nothing in fencing is really difficult, it just takes work." - Aldo Nadi
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J Helmes
Industry Professional
Location: Lanark Highlands Ontario Canada Joined: 06 Mar 2009
Posts: 120
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| Posted: Tue 10 Jul, 2012 3:23 pm Post subject: |
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This is cool, thanks for sharing this Dan. It makes sense really. Tubing can be made with fairly simple tech. Just think of all the gun barrels that were made from forge welded sheet that was later turned on a lathe and bored out. These had to survive the incredible force of a charge igniting within the barrel. I have never drawn wire before but I can imagine that it would be a time consuming process. Especially if you were to run into some slag in a bloom and your wire snapped.
Mathew. Drills aren't necessary to bore out a tube. Gun barrels for instance were reamed . They were bored using a series of reamers of carying size, which are basically a small bit of high carbon steel on the end of an iron rod. Fairly crude in design really.
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Randall Moffett
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| Posted: Tue 10 Jul, 2012 4:56 pm Post subject: |
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I am not sure making a tube is easier than drawing wire. Further i am interested in looking over the evidence of Roman's making iron tubing. That said german is not my thing.
My initial thoughts though. I cannot imagine making a tube of iron which involves taking a chunk of iron and hammering it flat to your wall thickness then squaring it off, then hammering it the entire length on a mandrel, then somehow joining the edges in a seam, then cutting it a million times or even the making a bar then lathing the outside then boring the inside them a million cuts to be easier than- hammering the same chunk of iron flat then taking a stamp and hammering it over and over a million times for seamless rings. Nor taking the same chunk and hammering it out longwise to then heat and draw in a drawing plate until it was the right thickness then wrapping the wire as a coil around mandrel, the cutting them into links. I have not tried mind you but have made funnels and tubes with iron and am not sure this would be easy. If they did it there is something here we are missing or they did not do it.
When Dan or some one gets the full details I am very interested in hearing how this gents argument sounds for this. Has any one found evidence of the Romans making tubes this way before for anything else?
RPM
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Sean Manning
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| Posted: Tue 10 Jul, 2012 7:47 pm Post subject: |
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Not so hard if you check the right place. WorldCat, as usual, has it listed with ten different numbers, but one of them has 30 copies worldwide, two in Canadian libraries, and 10 or so in Deutschland. That OCLC is 91770374. Mein Deutsch ist noch nicht Fließend so it would be good to have a native speaker have a look.
I find the idea that the Romans could make and slice up iron tubes more easily than punching sheet hard to believe. Gun barrels are a good parallel, since they could be made by village smiths, but they are bigger and didn't need to be sliced up. But they have a chance to convince me!
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Jared Smith
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| Posted: Tue 10 Jul, 2012 8:00 pm Post subject: |
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I have not seen a scholarly article showing the grain pattern in a cross section of confirmed "Roman maile" flat ring. It should be possible to tell something about how the iron was drawn from the grain structure though. Attached is a page from "Early Iron" by Arne Jouttijavari. On the left image Figure 3, it shows how flattened rings (a) I am aware of look in terms of grain structure, versus rings widely accepted as formed from drawn wire (b). If flattened /rolled/welded sheet formed tubes, or "drawn tubing" were used and sliced, the grain structure in all of the rings should actually look the same (image b).
It would be interesting to see how this new research concluded the "Roman" rings were made from tubing.
 Attachment: 87.42 KB
[ Download ]
Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence!
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Matthew Amt
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| Posted: Tue 10 Jul, 2012 8:18 pm Post subject: |
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| Kurt Scholz wrote: | | Sorry, stupid me misunderstood something. I thought the rings of the mail were tubes. |
Ha, no problem! Actually, I always thought tubular aluminum filled with helium would make a nice LIGHT mailshirt for my old age!
| Quote: | | The other stuff is fairly simple and well documented in the Middle Ages at least. Create an iron bar, pull it through a matrix to create wire, wrap and hammer it around the object of the shape of the mail rings (in most cases round) and chisel ring segments away as you go. The chiseling is done fastest by just going down one side of the wire wrapped object - the wire tube. There are several medieval illustrations of that process, but I seem unable to find them online. |
Ah, I think you're misunderstanding again--you are describing a wire *coil* or spring, which is how we all make mail. Wind wire around a rod to get a coil, then cut off each loop to make a ring. But the article under discussion apparently theorizes an actual iron tube like a drinking straw or water pipe, with tiny lengths (c. 1mm) sliced off the end to make rings.
But now I'm suddenly wondering if WE are misunderstanding the article and you got it right?? Are they telling us that wire was coiled into a spring and each turn or loop cut off to make the rings, as we've known for decades? But no, I don't think so, because they talk about *cutting* the tube on a lathe.
You're right, Jared, a slice from a tube with any forge-welded seam is going to be darn similar to a ring made from square-section wire cut from a sheet and forge-welded shut.
Hmmmm....
Matthew
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Ahmad Tabari
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| Posted: Tue 10 Jul, 2012 11:32 pm Post subject: |
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Very interesting development. The Romans no doubt had the technology required to forge thin iron tubes. But I am a bit skeptical since I can help but feel that this process would be far more time consuming than punching rings out plate. I guess one advantage of the process is that there would be less iron going to waste. But this doesnt seem to justify all the trouble.
Wouldn't the forge welding of the ends of the sheet cause signifcantly weaker rings? This sacrifice would make sense if you were getting efficiency in return for the loss of quality, but I am just not so sure this method is more efficient.
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Shel Browder
Location: Williamsburg, VA Joined: 22 Jun 2012
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Wed 11 Jul, 2012 2:14 pm Post subject: Iron tubes for mail |
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Punching rings from plate iron would make weak armour. Iron, as opposed to modern steel, has fibers that run the length of a bar. One must pay attention to grain direction in iron just as in wood. It is easy enough for a smith to weld a short length of tube, draw it out to the desired thickness over a mandrel, and cut it off. It is intriguing to me and seems perfectly reasonable.
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Randall Moffett
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| Posted: Wed 11 Jul, 2012 3:03 pm Post subject: |
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Shel,
Why would the grain be going the right direction if cut from a tube?
RPM
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Shel Browder
Location: Williamsburg, VA Joined: 22 Jun 2012
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Wed 11 Jul, 2012 3:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Torsten F.H. Wilke wrote: | | I believe that one could make single piece tubing fairly easily back then by first hot piercing a larger forged cylindrical bar, then drawing it down to a homogeneous diameter through successive die plates between annealings. On the last draw, you would end up with a very consistent, work-hardened product too.... |
A forge welded gun barrel is a long tube welded in a couple of different ways. They were welded because the drilling technology did not exist until the 19 th century to allow a long centered hole to be drilled in a bar of iron. Punching a hole in a long piece of tubing is quite frustrating. Butt welding a tube requires skill but is pretty simple and straight forward and once welded, can be drawn to the desired thickness and diameter. It will not leave a visible seam or a bump.
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Torsten F.H. Wilke
Location: Irvine Spectrum, CA Joined: 01 Jul 2006
Posts: 250
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| Posted: Wed 11 Jul, 2012 3:23 pm Post subject: |
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Nothing has to be welded....
A single piece of shorter round bar stock (billet) can be first hot-pierced then drawn down, resulting in the longitudinal grain structure just talked about. Wire was produced from billet that way very effectively, you are basically just drawing large hollow wire to make a homogeneous tube.
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Shel Browder
Location: Williamsburg, VA Joined: 22 Jun 2012
Posts: 4
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| Posted: Wed 11 Jul, 2012 3:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Randall Moffett wrote: | Shel,
Why would the grain be going the right direction if cut from a tube?
RPM |
That would depend on which way the tube is welded. It could all be wrong or all right. The grain runs the length of the bar, just like the grain in wood. If it is forged into a tube down the length (imagine rolling a board down the middle of its length) and then sawn, it would have short grain and be weak. However, an iron bar can be drawn out to make wider, rolled from end, and then welded. The grain will then become a continous circle. My wedding is an iron band made this way. If desired, several of these rings could be edge welded to form a longer tube.
The Romans are not getting the sorts of bars we buy. they were forged from bloom iron into relatively short square bars and probably were six or so inches long. I've seen bloom bars from iron age England but no Roman bars. These are treated the way we treat plasticine clay--well, sort of. They often had one end forged to a point that was bent to show the smith buying them the quality of the bar
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Randall Moffett
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| Posted: Thu 12 Jul, 2012 5:33 am Post subject: |
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Shel,
So the tube method still can be very much as weak. I assumed it would be done lengthwise and hence wrong. I guess we'd have to look at some magnified ring cross sections.
RPM
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Matthew Amt
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| Posted: Thu 12 Jul, 2012 6:34 am Post subject: Re: Iron tubes for mail |
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| Shel Browder wrote: | | Punching rings from plate iron would make weak armour. |
"Weak"?? Then why was mail made that way for a good 1500 years??
| Quote: | | Iron, as opposed to modern steel, has fibers that run the length of a bar. One must pay attention to grain direction in iron just as in wood. It is easy enough for a smith to weld a short length of tube, draw it out to the desired thickness over a mandrel, and cut it off. It is intriguing to me and seems perfectly reasonable. |
But doesn't iron that is going to be drawn need to have LESS slag than that used just for sheet? I can see now how the tube can be made larger and thicker than needed and drawn down to size, but I'm still curious about how the rings are cut or sliced off this fine, thin tube without crushing anything. How is all of this "easy enough" compared to the guy who just grabbed the same sheet (or even an inferior one!) and a punch and hammer and has punched out several hundred rings in the time it takes just to heat and draw the tube?
We really need to see the microscopic analysis of the rings in question to settle the debate. Arguing theory can go on forever!
Valete,
Matthew
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Dan Howard
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| Posted: Thu 12 Jul, 2012 7:29 am Post subject: |
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The solid rings aren't really all that thin. This type of Roman mail was pretty heavy. I think I have posted Erik's pic before. I don't see a problem with these links being cut from a tube. Couldn't you just press a chisel against the tube as it spins on the lathe and cut them that way?
Attachment: 57.83 KB
Roman mail reconstruction made by Erik D Schmid
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Torsten F.H. Wilke
Location: Irvine Spectrum, CA Joined: 01 Jul 2006
Posts: 250
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| Posted: Thu 12 Jul, 2012 8:19 am Post subject: |
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| Dan Howard wrote: | | Couldn't you just press a chisel against the tube as it spins on the lathe and cut them that way? |
Absolutely, without doubt. Could be easily done, the chisel just needs to be harder than the tube and kept against a rest as the work spins.
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Matthew Amt
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| Posted: Thu 12 Jul, 2012 9:41 am Post subject: |
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| Dan Howard wrote: | | The solid rings aren't really all that thin. This type of Roman mail was pretty heavy. I think I have posted Erik's pic before. I don't see a problem with these links being cut from a tube. Couldn't you just press a chisel against the tube as it spins on the lathe and cut them that way? |
Sure, but will they end up looking like that? They won't have that nice hammered face but should have fine spiral marks from the cutting. Punched rings often have raised burrs around the inner and outer edges on one side, as well. Granted, on many examples these features may be worn or corroded off! But there must be SOME distinctive features of lathe-cutting, or the whole theory is hot air.
Okay, so you wrap or pierce your short piece of heavy iron tube, and start to draw it down. Is it 6 inches long? A foot? Maybe an inch in diameter? By the time you draw it down to mail ring size, it will be longer than that, yes? Two feet or more? And will it be perfectly straight, or will it have some curve, like how I've seen freshly drawn wire come out as? Because if it isn't straight, you can't spin it on a lathe without a lot of screaming and pain, right? Do you have to cut it into shorter pieces? If only one end is secured in the lathe (because the other end is being cut), I'm guessing the free end must be quite short so that it doesn't bend under the pressure of the cutting tool. Or are you running a rod through the tube to support it?
These are just the first few questions that spring into my non-expert mind when I hear things like "no problem" and "easily" for this alleged process. It would be interesting to get the opinion of a modern manufacturer of steel washers, with access to perfectly straight seemless steel tube in any size, powerful automated lathes, and cutting tools like lasers and water cutters. That might help me understand "easy". But aren't modern washers mostly *punched*?
Matthew
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Jared Smith
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| Posted: Thu 12 Jul, 2012 4:04 pm Post subject: |
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Many modern alloy flat washers are stamped from sheet. I don't know how the similar to flat, but "cut" / slightly coil spring shaped type locking style washers are done. A nice aspect of low alloy iron still red or orange from the forge is that it can be stamped and punched through relatively easily with low alloy steel punches that are easily made from "junk steel" by current blacksmiths. Low alloy punches typically just have to be dipped in water frequently to maintain their relative hardness compared to the hot iron. I had previously read an academic article when looking into medieval tools that described a "high carbon tool punch" found in Norwegian territory. But found that no further explanation of the tool's composition, use, size, or shape was given.
I would think a hand held "squeeze" or screw type tool similar to inexpensive pipe and tube cutters just like today's models that do cut mild steel pipe and tubing would be more plausible and consistent with the types of tools we do know of as an early metal tube cutting device. They could probably work at least for a while with pack carburized cutting bits. Either way, the "lathe" as a process type of explanation would still be reasonable even if it were really a hand rotated cutting device.
Anyhow, I would rather not judge the article without seeing the evidence and logic behind it.
Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence!
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Randall Moffett
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| Posted: Thu 12 Jul, 2012 5:33 pm Post subject: |
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I sort of wonder if we are all not just taking this sort of far considering none of us have read it and really know what he is backing this with. I cannot say how many times something that was said to be really amazing just fizzled after the first time I read it. The Osprey book on guns comes to mind. We do not even know how much evidence, direct or otherwise he presents even. This might just be a really great idea backed up by supposition. Or it could be a major work with much backing. If no one here can get ahold of it and read it let me know and I will see if I cannot find it. I already have a small library in my queue but we are spinning our tires as none of us really know what his work even really says. At least if some one read it we can say what is really the issue at hand.
RPM
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This is a standard topic