STEEL Sword MAKING & why certain CHOICES were used in HISTORY

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An overview of the kinds of steel used for most swords (since steel started being used), and the hardening choices that connect to those technologies. Considering why differing methods were used.
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[@scholagladiatoria]

Reign supreme and download now for FREE - gmlft.co/Scholagladiatoria

[@alexanderren1097]

Thank God it's not another Raid advert!

[@ericaugust1501]

Hi Matt, you never actually explained what pattern welding is. You kept promising and kept talking around it. It sounded like its forgewelding metal together, but why are you forge welding multiple metal together? is this merely efficiency with scrap metal? or was there a benefit over just hammering out and folding a single ingot for a blade?

[@lalli8152]

@@ericaugust1501 To my understanding it was simply the quality of steel, and technology available. Forge welding high carbon steel to low carbon or even iron when done right gives end result of blade that has the high carbon steel on the edges, but the low carbon or iron core is not brittle. If the blade gets bent it stays that way, but wont just shatter. In europe largely the pattern welding was dropped as steel manufacturing improved, and also likely tempering technigues, and monosteel spring tempered blades became available in europe on large scale.

[@mikolajwitkowski8093]

Rewatch the video, he does explain it. It was done to get the best of two, a springy blade but a hard edge.

[@isaaczehnder225]

Excuse me? "scholagladiatoria" Can you show us about Albion Dane Longsword. Sorry for too long to type it. Here's a Google search "My Albion Dane. It’s my favorite sword reddit"

[@metatronyt]

Extremely interesting. Thank you for the thorough explanation.

[@strydyrhellzrydyr1345]

Right... This is probably one of the best explanation videos I ha e seen in a long time.. Anyone into this subject... This should become a GO TO video

[@kalgrave497]

Oh haai Metatron xD

[@martytu20]

Nice to see the Metatron spread his wings here.

[@rebekah-chriss-k4872]

Awesome sauce flying into the comment section of another awesome you tuber

[@Immopimmo]

@@rebekah-chriss-k4872 not awesome sauce, but pasta sauce!

[@siddharthm285]

Fantastic video. As an Indian I feel that it's a shame that so little of this aspect of South Asian history is taught to us, and that there's little effort to preserve or rediscover the knowledge of traditional blade making, the way you have people making replicas in Europe. Hopefully that will change thanks to people like you spreading this knowledge

[@tsmspace]

Well, one consideration is how the trades work. Tradesmen are traditionally two things: firstly, they historically would raise their own children to learn their trade, and they relied heavily on immersion and time for the skills and infrastructure to be learned. Secondly, they were secretive, to protect their market interest. Actually it IS true that a lot of people would have been willing to buy sub-par products from a maker who is not a proper tradesmen if they were available, but tradesmen wanted to be the only ones who could make the products (like a patent or something), and also buyers would often want to protect the tradesmens rights in order to ensure that quality products would be available. ,,, this means that tradesmen would largely not write anything down or otherwise depict their techniques and other secrets. They didn't want the competition. This continues still today, where tradesmen are able to make it happen, they try to have an advantage based on what they know that others don't.

[@spiffyracc]

I think much of the traditional sources of iron (with trace amounts of vanadium and other good properties) used to create wootz have been exhausted, so that's another obstacle to anyone trying to recreate this process authentically.

[@tsmspace]

@@spiffyracc well,, it seems like it would be able to be reproduced in the modern era

[@mallardtheduck406]

I have had several Windlass swords that I absolutely love!!! BTW, my very first sword was an Indian sword, brass hilt, horsehead pommel and beautiful purple velvet covered wooden scabbard.

[@MtRevDr]

@@spiffyracc - Hard to have a selection of wootz steel swords to buy new nowadays. People talk too much of mono steel swords.

[@robertkb64]

Best folding steel analogy: puff pastry. Even a few folds gives you many layers and near equally thinness.

[@danspragens4935]

This is exactly the analogy that sprang to my mind.

[@Theduckwebcomics]

@@danspragens4935 Thin layers aren't the point- for pattern welding YES, but the folding in Japanese sword making is just a different way of making more homogenous steel, like kneading bread doh.

[@RedmarKerkhof]

Steel croissant.

[@dimman77]

Yeah, the whole "Katana is folded thousands of times!!!" is a misunderstanding of basic math. They may have 1024 or less commonly 2048 layers but that's only 2^10 or 2^11. So less than a dozen folds to produce over a thousand layers.

[@tkeleth2931]

These 5 second intro bits that give an ACTUAL summary of the video with no KZbin blabber is the absolute gold standard by which all other channels should be measured.

[@barcibus]

Great video. The single line about quenching -> hardening -> heating -> tempering was very enlightening for me.

[@maxnordlund7928]

== DISCLAMER I WAS WORNG ON ONE POINT PLEASE READ THE ENTIRE THREAD == On the topic of Ulfberht swords they probably were not Indian produced crucible steel, the only one I know of to be chemically checked (a +VLFBERH+T marked one I believe) was most likely made out of German ore and on top of that the steel does not have to be crucible steel to be hypereutectoid, there are other methods to produce steel with similar- qualities. I would highly recommend the paper "Hypereutectoid steel in early medieval sword production in Europe" by PAWEŁ KUCYPERA and JIŘÍ HOŠEK it is quite short and gives a decent overview of the subject I think.

[@lalli8152]

Interesting. I would have thought if they were from european steel production that steel quality would have been more common. It seems the ulberths were quite isolated examples from certain time period. If they were crucible steel i imagine they came through the silk road, and russia for example to my understanding got crucible steel that way.

[@maxnordlund7928]

​@@lalli8152 Well the idea is that it was the hypereutectoid steel found in Europe was not made in a crucible but rather by other methods. some of the finds did not match the composition of crucible steel but did have the desired carbon content, and a quite a few of the ones that had hypereutectoid steel were not worked in the way that one should work with the material if I remember correctly... but I got a link to the paper in question and it is only like 9 or so pages with almost half of it images so its a rather quick read (says the guy that could not be arsed to read the paper again to give a you proper answer -__-) so you can read it yourself: www.rcin.org.pl/dlibra/publication/75132/edition/54815/content

[@positroll7870]

There were different kinds of swords with that mark. The very best were made of crucible steel, others weren't.

[@maxnordlund7928]

​@@positroll7870 The best were made with hypereutectoid steel the most common and perhaps most efficient production method at the time was to make it with a crucible as was done in what today is India and the greater middle east. The paper I linked says that either you cannot tell what process was used to make the European hypereutectoid steel or that it seems to not be crucible steel. I seem to remember the +VLFBERH+T being slightly better in general quality than the +VLFBERHT+ marked ones though the +VLFBERTH+ might have been slightly older based on the hilts on them. There was talk about having the crosses at both ends might indicate them being made for a bishop or something so moving the cross back one step might have been a sort of "well technically nor breaking the rules but still keeping my trademark" sorta thing or a bunch of people from the same family with the same name changing their "signature" but that is pure conjecture anyway. I believe that at least a couple years ago when I was looking in to it all the hypereutectoid ones known were marked +VLFBERH+T, doesn't necessarily mean that goes the other way though that all the +VLFBERH+T marked ones were made with hypereutectoid steel. and I might also remember wrong but ehh, read the paper

[@haraldbearclaw1856]

@@maxnordlund7928 I read about that mark "+VLFBERH+T" was an answer to trademark "violation". Basically people starter copying "+VLFBERHT+" logo and in order to distinguish original maker swords, they swapped places of letters and +. Not sure if the story is true though but it seems very interesting.

[@eliasbram3710]

"Let's talk about our sponsor Rai....March of What?!!!" I was bamboozled

[@nikkibrowning4546]

Raid is going to be mad when she figures out he cheeted on her.

[@onogrirwin]

Wish I had this 14 years ago. My high school thesis/senior paper was "The design and construction of medieval european swords".

[@MarcRitzMD]

I would love a follow-up to this with regards to specific other weapon and armour types. For example, spearheads were they heat-treated for absolute hardness? How about the spike on halberds? What about chainmail? Was chainmail sometimes made of iron?

[@potatokilr7789]

These are questions that I also have

[@parallaxe5394]

Hello. This was a great video and I have to admit I did not expect such a well balanced and educational video on this topic when I clicked the video. As an engineer for material science I tip my hat, Matt. From the many good points you made in the video I liked most that you pointed out that quality is an important factor, something that is often overlooked by people who talk about the topic. Thumbs up!

[@thelegendaryklobb2879]

An interesting example for obtaining better quality iron can be found in ancient Iberia, prior to the widespread use of steel. For falcata making, they would bury lumps of iron underground for 3 years to rust, and then use the tougher surviving material to forge the swords. The falcata has also a laminated construction, it's made out of three sandwiched layers. So not only steel, but prior weapon materials like iron and bronze have a variety of methods all around the world for making the best out of them. Would be cool to hear more about it as you don't usually find much coverage about the topic. Cheers!

[@thescholar-general5975]

Very informative! I especially appreciate the information on South Asian blades because I don't have much experience with them. I do have a couple little details to add (mostly about Chinese weapons) There are a couple times where you state that iron or steel billets outside of crucible steel were never liquified before going into a blade, but I think that you are overlooking the role of the blast furnace here. Blast furnaces did liquify iron, but did not product an alloy which could readily be used to make swords because it was far too brittle. This meant that the cast iron would have to be fined to reduce carbon content. So, some blades could be made with out of cast iron which underwent the fining process. Concerning heat treatment, I really like your thoughts on this chicken and the egg problem. I have briefly hinted at this in my video on Chinese sword heat treatment. A fair number of early jian (warring states - Han) appear to be made of spring steel, and these blades are more rapier like than later period jian. But over the course of the Han dynasty, the military began favoring the dao, and sanmei lamination with differential hardening became more and more widespread. I think that the chicken and egg problem definitely exists here with this transition from dao to jian. But one caveat I should bring up is that, in my opinion, we need more proper metallurgical and statistical studies on early period steel blades in China before any kind of definitive conclusion can be drawn.

[@alexcheng1560]

Yeah, I remember reading a book mentioning that one of the techniques Chinese smiths used to produce steel was decarburizing cast iron, and it was done late into the Song Dynasty, but don’t have the book on hand

[@PalleRasmussen]

The original Ulfbehrt swords are from the 9th century, not that many kite shields around then.

[@virginiahansen320]

Awesome video! I recall from Shad's video on the first steel sword they found in the Middle East, that it was an iron core/spine with steel blades welded onto the sides. People really are amazingly ingenious!

[@dogebestest7187]

That was actually greatly interesting, I would love to hear more about history of metallurgy and blade making

[@Adam_okaay]

Crucibles existed back to the copper age. The issue in Japan was they didn't have the same aluminium oxide rich clay, that was available in Eu/ME for steel crucible making, which at the time essentially the only workable medium that melted after steel. As you know japan was able to cast copper and bronze, which although is notoriously harder to work, copper and its alloys have a lower specific heat and it has much and better heat conductivity than steel. The main problem with crucible steel is that it requires much more energy to heat it, and because it's less conductive it is harder to achieve even heat distribution between the iron chunks, theres also a delicate line of temperature thiat is the difference between high carbon steel and cast iron, so theres a high risk of ending up with a crumbly mess of cast iron and wrought iron. so outside of a few locations where they the had the facilities and materials necessary to create and maintained massive forge Fires (ie Milan, Florence, various places from Uzbekistan down to modern Syria) most crucible steel would be made of smaller pieces of crucible steel forge welded together. While forging a blade from a single ingot of mono steel has its advantages, that gap can be closed quite significantly in the actually forging out process. It is no where nearly as revolutionary as when bronze clad/wielding soldiers first started showing up against their stick and stone wielding foes wearing shit like wicker, rough spun cloth, or hide armor.

[@Adam_okaay]

Because steel can burn, and temperature of the steel determines how carbon is difused through it. You don't put a solid piece of iron into a crucible and melt it, you put several pieces of iron ore and/or scrap steel as well as a carburizing agent (something that burns and create carbon). If the iron/scrap steel heats at different temperatures they will absorb different amounts of carbon, pieces/sections that get heated too quickly and absorb too much carbon turn into cast iron.

[@kiwiprouddavids724]

European technology was much better than japanese technology in the same periods ,it's a well proven fact

[@Adam_okaay]

@@kiwiprouddavids724 I know? They were still using bloomering furnaces, they needed to be folded to remove impurities and distribute the carbon. I acknowledge Japanese Smiths didn't have the same level of technology, and that the deficiencies can be mitigated to a degree through the forging process, I'm also saying that Wootz Damascus isn't some kind of magic steel. I'm also stating that a medieval societies ability to produce crucible steel was advantageous, it didn't give it some giant leg up, and I compared it to the impact of crucible bronze during the transition from the stone age to the bronze age.

[@kiwiprouddavids724]

@@Adam_okaay sweet as 👍

[@krissteel4074]

There was something of a technological disconnect between India and Japan when it comes to steel making, that started when the technology was available to the Chinese to make crucible steels and after taking enough of a look at it they decided that the bloom process was easier to maintain for their uses to get the quality they needed. Which was apparently not very high standards so they just kept doing it that way and the steel making process out of China more or less ended up in the Korean peninsula and Japan as just the bloom steels. Possibly this was due to the materials available, but more likely the pre-industrial process of just having lots of fellas whacking on lumps of bloom steel was still an economically and traditionally viable means to continue doing so up until more or less the mid 20th century in some places. Sometimes its a case that technology doesn't quite connect with some people's in so much that they got their own processes refined to such a point that they're not willing to take that step back in terms of re-learning the process so they can take the two steps forward for a long term progression via crucible steels. Its not an uncommon problem in most types of military development when people will keep a weapon or vehicle in service long after its technologically redundant because of the support mechanisms, mechanical aptitude and skill set hasn't caught up to the people running it, to replace that system- which by then is quite refined and effective. There's a certain risk that adopting new tech carries with it in that its going to suck for some time until people know what they're doing and back in the pre information age when there's no easily available data on the hows and why's, that can literally take many generations.

[@HeikkiHallamaa]

The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages & the Early Modern Period by Alan Williams was an interesting read about this topic.

[@jackrice2770]

What a pleasure to hear a real expert present a brilliant short lecture on the area of his expertise. Thanks for the education!

[@andreweden9405]

"The other year, the other day, she passed by And, in passing, pierced me through With a glance forged in Milan That knocked me into the rear ranks, So rude a blow she dealt me. The other year, the other day, she passed by. She destroyed me so thoroughly That she dismissed me from her troops; But, by God, she did her damage. The other year, the other day, she passed by And, in passing, pierced me through With a glance forged in Milan. And then our love ended, For, ever since she did her dance, The other year, the other year, I've had neither good day nor good year, So much bad luck has piled up. The other year, the other day, she passed by. The other year, the other day, she passed by And, in passing, pierced me through With a glance forged in Milan That knocked me into the rear ranks, So rude a blow she dealt me. The other year, the other day, she passed by." From the chanson "L'autre d'anton" by Johannes Ockeghem (1410-1497)

[@andreweden9405]

The actual chanson... kzbin.info/www/bejne/d3fJmGyAjrqemM0

[@KamiSeiTo]

This is one of the most interesting (sword related) video in all KZbin ! Thank you so much, Matt !!

[@positroll7870]

Re special places, you left out the 2 most important ones: The Hüttenberger Erzberg in Carinthia, which provided ferrum noricum to the Romans (and was mined well into the 1970s). de.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCttenberger_Erzberg Highly pure iron ore in the main lens - with also serious manganese content, which made it much easier to produce good, less rusty steel. Second, the BIG Erzberg further north, in Styria. Also very pure ore, but without the manganese. Provided the iron for much of central Europe for centuries; mined into the 2010s. Before Archduke (later Emperor) Ferdinand I imposed an embargo on the Turks mid 16th century, the yearly trade with the Ottomans was above 1,5 million knifes being shipped down the Danube. The main iron working center was around Steyr. Solingen only got going when ca 200 Protestant knifesmiths of Steyr were driven out by the counter reformation in 1626, and then settled in protestant Solingen (which until then had been a rather tiny place). Big, water powered furnaces helped producing blooms with very little slag remaining. Just as big water powered hammers drove out the remaining purities and homogenized the iron. PS All you might want to know about crucible steel etc ... www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/iss/kap_a/backbone/ra_4_1.html

[@henninghesse9910]

What about Passau blades? Most likely not protestant??

[@positroll7870]

@@henninghesse9910 Well, Passau started to make blades in 1000 a.d. There were no Protestants around back then. And during the Reformation era, Passau, as the seat of a Bishop, remained mostly catholic. Except for a group of Anabaptist revolutionaries, most of whom were promptly arrested and / or killed. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausbund Despite what one often reads in American history books, the Anabaptists were less persecuted because of their religious beliefs as such, but because these beliefs led them to reject any oaths of loyalty to the ruling nobility, as well as the participation in an "ungodly", worldly government in the cities, no matter whether elected or not. In other words, they rejected all forms of worldly authority not wielded by fellow Anababtists. No ruler or city councilor could accept that in the 16th century. They knew where that would lead. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster_rebellion That they basically told every other Christian that he would go straight to hell because of the lack of a second baptism just was the icing on the cake ...

[@sleazy1drache]

As usual, a great, complete and objective explanation. It's cool that you took up this subject. Thanks for sharing

[@dogmaticpyrrhonist543]

I just wanted to say this is an excellent summary of blade steels. There's not the detail that would span it out to being several hours long, and it doesn't bog down in unnecessary detail. I feel it's the type of video that will end up being shared a lot as a primer top the subject. Bravo.

[@akoponen]

I look forward to an in depth dive into the vanadium in wootz steel.

[@dimman77]

Talking about the Spanish influence on Japanese armour. I was in Japan about 4 years ago and there was a display in Chubu Centrair airport in Nagoya for some of the museums around the area (Oda Nobunaga's home). They had 3 suits of armour on display. 2 were very traditional samurai armour. The third looked like someone had done a mash-up of the ornate Samurai armour style, but done with completely Spanish Conquistador parts. It was a very odd Spanish/Japanese hybrid.

[@thekaxmax]

from trading with the Portuguese, those, both actual pieces and designs.

[@Arkantos117]

I remember reading that the Celts used similar forging techniques to the Japanese around the time of the Gallic wars but I can't remember where I read it.

[@MadNumForce]

I feel way too much attention is given to crucible steel/wootz. I mean in the greater scheme of things it should be talked about, but in actual facts making it a category of steel in medieval swords is a bit like classfying fish species between flying fish and fish that aren't flying fish. But just because crucible steel in Europe was a non-phenomenon doesn't mean that there was no steel production process with a liquid phase. The earliest blast furnace appeared it seems in the 13th century, from making bloomeries always bigger and more powerfull (especially using hydraulic power to pump the bellows). One needs to understand the phase diagram of iron-carbon binary alloy to get how carbon enrichment of the iron lowers melting temperature, and it kind of triggers a chain reaction of carbon migration and steel liquefaction in the heated ore and charcoal mix in the blast furnace. It's interesting to read 18th century litterature about steel production, as it's still very close the the practical issue medieval ironmongers were dealing with. Of course 18th c. metallurgists were already scientifically miles ahead of their medieval counterparts, but tge practical issues they faced with extraction and pre-treatment of the ore, the specifics of the building materials of the furnace depending on the ore, etc, are all issues that medieval metallurgists faced too. One thing that is to take into consuderation is the mindset, representations and probably even the underlying social structures. In India, you don't find wootz edged sickles or spades. In Europe, steel was not reserved for weapon making, it was treated as a material that could find many applications, especially civilian ones. There was thus a very different approach to output volumes, and mass production was seeked. Crucible steel on the other hand was by nature a low output method, for small production volumes. Late medieval blast furnaces were producing hundreds of kilos of cast iron ar a time. It later became tons. Europe has always been obsessed with mass production, and the best exemple is Solingen : how early they managed to churn out blades by the barrel and export them everywhere in Europe, and later in the world. Same with Pyrenean steel production, which is the reason why tomahawks look like they do now (the same methods were used in the Alps, thus the weapon and armor production of Milano, it's all linked to the hydraulic power you can harvest in mountainous areas). And one other thing worth pointing out : heat treatment in European medieval swords was extremely variable. Some blades apparently weren't quenched at all. The Cluny falchion is a good example : when you see it from the top it looks normal, but from the side you can see it's bent at very sharp angles like no properly heat treated steel could have got. Knowledge in the medieval era is power, and master craftsmen weren't sharing their methods, thus disparity is to be expected. And just like fake medicines and pseudo-science are striving today, despite the mandatory schooling we all had and the easy access to top notch scientific information, it is to be expected that cluelessness was extremely commonplace in the medieval era, especially in highly symbolically charged fields like everything pertaining to combat/war (probably lot less when it came to beetroot cultivation).

[@positroll7870]

Solingen was small scale in medieval times. They only became a serious player when 200 Lutheran knifesmith masters were exiled from the city of Steyr in 1626 and moved north. The Eisenwurzen in Styria and Upper Austria was the principal producer of Iron and steel for the Danube basin and beyond. They mostly produced blooms, a single piece of which could reach 2 tons in the 1630s. Climate change (little ice age leading to less precipitation and thus less available water power for the bellows) and population loss in the 30yw led to the use of smaller furnaces (from up to 24 foot ovens down to a mere 15 foot) again. Carinthia went with pig iron instead early on. But bloomeries had a lot going for them back then. There were 19th century furnaces that even allowed for producing bloom not as single pieces but a continous stream coming out of the furnace (thus increasing production while cutting down on energy waste) from which then pieces of the desired length could be cut. I once came across a source around 1900 (?) mentioning Krupps Austrian division having internal discussions whether that process (and subsequent fining) wasn't more efficient than going for liquefied steel via the Siemens-Martin process. Only the Bessemer process finally spell doom for Bloomeries.

[@mpsmith47304]

Crucible steel became a real player starting in the 14th century with the rise of blast furnace in perhaps the 13th. It was not dominant, of course, but it would be a mistake not to recognize how it changed steel production and quality in late-medieval Europe.

[@thormusique]

Brilliant video, thanks so much for sharing your knowledge!

[@Han-rw9ev]

That was seriously informative. I also got corrected on a few of my incorrect assumptions.

[@40drawers99]

Great topic, very interesting and well explained. Thanks for sharing!

[@augiedad54]

I cannot believe that you jammed so much content into this one fantastic video. Very similar to a lecture that I may have attended in college. The only feature lacking is that at the end you did not say, “...and there will be a test on this material next session.” And thank heavens for that!

[@bensul9979]

matt you saved my lunch time with this "slightly long video" for captain context standards xD

[@bellofbelmont]

Very thorough treatment. Thanks. Jim Bell (Australia)

[@dimman77]

Talking about the bending of Japanese swords, I'm reminded of the end of the Seven Samurai (original black and white movie) and one of the Samurai is preparing to make his last stands. First thing he does is collect a bunch of swords from guys he's already killed and stab them into the ground around him? Why? So when his sword eventually failed against the multiple opponents he had easy to grab backups around him to exchange.

[@Pendraeg]

Excellent job!

[@ycplum7062]

Advantages of fully melting steel is that the flag often floats to the top to be skimmed or cut off. With bloom steel, you have to fold and beat what you can put.

[@torianholt2752]

Slag isn't really a problem with crucible steel since those minerals that constitute it usually vaporize/gas off before the temperature required to liquify steel...except for silica, which normally just forms a film of glass on top of the billet.

[@thekaxmax]

Fully melting takes heat that Europe didn't have access to for some time but that Indians did have--Europeans couldn't make crucible steel until well after the Mediaeval period.

[@blackdeath4eternity]

@6:25 , funny thing mat, due to "mild steel" these days being made of scap metal allot of the time it actually can sometimes be quench hardened, though to a fairly low degree.

[@josephthibodeau9725]

There's a great 50 minute documentary by Al Pendray that covers a lot of stuff about historic Damascus Wootz steel. He spent years basically rediscovering what went into making crucible steel that had the patterning on the surface that historic Damascus blades were made of.

[@metalmikenz]

Fantastic summary Matt. I've heard bits of this in a range of different documentaries or in books etc. Lovely to have it all in one place (and get rid of some of the mysticism around Japanese blades).

[@MBTIinRealLife]

Thank you for the video

[@longpinkytoes]

i watched a video ages ago that totally roasted LotR for having sauruman pour the uruk-hai swords into moulds, rather than hammered on anvils... was this hasty, and would the technique used in the movies be viable?

[@neilmorris446]

Excellent video very useful and informative do more of these tipe of video

[@onebrownmeece]

One more reason why you may have had blended blades (27:00) is that iron-making in the mediaeval era is unreliable, so when they had a batch of metal that turned out to be steel, they kept it for the most important work surfaces - so you might have a chisel or axe with a steel cutting surface forge-welded to an iron body. The castle-building experimental archaeology show with Ruth Goodman has a few good examples of this process and how the foundry and smiths think about and use the metal they're producing.

[@dostuffz]

Amazing knowledge.

[@elliotsmith9812]

Thanks. This was great.

[@corro202]

Great video.

[@lagoonlane]

Very interesting !

[@navigator5426]

Well done.!

[@883tom]

This is great. Please say more on metallurgy.

[@883tom]

This was great. More metallurgy, PLEASE!

[@kalgrave497]

I dot a bit of blacksmithing, and was looking at what the HRC would be of medival sword and from what limited resarched i have done has been VERY fascinating

[@mikeday5776]

Really interesting, thanks. I learned a great deal. I must admit I smiled at the English understatement “Japan was a bit isolationist at one time”” . Wonderfully as ever.

[@dillonbuford]

What kind of oil was used in the quench?

[@navigator5426]

That really depends on what kind of oil was available to the sword smith and also the region where the sword was made. Sheep's fat was used in Scotland. Other places would have used whatever animal fat or plant based oils were available. I've even heard of a few places where human fat was used though overall that practice was extremely rare. The main souces of animal fat were sheep, cows/yaks, pigs and goats.

[@rickvassell8349]

Very informative. Would you do an episode about Sheffeild steel?

[@M.M.83-U]

Very interesting

[@JariB.]

"I hope it [the video] has not been too long for you..." Matt, if I can listen to Lloyd for an hour, why wouldn't I be able to listen to you for an hour?

[@gerryjamesedwards1227]

Matt is much easier to follow for an hour, in my opinion. Fewer digressions, verbal ticks and... er... much less hair.

[@anonymouslyopinionated656]

This channel often makes me miss my late dad, an indian metallurgist.

[@thefamily_ak1863]

Wow that is a beautiful sword

[@theeddorian]

Worth noting that tool blades, axes, chisels, and plane blades in Europe and the Americas up into the early 19th, and even into the 20th century in the case of some premium axe makers, had hammer-welded blades with softer steel for the body and a hard steel for the edge. There's a youtube video on a maker of axe blades in the US that shows a film that documented axe making in a factory there the edge steel is hammered into the body. The reason the method persisted was economic.

[@jellekastelein7316]

Do we know how medieval armorers thought processes like quenching and tempering worked?

[@Krishnaeternal]

The blunt side of a through tempered spring steel katana works as an incredibly effective bludgeon.

[@R4x0]

I saw an extensive video on the comparison between types of steels on KZbin somewhere. Content analysis of the wootz/Damascus steel swords showed significantly higher sulphur and phosphorus composition than bloomery steel. This would indicate that wootz is hard but also more brittle than fold forged steel. Therefore some people think that is why curved swords designs were more prevalent in Western and South Asia to mitigate this material flaw. What do you think Matt?

[@johnmarken3945]

Wish you had mentioned more on impurities. The refolding and forging thing wasn't just about evening out impurities, the many reheats and poundings in the forging actually caused the oxides to come to the surface and be 'pounded out'. Whereas with crucible steel, they came out as a separate layer as slag in the clay pot. Even with the sort of half-way melting, there was developed a surface layer of slag that could be pounded off.

[@joshalmighty1901]

Thanks mate, I can put one of your vids on and fall straight to sleep! I mean that in a good way...

[@lagoonlane]

Wish there was a link to buy the sword in the thumbnail ! Looks great !

[@j.a.steiger7201]

I have a line in some Bessimer steel. I'll be back with my guns....later. Good topic. Thanks!

[@Sirsethtaggart3505]

This explains a lot. I studied shinobi for a number of years where we hardly had any blade to blade contact and was all over with a couple of moves..... imagine my disgust when I started studying European longsword! All that smashing blades together made me cringe

[@lachirtel1]

I think that you or Tod (or both) should do a whole episode on steel production: explain bloomery vs blast furnace, pig iron, cast steel, etc.

[@LuxisAlukard]

Educational! YES!!!

[@oldschooljeremy8124]

Monosteeel...( What's it called? ) Monosteeeel...(Once again! ) MONOSTEEEEEEL!

[@zerofox975]

I've sold monosteel to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook, and by gum, it put them on the map!

[@sullir9397]

Some people, like me, have seen Shad's video, and are probably wondering about blast furnaces. Supposedly, blast furnaces were used in medieval Europe, and fully liquidized the iron. According to "Shad's research" the problem was they couldn't properly regulate the carbon and usually ended up with cast iron, from which additional processes could remove carbon in order to make the end product "high carbon" steel. I only bring this up because of the contemporary time in which both these were made, covering largely the same topic, but blast furnace steel is mentioned in one but not in the other. I would like the information to be consolidated to a degree in order to know what to do with it.

[@blistersteel]

there was Awase Warikomi also Awase San-mai . there was also Hasaki-Ryoba types. and they are very different, while being of the same family.

[@zethron1173]

Matt Easton is a bad boi

[@erikgranqvist3680]

Ulfbert was so valuated, so there was copies if them made of inferior material.

[@morriganmhor5078]

Matt, won´t you make a video on pattern-welded swords?

[@Top_Cheeze]

Viking smiths that managed to make steel were considered to know magic according to what I was taught, steel was very rare and precious We were taught that the carbon they added came from bones, the Vikings thought the smith added the spirit of their ancestors to the sword/metal and that was what made it better than normal iron but ofc now we know they just managed to make some kind of steel instead, lol I'm Norwegian btw, no idea what the current understanding is or how accurate it actually is but I was taught this

[@41adam33]

Fricking amazing. What knowledge and what enthusiasm for the subject. Is India a good place these days for a sword collector to find good a range of examples.

[@steff-the-ghoul]

Mr. Easton, may I ask where that beautiful arming sword is coming from? Such a sweet looking sword.

[@gavinmcgraw]

Here's a question, Matt: What are the different considerations for choosing swords or blades for stage combat vs. film vs. reenactment vs. training? Thick blunt blades and rounded tips seem the obvious choice either way, but do the different types or lack of choreography involved demand other characteristics?

[@caesarmendez6782]

A very informative video. But I'm wondering what were the forging techniques for swords in the classical era besides Roman swords. What were the methods used by the Greeks for their Hoplite swords; what were the methods used by the Gauls & other Celtic people. What were the methods by other Mediterranean cultures besides the ones I mentioned. Or is it just the Roman method that we know about.

[@basilbrushbooshieboosh5302]

Hello Matt Do you know the approximate date when the Japanese started making the pattern welded swords to improve edge hardness and core flexibility?

[@jerrymcgovern4848]

Where does one get that medieval arming sword? I really like the ridge. Any information you can give would be helpful. Thank you.

[@mikexibalbafarms4169]

Looks like an Albion

[@lalli8152]

He has i think mentioned the maker in some other video. Its replica of so called Henry V sword

[@basilbrushbooshieboosh5302]

It would be good to see a table that showed the regions and cities, NOT countries, with associated dates for when crucible steel became viable, or available, thereabouts.

[@alexanderguesthistorical7842]

I think a lot of the reasons for different sword construction types, is simply down to the different manufacturing techniques favoured by individual manufacturers. With something as complex as sword blade manufacturing, especially in a "pre-industrial" age, manufacturing would be done by hand through a series of specific tasks set by the "Master" or management of the company/establishment, and form the basis of a "tradition" of manufacturing. A company would have their way of working which produced good, sale-able goods. So the establishment would keep that process of manufacturing, as they knew it worked, and their employees knew what processes to perform to produce the required goods. New/different production processes would therefore be shunned as they would involve lots of expensive trial and error and experimentation to incorporate the new technique into their production methods.

[@siddharthsingh1792]

The talwar was beautiful

[@blablablablabittybla561]

What episode of forged in fire did anyone ever temper? The only heat treating I have seen them do is quench.

[@torianholt2752]

No wonder those blades always break/shatter...More added drama I guess 😆

[@althesmith]

Apparently the crucible steel Huntsman made was initially turned down as it was harder to forge by the British bladesmiths.

[@markfergerson2145]

Has here been a recent upsurge of interest in this topic? I note similar videos diving deeper into steel and weapons making on other channels. Myths being rooted out of history like impurities removed from steel is a good thing.

[@raphlvlogs271]

18:00 were those places famous for making good quality steel particularly close to iron ore mining sites?

[@Adam_okaay]

Generally speaking yes Steel forged in Germany, Italy, and France was considered the best. They were identified by specific region, ie Prague, Bergundian, Milanese etc.

[@longpinkytoes]

what is Eastern Anti Calms, mentioned in the intro, or did the captions get those words wrong

[@PeterSt1954]

Just put this on my "Watch Again" list. This is definitely worth a few viewings. It's shame I can only Like it once.

[@thetoneknob4493]

ive got a koto uchigatana blade made in soshu den style. its 22inches long but alot thinner that most blades from the period it has a springy quality to it that ive never seen in any other nihonto ive handled. it also has an interesting hamon. its ben shortened so no signature.if i compare it to my hizen-to witch is much thicker and has a slighter curve its like day and night. different concepts . one was made during constant warfare and the other during peace times.

[@Jukkaimaru]

There's some very interesting elements of koto blades that aren't commonly known. They still tended to have harder edges than typical European swords but they weren't as aggressively hardened as shinto era nihonto edges. Edge geometry could also be less acute, sacrificing a bit of raw sharpness for more durability at the edge. Exactly the kind of thing you'd want in a sword expected to actually encounter battlefield conditions.

[@herbertgearing1702]

I think the rising literacy rates in Europe moved steel from dark art to science. The apprentice system tends to be resistant to advancements for fear of losing the basic knowledge. Then just as in our time you make a weapon to perform best against the enemy you are most likely to be facing. Pretty much every aspect of steel is a trade off, hardness and toughness, edge retention and grindability, even thrust and cut. You have to sacrifice something if you want more of something else. From a strategic perspective you have to make the quality vs quantity, cost and even resources management. I'm sure many people would have been happy to provide top quality arms and armor to a large number of their fighting men but it just wasn't possible. It made more sense to use the limited resources to arm large groups with spears, axes, and pikes and only your wealthy nobles would have been carrying a state of the art sword.

[@thekaxmax]

Tamahagane is made similarly to modern sintered steels. These are used for making alloys that won't work if you just melt the metals together. Tamahagane just hasn't got the metallurgy or technology to make the quality we can make now.

[@Dragonfire576]

Where did you get that Knightly sword from?

[@alexanderren1097]

"So do you want crucible steel, wootz, folded steel, or pattern welding and do you want differential hardening or through hardening?" India: "Yes"

[@MtRevDr]

Seemingly lots of Pakistani Damascus blades manufactured nowadays and very few Indian swords custom made and trading in the market.

[@Blyledge]

1. Randomly CAPITALIZED words in the TITLE 2. Big square bug glasses It's official: Matt has become a boomer.

[@scooterdogg7580]

maybe I missed it in a previous video but I'd love to see some cutting and sharpness demos with a true damascus wootz blade

[@doctorgorgomel]

It would likely cut exactly the same as any other steel sword sharpened to the same degree. :) Their main advantage was a higher average hardness/carbon content, keeping the sharpness/edge for longer compared to other weapons. So if you didn't maintain the edge of your blade, you could see the damascus blades being better. But otherwise their sharpness is a misconception.

[@danielleriley2796]

I didn’t believe that wootz Damascus blades were heat treated by heating to red then quenching to harden and then heating and holding hot to temper. I believe that if you did this then you would ‘dissolve’ the carbide spherials that the forging process has built up into sheet layers and gives the blade its sharpness and strength. Correct me if I’m wrong I’ll be interested.