Iron Age Swords?

[Sam Salvati]

Does anyone have any information and preferably pictures of iron age swords? Swords that were just made of iron, not pattern welded or steel or anything, just iron.

[Jim P]

I saw some info on anvilfire a few years ago about wrought iron swords/blades and it had some references but I don't remember if there were any links. Sorry, that's not much help.

[Garrett McCormack]

Hey Sam, maybe you could specify which culture you are thinking about. Different groups had different iron ages, and there have been a heck of a lot of iron swords made over the last few thousand years

[Geoff Keyes]

Sam,

 

Start here Ethnographic Swords, work the links, and then move to Oakshotts books. That ought to keep you busy for a while .

 

Geoff

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

I've got plenty, I'll get back on that. B.t.w. I'm assuming you're looking for straight edged La Tene style swords?

[Michael Pyron]

I've got lots of pics of swords from that era as they are my favorite swords, mostly northern european examples, hope this helps:

 

First, some Celtic swords

 

 

 

and my favorite celtic, the Kirkburn sword

 

 

Harder to find germanic examples as theyre usually destoyed at the burial like the first on but heres some good reproductions of originals, theyre a lot like viking age swords just earlier versions and had more organic hilt components:

 

 

 

 

 

hope some of those were relavent, Michael.

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

First of, for La Tene swords, they had varying constructions. Some were simple iron, harder iron sandwhiched between softer, harder edges welded on a softer core, harder iron outside, softer iron inside etc. with the harder either due to more carbon or phosphorous. Of all the iron age swords I've seen analyses (speaking of pre-Roman iron age), all were workhardened but not quenchhardened.

 

Examples of la Tene swords:

 

Swords mostly from the Netherlands (particularly the bronze ring hilted ones are typical for this country):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

Some great examples from the Klingenmuseum, Solingen, Germany:

 

 

 

 

From the British Museum:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

There's also a great deal of information and images of La Tene swords over here:

 

http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=194

 

And for Hallstatt (early iron age), a lot can be found here (these are a lot harder to make though):

 

http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=3475

 

There are many more different types of iron age swords though, such as the falcata, Nordic war knife, Mycenean leafbladed Naue II swords and derivative the xiphos, Iberian antenna hilted short swords etc. etc.

 

B.t.w. if you or someone else wants any information about the find locations f.e. of the swords, LMK and I'll look it up.

Edited February 20, 2009 by Jeroen Zuiderwijk

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

Harder to find germanic examples as theyre usually destoyed at the burial like the first on but heres some good reproductions of originals, theyre a lot like viking age swords just earlier versions and had more organic hilt components:

 

Mind that that is an early iron age sword from around 700-600BC. And the ones below that are early medieval swords (still called iron age in Scandinavia though) from around 600-700AD. There's a good 1200-1400 years difference there:) The latter ones are patternwelded and frequently (though not always, not even when patternwelded) hardened steel.

[Sam Salvati]

Thanks very much Jeroen. I am mainly looking for a design I can recreate using wrought iron, am I barking up the wrong tree with wrought as a material for an iron age sword?

[Adlai Stein]

wrought is perfect however if it's really slaggy than you may want to refine it a bit by welding it to it self several times to take some of the slag out.

[Jacques Delfosse]

thanks for all that documentation, Jeroen....

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

wrought is perfect however if it's really slaggy than you may want to refine it a bit by welding it to it self several times to take some of the slag out.

Exactly correct. Later puddled irons frequently have more slag then present in true wrought, particularly when used in swords. Enough slag needs to be removed to be able to workhardening the iron without it splitting.

 

If you look at the third photo I posted f.e. you clearly see the bands of the wrought. The swords were made both sideways piled or piled in thickness. Sideways gives a really nice pattern, but in thickness would make workhardening more easy. There's even speculation that the swords were edged to bring out the core, with the edges ground smooth. I have no idea what they would have used as etchant though. The bottom sword in the sixth picture "might" be such an example.

 

N.b. I'd recommend practicing the workhardening on spare piece of wrought if you have it, both to see how far you can go, and where to stop forging, so you can hammer it down far enough to harden it properly.

Edited February 21, 2009 by Jeroen Zuiderwijk

[MDF]

Jeroen,Thanks for your always great photos

Edited February 22, 2009 by MDF

[Sam Salvati]

Cool, thanks everyone. Jeroen, I will consolidate the wrought when I am ready, I do have some very clean stuff, how clean was sword iron?

[Antoine]

Nice pictures Jeroen, thank you.

 

Do you happen to have pictures of the ring knife beside the falcata?

It does not seem to have holes for riveting scale or are they close up by rust?

 

Thank you,

 

Antoine

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

Nice pictures Jeroen, thank you.

 

Do you happen to have pictures of the ring knife beside the falcata?

Of course :

http://1501bc.com/page/solingen/04300047.jpg

 

It does not seem to have holes for riveting scale or are they close up by rust?

No, these la Tene ring knives generally don't have rivet holes as far as I've seen. I've not encountered any other evidence regarding coverings of the hilts yet. They could have been bare, or had a wrap of leather or textile. I've got one myself and I'm planning to wrap the hilt in a thin cardwoven belt. Edited February 26, 2009 by Jeroen Zuiderwijk

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

Cool, thanks everyone. Jeroen, I will consolidate the wrought when I am ready, I do have some very clean stuff, how clean was sword iron?

No idea exactly, but clean enough at least to withstand a fair bit of cold working without splitting.

[Sam Salvati]

OK, that is enough to go by thanks again Jeroen.

[peter johnsson]

Hey Sam,

 

I have had some close encounters with that ring knife. It was classified as a Pannonian weapon, meaning present day Hungary but in Roman times, dated to second or first century BC. It is just shy of 700 gram today (750-770 originally?), with a point of balance some 6 cm into the blade from the grip. Blade starts out 65 mm wide (originally) and a blade length of some 410-420 mm (originally). The cross section has a forged to shape T-back. 13.5 mm at thickest, going down to about 4.5 at the point. The grip is solid: a rectangular block of steel. I think you can make out some details in the rather subtle shaping of the knife´s geometry in the drawings that show up as background in the photos below:

Edited February 27, 2009 by peter johnsson

[Sam Salvati]

Peter, thank you for the pictures! I see what you mean about the drawings and geometry, it would have been impossible to glean any of that information from just a picture alone, it is as if I was there handling it. What a complex and awesome knife.

[B. Norris]

Peter,

 

Do you have similar information for the falcata, next to the ring hilted knife, in one of the pictures?

 

Thank you for sharing the drawing of the ring hilted knife by the way. Information about cross sections and proportions is extremely difficult to determine when all one has to go off of are photographs. I do not know about the rest of you but, to me, it makes me feel more of a sense of connection to the craftsman who made it. I learn by seeing what was done and reasoning out how to do so myself.

 

~Bruce~

[owen bush]

sam,

I work a lot of wrought iron into blades ,it likes to be worked hot and preferably hotter than a gas forge will go .

there are many grades .It would make sense to use well refined iron for blades as it would make for a stronger blade ,wrought iron is soft and I think the fact of that influences a lot of the thicker sections (as in the ring knife spine pictured and bigger seax) .

I have made a few wrought iron backed seax and if you make them to "modern" dimensions (4mm thick or less) you end up with blades that bend in normal use (read cutting not hacking) .

I have recently acquired some phosphor iron and will have some fun playing with that ,it is a rubbish material and a 3/4 inch bar will snap not bend .I will be interested to see how it is when work hardening .

I feel fairly sure that different grades of iron would have been kept and used for the smiths pallet not that discimilar to what we do now with our steels , That is certainly what I do with wrought one bit is so different from another .

I would not assume that iron age blades were made of iron ,as my limited (but growing) explorations into that subject seem to come across steel all over the place at all times .

[Jeroen Zuiderwijk]

sam,

I work a lot of wrought iron into blades ,it likes to be worked hot and preferably hotter than a gas forge will go .

there are many grades .It would make sense to use well refined iron for blades as it would make for a stronger blade ,wrought iron is soft and I think the fact of that influences a lot of the thicker sections (as in the ring knife spine pictured and bigger seax) .

I have made a few wrought iron backed seax and if you make them to "modern" dimensions (4mm thick or less) you end up with blades that bend in normal use (read cutting not hacking) .

The original La Tene swords that I've seen were surprisingly thin, something like 4mm tapering down to 1-2mm near the tip, and that at lengths of around 80-100cm. They would have been quite bendy, even with workhardening, yet they seem to have made it work. I've done tests with bronze swords of similar lengths, quite a bit thicker, though with no workhardening. It held up surprizingly well cutting into a log, just as long as I struck it at the center of percussing.

 

I have recently acquired some phosphor iron and will have some fun playing with that ,it is a rubbish material and a 3/4 inch bar will snap not bend .I will be interested to see how it is when work hardening .

Is it phospor containing wrought, or modern iron containing phosphor? The phosphor in wrought acts very differently, as it's distributed through the iron very differently. I remember reading an article about this some time ago.

 

I feel fairly sure that different grades of iron would have been kept and used for the smiths pallet not that discimilar to what we do now with our steels , That is certainly what I do with wrought one bit is so different from another .

I would not assume that iron age blades were made of iron ,as my limited (but growing) explorations into that subject seem to come across steel all over the place at all times .

Iron with varying amounts of carbon and phosphor were used, quite a few have very little of both. I've got a list here of 24 analyzed swords. 6 have above 0.2% phosphor. 9 have above 0.4% carbon in the high end measurements, but they have a fair bit of variation in contents in the same blades. The hardness of the blades is all pretty similar, most measurements in the 150-200HV range. There doesn't seem to be any notable difference between the swords of purer irons and the ones with higher carbon or phosphor contents. Nevertheless they did seem to clearly select high carbon steel for edges. B.t.w. this data is from "Iron and steel in ancient times" from Vagn Fabritius Buchwald.