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interesting article heat treated pattern welded 1300s


Kevin Colwell

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This is an article about an examination of two knives. One is pattern welded, and heat treated. From the 13th Century. I think it is awesome. It was even tempered.

 

Metallographic exam knives croatia 1200s.pdf

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please visit my website http://www.professorsforge.com/

 

“Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” E. V. Debs

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31 minutes ago, Doug Lester said:

I couldn't access the site but thanks for trying.

 

Doug

Must be fixed Doug as I can get to it now.

Von Gruff

http://www.vongruffknives.com/

The ability to do comes with doing.

 

 

add resized.png

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If you can't download the article I linked, here are some take-away points.

1. The blade was small but pattern welded.

2. It was heat treated (even had a little crack or two in it, too).

3. Wrought iron from bloomery, phosphoric wrought iron, pattern welded steel mixed with iron and twisted, then a steel edge. From spine to edge.

4. Edge had .6 % carbon

5. Edge was tempered martensite. This means it was heat treated completely. Austinitized, quenched, and tempered.

6. Hardness of edge at about 55 or 54 Rockwell C. (they measured in Vickers).

7. The shallow hardening mix of steel and iron was such that the body of the blade was a mixture of bainite and martensite.

8. The authors suggest that the edge was heated and the whole blade quenched. I disagree. I believe the whole thing was heated and quenched, and the mixed structure is from the shallow hardening nature of the material. I think that edge heating in a forge isn't something likely. Why bother, when part of the spine of the blade won't harden anyway.

 

This was a WELL MADE little blade. Some slag inclusions, even in the edge steel. More in the body. It was never liquid, but made from blooms. 

 

In the 1200's in Europe, there was at least one guy still pattern welded (unless this knife was really old when lost and buried, it could have been).

 

Our predecessors, at least some, really knew what they were doing!

 

take care...

please visit my website http://www.professorsforge.com/

 

“Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” E. V. Debs

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  • 2 months later...

I finally got it to down load and when I went to save it my computer said that I already had a copy.  Oh well.  They say that the memory is the second thing to go and I can't remember what the first one is.

 

Doug

  • Haha 2

HELP...I'm a twenty year old trapped in the body of an old man!!!

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