By: Jody

Jody — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 11:20:48 +0000

Actually, pattern welding existed in many places around the world, dating far back in any sufficiently advanced steel making culture. There are surviving examples and records of pattern welding in the Celtic, German, and Viking cultures. It is necessary to laminate whenever an inhomogeneous steel is produced, otherwise stress zones are formed and the metal will crack or bend. The layered, hard and soft iron/steel construction of Japanese and Chinese blades allowed the edge to be hardened much more than was safe in Many western cultures, because the blade as a whole could flex. This compounded with the technique of differential tempering using clay, even though “western” smiths did use water to quench, they also used oil sometimes, as it cooled slower and thus had less propensity to cause the metal to crack, at the cost of hardness in the final product. It’s not that western steel of sufficient carbon couldn’t be this sharp as a Japanese blade, it’s that it wouldn’t be safe because the whole knife would be rigid and brittle. If any culture hit the highest early technical steel making achievement it was probably India with wootz steel, which was used to make damascus blades. Because the metal was completely liquid for a time, it was homogenous and there was no need to forge weld it. I often wonder what amazing properties a sword made by a Japanese smith using wootz steel would have, combining the most refined steel and blade technology in the ancient world, but until such a sword is discovered or made, we will never know.

Comments on: What’s the difference between Japanese knives and Western knives?: The feature of Japanese knives.

By: Jody