Making a sword: description of technology and materials

The invention of the sword had a huge impact on our civilization. A sword is not just a piercing weapon, it is a symbol of the Middle Ages, a sign of status and a symbol of honor. Swords were given proper names, they were known by their characteristics, and it was believed that a sword could have its own character. The life of the blade was long and difficult, as was its manufacture.

We must understand that at all times the sword was not just a weapon, it was a sign of a professional warrior-knight, the elite of the army. Mastering a sword required long periods of practice and the strength of the owner's hand. The sword itself was practically a work of art. Its production took a lot of time and resources. And the craftsmen who made such blades have always been valued at their weight in gold, or even more. It is worth noting that in those days it was impossible to control the temperature and maintain the hardening time, everything was done by eye and touch, however, ancient swords still surprise us today with the quality of their metal, thanks to the incredible skill of the blacksmith.

Evolution of the sword

Legends speak of the widespread use of swords by warriors of antiquity and the Middle Ages. But in reality everything was different. The main material for the manufacture of weapons then was copper and its alloys, such as bronze. Despite its low hardness, bronze was widely used to make weapons.

The next step in metallurgy was the use of iron, its forging and the production of low-carbon steels based on it. The main weapons of the infantryman were the sword, spear and ax.

Short swords made of soft iron became widespread already in ancient times.

Roman maniples and Greek hoplites went into battle armed with short one-handed swords. The quality of the metal of these swords left much to be desired, but they were mass produced and the legionnaires' gladiuses were not required to cut through iron armor.

But metallurgy improved, and new methods of iron processing and steel smelting gradually appeared. In the IV-III century BC. Forge welding technology appeared, then still copper, but later it began to be used for welding strips of low-carbon steel.

Already in the 12th-9th centuries, craftsmen learned to weld strips of metal into one strip, and then subjecting its edges to thermochemical treatment to obtain sword blades.

There were no high-quality iron deposits on the territory of Rus', so Russian craftsmen used high-quality metal purchased in Sweden. Well, or they repeatedly forged the metal obtained from the swamp ore, even from it the Slavic blacksmiths made magnificent steel products.

Characteristics

Viking swords

The famous Vikings are known to come from Scandinavia. And, in modern terms, these were highly armed and trained small units of the Marine Corps that caused terror throughout Europe. From their campaigns they brought with them looted treasures.

The area of ​​modern Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Denmark, as the main places of their settlement, had a fairly harsh climate. Which accordingly left its mark on the formation of a power and hierarchical structure among the Vikings.

At the head of the tribe or clan was a military leader, possessing the “right of the strong.”

Subordinate to him were separate clans, which in turn were united into clans. The head of the tribe had a military squad and ships - drakkars - under his command.

The economy developed only through the extraction and sale of iron ore and products made from it, as well as meager hunting and fishing, since farming in those parts was quite inconvenient and dangerous, from the point of view of crop failure. The main path of economic development was trade, piracy and raids on the coastal cities of other peoples for the purpose of robbery.

Due to the clan way of life, metal mining, weapon production, and even individual technological operations for its decoration were in the hands of several separate clans or clans. This is how the Ulfberht family is known, one of the famous blacksmith families of the Franks and Danes.

The armament of the squads of the Scandinavian kings did not stand out in any way compared to the weapons of the Frankish or ancient German troops. Usually for the senior warrior it was a sword, shield and armor; for ordinary warriors, axes and shields made of wood with stuffed umbons and a metal edge of the shield.

The Scandinavian sword originates from the Frankish straight sword, also called Carolingian.

This is a long, straight, double-edged blade with a cross. The handle was round or oval in cross-section and fitted onto the shank of the blade. An apple pommel was placed on top of the handle.

Swords created by Scandinavian blacksmiths are designed for slashing. Length, usually 70...90 cm. Thickness - 4..4.2 mm. Width - 5...6 cm. The end, as a rule, is blunt or even rounded. The thing is that it is inconvenient to thrust with a sword. According to Oshcott's classification, these swords are a subtype of the European "Carolingian swords".

Swords were worn as convenient for the warrior, usually on the hip. But contrary to the films, carrying swords on your back is not very convenient and, moreover, extremely dangerous; it will not be possible to quickly remove it if necessary. For this reason, it is a purely cinematic technique.

The blade was made using layer-by-layer forging, alternating soft and hard iron, thereby achieving high ductility and elasticity of the blade.

Later, Scandinavian blacksmiths also mastered the method of layer-by-layer forging, making swords using a method similar to Damascus steel, but unlike the East, this tradition did not take root among the Scandinavians.

First of all, this is due to the presence of iron ore deposits, from which high-quality steel was produced, which is valued to this day; the second factor was time. Making an expensive sword could take up to six months; the Vikings did not have that kind of time; raids had to be carried out much more often.

For this reason, Carolingian Viking style swords are more likely to be weapons for a senior warrior or chieftain. In the Scandinavian squad, axes and hammers were considered more convenient, due to their fighting style.

Making a wooden shield

Based on the preferences of Scandinavians and modern materials, the simplest thing is to make a board from plywood 6 mm thick. Using the markings, cut out a circle of the diameter you need. Cut a hole in the center for the fist. Using a wood knife or paint, you can imitate boards. For durability and a better look, coat the shield with stain.

Depending on the size of your hand, make a metal umbon to cover the hole. The shield handle is attached to two strips, which are attached to the entire diameter of the product. The handle is made of oak, birch or ash. They are fastened with nails, and the protruding parts are removed with pliers and riveted.

At the next stage, the shield is glued with leather or burlap. After this, the umbon is mounted. The shield is framed either with metal or leather. The metal is from 1 to 1.5 mm thick, and the leather when forging should be thicker, from 5 mm.

For ease of wearing, you need to make a leather strap. This addition will allow you to carry the shield on your shoulder or throw it over your back over your head.

The final stage - decoration - is left to your discretion. The shield was often depicted with a coat of arms, a unit sign, or simply a drawing aimed at intimidating the enemy.

Metallurgy in Japanese

Iron came to Japan later, but despite this, Japanese swords are known for their deadly characteristics. The “master of swords” in Japan in class society was on the same level as the samurai. His skill gave him this right.

Blacksmiths-gunsmiths - kaji, were outside the rank of artisans and were part of 80...120 blacksmith schools, their number changed at different times.

Iron ore was mined from river sand; smelting steel from such ore was a labor-intensive and time-consuming process. After smelting, the resulting steel was forged many times until a homogeneous dense mass was obtained. Strips of such material were combined by forge welding into a package and forged again.

It is necessary to distinguish the Japanese technology for producing a composite from layers of metal from the European technology for producing Damascus steel. If in Japan it was customary to weld layers of steel onto the base, then in the manufacture of Damascus a monolithic package was used, united by forge welding.

Making Japanese swords was a complex process. There were two main types of sword forging:

• itame - a repeatedly folded package of high-hard metal was welded onto a steel strip of mild steel, which formed the blade;
• masame - also a strip of soft steel was used as a base, but a rolled strip of hard metal was forge welded onto the blade area and a blade made of hagane - a very hard alloy - was welded onto it.

The blade itself had a wedge shape, which simplified its processing and repeated welding.

The production of a samurai sword differed in technology and quality from the products of European masters. Although it had some common features.

Grinding

This process also had several stages. First the rough work was done, and then the fine work, and the process was completed with oil cleaning. By the way, this provided a little anti-corrosion protection. After grinding, the blade was sharpened and assembled. A crosspiece was installed on the shank, as well as a handle and a pommel. The handle was braided with cord and covered with leather, a sheath and a belt were made for carrying the sword.

In those distant times, a good sword was worth as much as a house, and a magnificent sword was worth as much as a small castle. The sword for knights was intended for noble persons, and it took tens of days, or even months, to make one sword.

European sword

Technologies for obtaining metal were constantly evolving, but initially the same technologies were used almost everywhere. In order to understand the essence of the sword, you will have to delve into the technology of its creation from the very beginning. From receiving ore.

From ore to iron

Iron was initially mined from swamps, from the so-called bog ore, but already at the beginning of the Middle Ages, mining from closed deposits began to be used.

The resulting ore was smelted into metal using the cheese-blowing method, which got its name due to the use of air at atmospheric temperature to support combustion.

The efficiency of metal production was extremely low. The resulting steel had an unstable structure, interspersed with slag. In order to bring it to an acceptable condition, repeated forging of the workpiece and its subsequent carburization were required.

Making swords in Rus' was a rather expensive and complex process precisely because of the swamp ore; almost all high-quality weapons were made from iron imported from Sweden.

It should be noted that steel is an alloy of iron and carbon. The more carbon in iron, the harder the metal, but at the same time, with a significant amount of carbon, the material becomes excessively brittle. When oversaturated, it turns into cast iron, which at that time was considered a useless material due to the impossibility of processing it by forging.

Smelting was carried out in a furnace into which iron ore mixed with charcoal was poured and burned for a certain time.

Air was supplied to the house by bellows. The process is quite slow and expensive, especially considering that the coal also required long-term burning from certain types of wood.

After the coal burned out, metal ingots called kritsy were taken out of the furnace. It was an alloy of slag, steel and cast iron. The kritsa was broken into smaller parts, the steel was separated, and then forged, removing voids and slag particles. After this, the blanks were sold to gunsmiths.

Forging a sword

After obtaining the iron, many more operations were required. The technology of forging military weapons from such ore is a delicate matter and requires experience, accuracy and skill. The blade was created in several stages:

• production of packages from metal of different hardness, repeated forging with forge welding;
• forge welding of packages to create a sword blade;
• shaping;
• thermochemical treatment of cutting surfaces;
• final hardening;
• blade polishing;
• sharpening and fitting of the handle.

Forge welding of metal packages of varying hardness was used to ensure that the sword blade had sufficient elasticity (soft core), strength (medium-hard side packages) and hardness (blade area).

Thermochemical treatment usually consisted of surface cementation; a hot workpiece was lowered into a vessel with finely ground coal and heated in it. At this time, the surface layers of the steel were saturated with carbon, which increased the hardness of the blade surface.

It should be noted that the surface cementation did not cover the depth and therefore, after a cycle of sharpening, the sword required repeating this procedure, since sharpening removed the cemented layer.

This is how the famous Carolingian swords were made; the production of Scandinavian swords was practically no different from this process.

The process of obtaining such products has now been mastered by blacksmithing enthusiasts, using independently created sketches and drawings of medieval weapons, but even now, using relatively modern technologies, it takes up to six months to create a high-quality sword.

Description and typology

1. Armory
2. Medieval swords
3. Sword hilts

To make the sword convenient for use, the main metal structure had to be equipped with certain interchangeable accessories. Only a very small number of such additional devices have survived to this day, since they were made of wood or horn, leather or textile materials. Nevertheless, individual copies have reached us, and in good enough condition to tell us about production methods and changes that occurred over time.

Steel named after the bazaar in Damascus and damask steel, and their differences

Damascus steel, despite its name, is in no way connected with the city; it received its name in the Middle Ages because of the large arms bazaar located there. And it appeared in antiquity.

A Damascus steel blade is a blade made from several packages of steel with different carbon content.

The most famous is the so-called “charal” steel. In this case, the blacksmith welded several rods of metal with different carbon contents into one package, after which he twisted it into a braid and forged it into a bar; several such bars were also welded, twisted and forged.

With successful selection of temperatures, a flexible and hard blade was obtained.

After forging, the blade was hardened and sharpened. A characteristic ordered pattern on its surface was etched.

The second option for making Damascus was to repeatedly forge a package of steel plates, constantly folding and bending it. The result was a “puff pastry” of more than a hundred microlayers of material of varying hardness and viscosity.

But this option also took a huge amount of time. For such forging, it was necessary to use the labor of hammerers, since a blacksmith alone would clearly not have been able to cope with such work.

This produced a magnificent weapon; legends christened it after the eastern city of Damascus, but in fact, haraluzh blades appeared in Europe at the beginning of the Middle Ages, as evidenced by numerous archaeological finds. So bastards, that is, one-handed European swords made of Damascus steel, appeared earlier than kiliches and shamshirs from the East.

Damascus steel differed from the composite blades of Japanese and European masters. But, despite the excellent characteristics, the manufacture of such swords was too labor-intensive. They did not gain much popularity, but they became legendary.

It should be noted that the qualities of Damascus blades are greatly exaggerated. The blade could not cut through plate armor on its own or cut through a pillow; these were all inventions of novelists of the 18th and 19th centuries. Damascus blades were distinguished only by increased strength, sharpening sharpness and increased cutting properties, due to the multi-layer structure of the blade.

At the end of the 19th century, Damascus steel and damask steel were obtained by the Russian metallurgist Anosov. But if damask blades were mass-produced at the Zlatoust plant, the production of Damascus steel was considered economically unprofitable due to its complexity.

Bulat, unlike Damascus, is a cast metal, and not produced by forge welding.

It just came to Europe from the East, under the name wootz it was made in India, in Afghanistan and Iran it is also known under the name horoshan. Externally, it is relatively simple to distinguish Damascus steel from damask steel. Damask steel has a chaotic, disorderly pattern, while on damascus obtained by forging the pattern is more stable and orderly.

Damascus steel was produced from high-carbon steel, almost cast iron, by adding particles of low-carbon metal to it during melting; not completely melted particles of a low-carbon structure gave the damask steel its characteristic patterns.

In general, the ancient masters knew not only this secret, there were many options for smelting, but the main one and the easiest to master was still this one.

Like damascus, damask steel did not have supernatural powers. High-strength blade steel, good toughness and hardness - this is a damask steel blade. But compared to contemporary composite swords, often made with technological violations, damask steel had excellent characteristics.

With the end of the Middle Ages, which included wars and the invasion of the Tatars, the secret of obtaining damascus and damask steel was lost. It was restored in 1881 by the Russian metallurgist Anosov.

Important points

The length of the blade and handle are important, but not the only parameters. Before you start making a sword, you need to find out what the following parameters will be for the future weapon:

1. Blade section shape. There are a huge number of options, but for a wooden sword the most suitable are a rectangle with pointed or rounded edges or a diamond.
2. Handle shape. The best option is an oval handle, since in this case the weapon will be comfortable to hold in your hand. A round shape is not acceptable (the sword will rotate). You should also pay attention: the handle is usually made thinner than the blade.
3. Point shape. It is arbitrary, but if you are making a sword for a child, then it is better to make its end rounded. For an adult, you can make a point, the two sides of which form an angle of 45 degrees.
4. Garda. The widest part of the sword. Its width should be enough to protect the hand, and the sword should be comfortable to hold.

Guards (crosspieces, also called “armchair”)

Sword guards
Sword guard - this element of the sword hilt is designed to protect the hand during fencing, from blows from the enemy’s sword blade. Different countries and peoples have created guards of different shapes. In addition, the guard performs the function of balancing the sword.

Shank

may or may not be present on the guard. It is believed that the presence of a tang on the sword allows the blade to better absorb impact energy and thereby protect the blade from vibration and loosening in the hilt.

2) Let's take a closer look at the individual parts of the blade:

What difficulties may arise during work?

The most difficult thing when making a sword yourself will be to correctly observe the heating temperatures, as well as to properly harden the blade. These processes are extremely important for obtaining sufficiently high-quality weapons. Overheating the metal will result in a very fragile product, and poorly hardened material will be too soft.

It should be remembered that the lower limit of ductility of low-carbon steels is in the temperature range of 800-850 degrees. Without instruments, you can determine the heating of the material in two ways:

1. At a certain heating temperature, steel acquires the corresponding color. At 800-830 degrees - light red and light cherry tones;
2. When steel is heated to temperatures of 768 degrees Celsius or more, it loses its magnetic properties. After cooling they are restored. You can check the presence or absence of these properties with a regular magnet.

Hardening is done when the metal becomes barely red. After this, you need to “release” (stabilize) the metal again. To do this, the blade is first cleaned and heated to a golden color, and cooling is carried out in the open air.

Blade

The blade has many interpretations united by a common message. A blade is: 1) the cutting part of a bladed weapon or knife (literary dictionary, Ushakov); 2) the cutting and piercing part of edged weapons (literary dictionary, Ozhegov); 3) strip, generally the steel part of a cold, sharp weapon (except for a bayonet) and a knife (literary dictionary, Dahl).

And yet, what concept should be the key? It would be correct to turn to the legal concept of the word blade - an extended metal warhead of a bladed weapon with an edge, with an edge and one or two blades, or with two blades, which is part of a strip, this definition is enshrined in GOST R 51215 98. This is the generally accepted understanding of the word - blade .

However, we will also derive a specific concept of blade, associated with the reality of the Zbroevy falvarak workshop, the blade of the ZF workshop is an extended metal warhead of the product, with an edge, with an edge and one or two blades, or with two blades, which is part of a strip, externally and structurally similar to edged weapons.

The main feature: the master craftsmen of the Polar Division do not make edged weapons, but make mass-sized copies).

1) Let's take a closer look at the individual parts of the hilt: