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I Forge Iron

antique knives


dickb

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Does anyone have an Idea what king of iron or steel was used to make knives before hardenable carbon steels came  into common use. For example 100, 200, 500 years ago. 

I made one out of some one hundred year old wrought iron,  but of course could not get  a  decent edge on it and the edge I did edge  didn't last long

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100, 200, 500 years ago high carbon steels were used for knife edges commonly in Europe and most other places.  Pleiner's "The Celtic Sword" has good metallographic information on the use of higher carbon or higher phosphorus irons/steels in Roman era blades.   Most such blades and those into early and high medieval times were not made completely from high carbon steels but had layers or edges of the high C stuff welded in.  In fact "Knives and Scabbards, Museum of London" even has a method of categorizing knife blades by how the high carbon edges were applied, (lap weld, cleft weld, butt weld, etc).

You may want to look up blister steel, shear steel and crucible steel. Crucible steel dates from the 1700's in Western Europe and from around 1000 years earlier in Central Asia. The bloomery process can produce carbon contents from extremely low up to cast iron; knowing how to identify, work and heat treat were the bigger issues!

Perhaps "The Metallography of Early Ferrous Edge Tools and Edged Weapons" Tylecote and Gilmour; would be of interest as it includes at least 1 Roman blade of plain wrought iron.  Of course "The Sword and the Crucible: A History of the Metallurgy of European Swords up to the 16th Century" would be a good place to read up on the metallurgy of medieval swords.

If you are at Quad-State  I will have a factory made adze with a steeled edge on display to show how they used to do it in the 19th century.

 

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Wiki has a pretty good write up on crucible steel and historical references to region and periods.  You can certainly see why good steel was so darned costly and generally used only for cutting edges.  

Also a couple of pictures of crucible Damascus sword blades...darned pretty stuff, having a mostly random pattern. 

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