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damascus in America


runes

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Incorrect. Pattern welding dates back much longer than that. There are many viking blades from 900CE and earlier with beautiful patterns..

As for damascus: the true damascus blades are more properly called Wootz, a crucible steel of a higher than expected carbon and carbide formers. the raw ore was presumed to be mined from India, it first came to the attention of crusaders in the region of damascus, hence the name stuck.

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Guys I just wanted a simple answer. I didn't want to start an argument. I use the American generic term "damascus" meaning pattern welded. We all know that the steel didn't come from city by the same name. Does anyone know when "pattern welded" blades were in common use in America.
Thank you Hackknives for understanding.

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IF I'm not mistaken (I might be) Bill Moran was one of the first bladesmiths to 'rediscover' damascus in the U.S. in the 50's or 60's.

I read an article in an old knife magazine that he wrote letters to a blacksmith for the German army in the early 1900's who was known for pattern welded steel. Bill never received a response, so he experimented until he came up with 'damascus' steel. I will try to find the article tonight to verify (and correct any of my own errors). It has been a LOONNGG time since I read the article (I think it was in Knives Illustrated).

As for whether damascus knives were commonly used in the U.S. prior to that, I don't know although, as Hackknives pointed out, damascus barrels were common back then.

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Hello:

Knowing a little bit abouit this stuff..I was pattern welding back in 1972..Beau Hickory was pattern welding back in the 1950's....

Up until WWII several shotgun makers were offering pattern welded barrels, and some premium shotgun makers still offer nitro proofed welded barrles today.

Why people say that the process was "lost" is beyond me..In fact the German cutlery makers were doing presentation daggers and swords for the Germans in WWII as well.

In answer to your question...in regards to the US Civil War.. the answer would have to be yes. Given the fact that most steels used by smaller firms then were blister or shear steel, when etched, depending upon the level of refinement on the shear steel, you will get a "pattern" on the lesser refined materials, usually nothing more than straight line laminations. I do not think however that a smith would be manipulating the material for a "regonizable" pattern...

JPH

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Pattern welded steel has been around since the first smiths started running out of steel and had to weld their scaps together to get a bar long enough for whatever project they were doing. You can believe there were probrably alot of "damascus" blades used during the Civil War, but chances are they werent etched and any pattern that came out was the result of time and use. I agree with the others that any pattern was unintentional and was just the result the smith salvaging what little steel he had to make the blade. Remember, people have made cable damascus blades and tools since cable was invented, but I dont think anyone purposely etched one till the 70s. It all depends on your definition of damascus. Just my .02, Im sure someone has a different opinion

Edited by J Anderson R
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Further to my earlier post, I found the article in the Winter 1993 issue of Knives Illustrated. In the article, Bill Moran stated he first started making Damascus steel in 1969 and, prior to that, noone else in the U.S. made it. He even had a professional researcher search the Library of Congress for information on how to make it.

Prior to 1969, he wrote to Paul Muehler, who was the German State armourer under the Nazi regime during WWII. Apparently there were 5 or 6 smiths producing damascus blades in Germany at that time. Meuhler never did respond to Bill Moran's enquiries.

I'm not questioning Mr. Hourisoulas' statements regarding earlier damascus in the U.S. as he knows far more about the subject than I could ever hope to know. I'm just relaying what Mr. Moran claimed in the article.

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Hello:

Knowing a little bit abouit this stuff..I was pattern welding back in 1972..Beau Hickory was pattern welding back in the 1950's....

Up until WWII several shotgun makers were offering pattern welded barrels, and some premium shotgun makers still offer nitro proofed welded barrles today.

Why people say that the process was "lost" is beyond me..In fact the German cutlery makers were doing presentation daggers and swords for the Germans in WWII as well.

In answer to your question...in regards to the US Civil War.. the answer would have to be yes. Given the fact that most steels used by smaller firms then were blister or shear steel, when etched, depending upon the level of refinement on the shear steel, you will get a "pattern" on the lesser refined materials, usually nothing more than straight line laminations. I do not think however that a smith would be manipulating the material for a "regonizable" pattern...

JPH


Just out of curiosity, would you happen to have any photo's, or references to photo's of some of your blades or those of Beu Hickory's pattern welded blades from that far back? I wold love to see some of those! Wes
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  • 2 weeks later...

hello,
it happens that i have a ~100 years old french 101kg anvil which it seems to be a forged one. it also seems that is made out of stacked pieces of steel. if you're looking at the surface you can see the welding lines and it looks like been made out of bricks, similar as in cable damascus, but much, much larger and rectangular. i also saw a video on youtube about manufacturing a huge forge-welded anchor some 100 years ago. they also build up material by forge-welding. another story i heard from one of my teachers about a gipsy blacksmith (a rural smith) who forged him an axe head out of a kilogram of nails, back in the seventies. he surery didn't ever hear about Mr. Moran.
these guys just didn't know they're making 'damascus'.
just imagine the several tons damascus anchor :)
matei

knives2use.blogspot.com

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Shear steel and double shear steel were made by stacking up pieces of blister steel made from wrought iron and welding them into a hopefully more uniform steel. These are not considered "damascus" as there was no effort put in to develop or "show" the patterns. They were the common material for knives until crucible steel came along and even then there were a century of so where shear steel was more common for knives than the much more expensive crucible steel.

Having a patterned welded blade historically would have been quite unusual for the early 19th, 18th, 17th, etc centuries; with them being more common pre-1000 in Europe. ("The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England")

BTW Manfred Sachse's book on Damascus Steel has a lovely picture of a sword from 1600 that was etched to show the welded up nature of the steel used back then.

Matai; that anvil was probably welded up out of wrought iron and not steel---save for the face plate(s). Welding up even large pieces of wrought iron was the common way to do it back then. Somewhere in my wrought iron documentation they show a large drive shaft being turned on a lathe with the ends rough showing all the pieces that were welded together to get the mass they needed.

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WRT the original question, what are the steels used? That will give you a good answer in itself. Clue: high-tech high-alloy steels aren't ACW period-correct. No stainless for a start, and I think (but can't say for sure) no high-nickel steels. These are commonly used in modern pattern-welded blades to give a good contrast with a simpler steel, something like 1095. Period-correct Western steels were blister or its derivatives (shear, double-shear, triple-shear, crucible/cast). These are all fairly simple steels with carbon contents between, say, 0.7 and 1.5% by weight. Pattern-welding these probably won't give much contrast, even if etched; they're just too similar.

Pattern-welded gun barrels are usually polished and 'browned' (controlled rusting) to show a pattern. They were typically made from low-carbon steel and iron. Think: bag of rusty nails, old chain and other scrap. Think about the backwoods mountain smiths with very little spare iron but lots of spare charcoal, time and skill. Their customers were the people that might wait for a shot backed up by a tree, so they could cut out the bullet and re-cast it. They wanted a serviceable gun to go shoot their dinner or the panther eating their livestock, and the cheaper the better. Consolidating 'useless' scrap was a lot cheaper than buying in (and shipping) new iron. Later pattern-welded barrels became an aesthetic art-form.

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Hello:

In response..I am not sure Mr Hickory is still alive..I was like 12 at the time I met him, after reading a rather obscure book printed in I think 1770/1771ish in France by Jean J. Perret entitled "LaArte Du Le Coutlier" (I am going from memory here the title may be a bit off rough translation : "The Art of the Cutler") where Mon. Perret goes into great detail over the making of pattern welded steels. The one section that comes into mind is the chapters under the title "Maniere de Faire L'Acre de Falcon de Damas(cus?)" Rough translation: "Steel Making in the Damascus Style".. Now my French is terrible but some of my childhood friends could read it so they translated it for me at the time..I really bugged them about it too.

So the information was out there in the 1960's and 1970's..if a 12 year old Pennsylvania farm boy could find an obscure book like that, well a grown man shouldn't have any problems..Anyway.....

I took that book as the gospel incarnate as far as pattern welding and I ran with it from there for many years afterwards. Mon. Perret did the "Liberte" bar, a bar of steel when cut revealed the words "Liberte Equalite Fraternite" when cut into/on the centre axis of the bar. This was after the French Revolution, supposedly made around 1790ish or so. Again I am going from memory here.

In fact it was his work that I based most of my research on at the time and well, like I said, I was a kid back then and had hardly any resources other than the New Castle, Pennsylvania Public Library and family/friends, most of which were still in the "Old Countries".. So I was able to find this book..took some wheeling and dealing but if I could get it..anyone could at the time..

I still have it around here someplace in my library..safe..so safe I don't even remember where it is safely stored at any more!! Now it's gonna bug me till I find it!!

Anyway...the process was never lost..it's just that Bill Moran got all the press for "Ffinding it again" when it wasn't reeally "lost" to begin with!..Simple as that..and ya know what? That's OK with me 100%!!..it will all even out in the end..As long as the art stays alive and the traditional ways are not forgotten, personally, I don't care who gets what credit wise. It's all bigger than that...

JPH

Edited by JPH
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Bruce: Yeah...more or less..Born in Sharon, raised in New Castle...right between Pittsburgh and Youngstown..closer a ways to YOungstown than Pittsburgh though.

My family owned a lot of property, that they bought when they came from the "Old Countries" inclusing a small farm outside of town heading towards Ohio and a night club/bar/grill on East Washington. My Mum use to work for Shanango Pottery part time as a glazer. She worked on the place settings for Pres and Mrs. Eisenhower (so she told me..).

So I am still what I would consider a Pennsylvania Farm Boy..even though I hate the cold and snow is the devil's doing....

JPH

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No steel making; however innuit used chips of meteorite to make points from. A major US museum has several of these meteorites that they acquired under dubious circumstances---but a long time ago when such things were "normal".

In North America Native copper was extensively used; but not smelted from ore or cast---more chalcolithic than bronze age

South of north america casting of metals was quite advanced including lost wax casting---see depletion guilding for some of the neat things thay did with it.

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