BladeSmith and the Admiral Byrd Aero footage.

[BladeSmith]

Hello All,

Here's a condensed video of all of the things I've been involved with in the last couple of years. Making Damascus by hand, Roman swords, and shooting guns. Have fun watching it, and please don't give me too much guff about it. The Aero Admiral Byrd is in the last segment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brAKZLNSlhc

Cheers,
Fuad
http://www.AcreMetalworks.com

 

[Peacoat]

Cool. I didn't see anything about Admiral Byrd though. The last segment was the one about the mini gun.

 

[rgraham]

Cool. I didn't see anything about Admiral Byrd though. The last segment was the one about the mini gun.

Admiral Byrd is the name of the jacket he's wearing. And a great looking jacket it is.

 

[John Lever]

Very beautiful blades that are honestly priced considering the amount of work skill and knowledge required.
I read recently that some Saxon swords were made from laminated iron like Japanese Katana, but pre-date them by centuries. Perhaps this is where the legends come from regarding magic blades ?

 

[Creeping Past]

Looks like you had a blast.

Your work is outstanding. Those are some beautiful blades. Do you make the scabbards, too?

 

[Corky]

Reply to The Frankish Blade question...

I read recently that some Saxon swords were made from laminated iron like Japanese Katana, but pre-date them by centuries. Perhaps this is where the legends come from regarding magic blades ?

The answer is in a sense, yes. But to arrive at an answer, one must consider the old stories symbolically or poetically and consider how they relate to what we know of historical events.

The Celts were the first Iron Age culture and the forerunners of our own civilization. The Iron Age lasted from about 800 BC in parts of Britain until the Roman conquest and elsewhere until the 5th century AD. The idea of folded steel came in at the end of that period and the methods and secrets of the forging was jealously guarded. The early European steels were forged and probably folded a few times. We know that later on, Damascus steel would be folded a few dozen times and Japanese Samurai Sword steel would be re-forged and folded several times every day for a year.

The secret of how to coax the iron or crude steel from the ore or rocks was jealously guarded by the early druids and later by others, notably the Frankish monks.

Poetically or symbolically, the retelling of this story is encapsulated in legends such as that of The Sword In The Stone, or the Forging of the Magic Blade or whatever variant. (As in Only Merlin Knows The Secret Of How To Extract The Sword From The Stone.)

Some of the other things the Celts contributed to Human Culture were the idea of an individual self with a particular destiny (as in Only The True King Can Draw The Sword From The Stone ) or the the notions of Romantic Love Btween Two People Who Select One Another (the old Celtic stories one finds in the Tairn which were recycled by balladeers into the King Arthur, Guenevere, Lancelot stories for Eleanor of Aquitane) preceded by eye contact (in these stories the two lovers select their own mates, and marry for love instead of by parental arrangement -- racy and revolutionary stuff in those days) .

Joseph Campbell wrote a lot on these topics, and one could write a PhD Thesis on any of them, but that is the essence of how they relate, boiled down to a few paragraphs.

What else did the Celts contribute? Ireland was the first place on earth to abolish the practice of Human Slavery (thanks to the ministry of St. Patrick who had been a slave in his youth). That's enough for now...

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

 

[BladeSmith]

Very beautiful blades that are honestly priced considering the amount of work skill and knowledge required.
I read recently that some Saxon swords were made from laminated iron like Japanese Katana, but pre-date them by centuries. Perhaps this is where the legends come from regarding magic blades ?

Hi John,

Yes the laminated blades did perform better than Iron age fare. Considering how they would perform in comparison to Iron age and bronze age weapons they certainly would be regarded as magical. Typical Japanese blades are around 13,000 layers and the progression is like this assuming a sandwich of high and low carbon pieces of the bloom are used in a 3 layer billet of steel 3-6-12-24-48-96-192-384-768-1,536-3,072-6,144-12,288. Historically academia has built mythos around how these things were done. Homogenaity of the steel and carbon distribution was the goal of the smith and why the steel was folded. Most likely during the end of the Roman empire and the beginning of Arturo Roman legend the blades used there would have been a banding of wrought iron and steel. For years historians pushed the idea that the first steel was made accidentally by the smith forging on an anvil with carbon from charcoal being imparted to it which isn't true. On the topic of Japanese swords the best book I've read is "The Craft of the Japanese Sword" by Leon and Hikoro Kapp and Yoshindo
Yoshihara.

Cheers,
Fuad

 

[BladeSmith]

Looks like you had a blast.

Your work is outstanding. Those are some beautiful blades. Do you make the scabbards, too?

Yes I make the sheaths too. When I began making knives over 19 years ago I had to learn how to make sheaths too. I'm one of those sole-authorship nuts, and I have to make everything myself.

Cheers,
Fuad