Sword of Laban

[Colirio]

43 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

So, the common belief was that strength and flexibility are at odds with each other.  You can't increase one without decreasing the other.  Swordsmiths today believe that you need one alloy for the edge while having another alloy for the body of the blade.  This is born out of the concept that both the alloy and the forging will affect both characteristics.  That is only true if you MAKE it true. 

A PBS article with inaccuracies?!? Surely you jest!! 

 

Seriously though, many modern mid range to higher end swords are made from one type of steel rather than using different alloy compositions for the edge and remainder of the sword. For the reasons Vort pointed out, modern steel is vastly superior to the steels used even a couple hundred years ago. A sword made from 5160 (or Chinese equivalent 9260) spring steel, for example, is extremely tough and will hold a decent edge even after repeated use. 

 

Higher end katanas, due to the romanticized lore that surrounds them, still use the clay hardening techniques to achieve a prized hamon on the edge. This edge is harder and remains sharp longer than and edge made from tougher material. 

 

A simple google search for "sword steel hard versus tough" will be full of articles concerning how modern sword smiths are using various heat treatments to achieve amazing results for steel. The point (no pun intended) is that even the top sword smiths have to strike SOME balance between hard and tough steel. If you believe that is not necessary, you stand to be able to make a LOT of money through your patented process. 

[anatess2]

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Colirio said:

A PBS article with inaccuracies?!? Surely you jest!! 

 

Seriously though, many modern mid range to higher end swords are made from one type of steel rather than using different alloy compositions for the edge and remainder of the sword. For the reasons Vort pointed out, modern steel is vastly superior to the steels used even a couple hundred years ago. A sword made from 5160 (or Chinese equivalent 9260) spring steel, for example, is extremely tough and will hold a decent edge even after repeated use. 

 

Higher end katanas, due to the romanticized lore that surrounds them, still use the clay hardening techniques to achieve a prized hamon on the edge. This edge is harder and remains sharp longer than and edge made from tougher material. 

 

A simple google search for "sword steel hard versus tough" will be full of articles concerning how modern sword smiths are using various heat treatments to achieve amazing results for steel. The point (no pun intended) is that even the top sword smiths have to strike SOME balance between hard and tough steel. If you believe that is not necessary, you stand to be able to make a LOT of money through your patented process. 

It's not patented.  Just take 1080 steel for instance.  It is extremely strong and extremely hard.  Yet it exhibits no brittle behavior.

Simple A36 steel is also quite strong and exhibits no brittle behavior.  A992 G50 steel has an ultimate strength of 85 ksi and still exhibits no brittle behavior.  I believe a lot of swordsmiths romanticize their craft a little too much.  In the end, steel is a material.  It isn't magic.  And there are no secrets except for the specific alloy being used.  

The interesting thing about alloying steel is that there are guidelines on what components create what properties, but the truth is that no one knows how it will behave until it is actually mixed and forged.  Then they can test it and see just how far their guess was from reality.  Trial and error -- trade secrets.  Nothing more.

[Colirio]

30 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

  Trial and error -- trade secrets.  Nothing more.

 

30 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

And there are no secrets except for the specific alloy being used.  

 

Secrets? 

 

No secrets? 

 

I tend to agree with your assessment in that MANY people romanticize the sword craft, buyers, sellers, and smiths alike. 

 

But 1080 steel is simply the middle of the road. There are tougher steels made from 1060. There are harder steels made from 1095. The 1080 is simply a compromise somewhere in the middle. 

Companies like Cold Steel use 1055 for their swords and they are very tough. However, their edge retention is nowhere near as good as Ka-Bar's 1095 Bowie knives, for example. Companies like Condor Tools and Knives use 1075 for most of their knives and swords because they compromise a little toughness and a little edge retention to achieve something in the middle. 

 

Another element that that many companies seem to struggle with is giving a proper heat treatment. The type of steel can be made much stronger or weaker depending on their processes for heat treatment. Some of the larger modern manufacturers seem to have entire runs of breakage in their weapons, even though the type of steel is the same. 

 

Anyway, the entirety of the point was summarized by something you stated that goes back to the original topic: 

30 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

In the end, steel is a material.  It isn't magic. 

 

That is exactly right. 

Nephi clearly recognized the steel used for Laban's sword. That means it was made from elements he recognized. 

Edited January 1, 2018 by Colirio

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Colirio said:

Nephi clearly recognized the steel used for Laban's sword. That means it was made from elements he recognized. 

That is what makes me wonder.  I look at dozens of grades of steel and I can't really tell the difference except for stainless vs carbon.  But varying grades of stainless?  There's no way I could tell by simply looking at it. I don't see how anyone could. 

Perhaps stainless was quite rare.

Perhaps it was as Vort was saying that impurities made swords of the day much lower quality.  It is fairly easy to tell if there are significant impurities vs. nearly pure steel.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Colirio said:

Secrets? 

No secrets? 

Yes, that was a vocabulary thing. It fed into the "romanticism" of swordsmithing that I mentioned before.  While I admit that the formulas for alloys were trade secrets, it was not a matter of magic or technology that we have that they didn't -- or vice versa.  It was no different than Coca-cola having a secret recipe.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, anatess2 said:

<Sword of Laban Video>

Thanks, Anatess.  That was pretty cool.  After hearing his arguments and descriptions, I'm finding it difficult to disagree.  I like his take on what Nephi meant by  "The most precious steel."

That makes a lot of sense.  You can tell that it is made of steel.  And such was much less common than brass or bronze swords.  Therefore, "most precious."  I'm satisfied.

[NightSG]

14 hours ago, Carborendum said:

That is what makes me wonder.  I look at dozens of grades of steel and I can't really tell the difference except for stainless vs carbon.  But varying grades of stainless?  There's no way I could tell by simply looking at it. I don't see how anyone could. 

That, and the vast majority of ancient metallurgy was a random mix of irreproducible trial and error, and total guesswork.  It's highly unlikely that any of them actually knew that wrought iron from a certain area was tougher because of certain impurities from the coal used to smelt it, for example.  It's even more unlikely that they actually knew beforehand what adding this other shiny stuff was going to do to it, especially given the major changes in a final alloy caused by relatively tiny changes in the amounts of other metals added.  For example, the difference in molybdenum content of some substantially different alloys can be as little as .05%.  Hard to believe that a blacksmith working at a coal forge would be thinking in terms of alloying several pounds of steel with a few grams of manganese to drastically change its properties, much less that he could gauge an alloy very effectively by eyeball in the dark.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, NightSG said:

That, and the vast majority of ancient metallurgy was a random mix of irreproducible trial and error, and total guesswork.  It's highly unlikely that any of them actually knew that wrought iron from a certain area was tougher because of certain impurities from the coal used to smelt it, for example.  It's even more unlikely that they actually knew beforehand what adding this other shiny stuff was going to do to it, especially given the major changes in a final alloy caused by relatively tiny changes in the amounts of other metals added.  For example, the difference in molybdenum content of some substantially different alloys can be as little as .05%.  Hard to believe that a blacksmith working at a coal forge would be thinking in terms of alloying several pounds of steel with a few grams of manganese to drastically change its properties, much less that he could gauge an alloy very effectively by eyeball in the dark.

This may or may not be true.  They had at least a few hundred years of iron working history.  And they also had the benefit of carrying information from father to son, or master to apprentice for many many generations.  This is something we lack today.  We depend on education.

While they couldn't tell exactly what impurities there were, they could tell that ore from one area gave better results than ore from another area.  Same with the coal that was used.  Trial and error is not any different than what we do today.  We just have different ingredients.

[NightSG]

8 hours ago, Carborendum said:

While they couldn't tell exactly what impurities there were, they could tell that ore from one area gave better results than ore from another area.  Same with the coal that was used.  Trial and error is not any different than what we do today.  We just have different ingredients.

We have well-defined ingredients and means of verifying them.  They had no way of knowing that the ore on the left side of the dig wasn't the same as the ore on the right side until after they'd forged it into something and tested that...and really, until they'd done that a few times, they couldn't be sure the difference was from the ore and not a mistake elsewhere in their process...if even then; how much did they really understand about heat treating?

[Guest]

1 hour ago, NightSG said:

We have well-defined ingredients and means of verifying them.  They had no way of knowing that the ore on the left side of the dig wasn't the same as the ore on the right side until after they'd forged it into something and tested that...and really, until they'd done that a few times, they couldn't be sure the difference was from the ore and not a mistake elsewhere in their process...if even then; how much did they really understand about heat treating?

I'll grant you the point on precision.  But if they've been doing it for a couple hundred years, I'd say they knew a lot more than we'd give them credit for.  And ore from a particular mine is going to be a lot more consistent than what you seem to be indicating here -- especially if that ore were looked at with a trained eye.

Edited January 3, 2018 by Guest

[Traveler]

 

Another thought – for fun.   In the regions of our outer solar system (Kuiper Belt) the temperature is about 50 degrees K.  This would preserve the best examples of primitive materials of our solar system.  At that temperature, the best steal even steal alloys becomes brittle and shatters but water (ice) becomes harder and stronger as the temperature drops – even harder than diamonds.

 

The Traveler

[Guest]

9 hours ago, Traveler said:

 At that temperature, the best steal even steal alloys becomes brittle and shatters but water (ice) becomes harder and stronger as the temperature drops – even harder than diamonds.

Austenetic steels are an exception.  They are often used in cryogenic applications.

I'm not sure where you got that information on ice.  I have heard it is a common urban myth.  Ice never gets harder than diamonds.  It tends to cap out at about a Mohs hardness of 7 or so at around 170 K.  It doesn't get harder than that.  Diamonds are 10 at any temperature we're able to produce.

[askandanswer]

Here's a recent article from Scientific American about metals that some believe are of extra-terrestrial origin

The New York Times published a stunning story Saturday (Dec. 16) revealing that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) had, between 2007 and 2012, funded a $22 million program for investigating UFOs. The story included three revelations that were tailored to blow readers' minds:

3. In a group of buildings in Las Vegas, the government stockpiles alloys and other materials believed to be associated with UFOs.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-truth-about-those-alien-alloys-in-the-new-york-times-ufo-story/