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Historical Inspiration This forum is dedicated to the discussion of historical knife design and its influence on modern custom knife work.

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  #16  
Old 03-25-2004, 01:14 PM
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Actually, the vast majority of seax blades had a pattern-welded spine of low-carbon material (differentiated usually by phosphorus content,) with a high-carbon edge... this practice continued even beyond the period when full-length swords started to be primarily made from homogenous steel. The pattern in the spine is itself decorative beyone the purely functional needs of saving high-carbon material and obtaining a soft spine. To bring out a damascus pattern requires a fairly polished surface, and why bother making a pattern which is purely decorative and leave the blade 'scratchy,'? Even in the case of an all high-carbon blade, the value of the material itself would demand a certain amount of care, and a polished blade resists rusting. I think the benefits (resists rust, looks better for saleability,) outweigh the short term gain of starting off with a 'scratchy,' surface.

The earliest identified human tools are bone knives that are polished... and it really isn't hard at all to obtain a polish with 'neo-tribal,' or in this case, 'tribal,' technology.


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  #17  
Old 03-25-2004, 01:45 PM
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Chuck Burrows Chuck Burrows is offline
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and it really isn't hard at all to obtain a polish with 'neo-tribal,' or in this case, 'tribal,' technology.
One of the easiest "tribal" processes to get a high polish besides finer grades of stones is really simple - dip a piece of leather into water and then into various grits: sand, ground up rouge, even ashes will act as polishing agents. I have used and use this procedure on "period" pieces frequently and it works excellently.

Another process often used on wood and the "softer" metals at least such bronze and silver is burnishing - in fact burnished wood will give a depth of grain that sanding never will.

And I definitely agree Jonathon there are too many "self proclaimed authorities" that think old means crude - there were and are "primitive" technologies that can meet and even exceed modern ones. For instantance the fineness of the work of the Scythians - a nomadic peoples without any great centers of industry - is astounding.


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Last edited by Chuck Burrows; 03-25-2004 at 01:50 PM.
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  #18  
Old 03-26-2004, 05:23 AM
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Jake Powning Jake Powning is offline
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I make knives that are used everyday by their owners for all sorts of mundane taskes and I polish them to 600 grit, a nice functional polish. I think it is extreamly probable that if the vikings could polish their knives then they did. It was a time when people had very few personal possesions and the possesins that they had conferred personal status, so there was a great onis on craftsmen to create beautifull as well as functional objects, even when it came to wooden spoons and warps, there are examples of highly ornamented objects of everyday use. I think people confuse ancient with rustic, as far as craftsmanship goes the nordic society was highly advanced they had a complex and almost religious asthetic similar to what can be found described in edo period japan.
In a gift giving anamistic society where great importance is given to personal appearance and the quality of objects as gifts, the objects where made to exacting standards that we modern smiths can only aspire towards.
sorry for the rant, it gets me worked up when I here this whole its old so it must have been a piece of rough steel shoved in a willow stick thing, that seems to be such a big part of the SCA. The SCA is fun but it's important to seperate roleplaying from actual history, it's fun to play a rustic barbarian, and in their time the norse had their myths about rustics. but Viking society was a dignified highly material culture worthy of as much respect as the Romans or La Tene period Celts.
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  #19  
Old 03-26-2004, 08:43 AM
AlexI AlexI is offline
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Come on, guys, you sound like you took offense for the Norse culture from my comments.
Again, I didn't even suggest that they were not able or not willing to produce highly finished art and craft objects.
My point was, what would happen to a knife of this type after just a short period of use? Look at the modern Scandinavian knives: they typically don't have any secondary bevel like most modern knives do. To sharpen them, you just lay the whole primary bevel flat on a wetstone and go ahead. Very easy and fast do sharpen, produces a very sharp edge, but scratches whatever finish there was to hell and gone!
I think it very likely that Viking small knives used similar approach. Imagine a Viking woman who wants to refresh the edge on her everyday knife (which would be required often, most likely once a week or so). Would she go looking for a knifemaker? No, she would just give it a few passes on a wetstone. Do you think she would then break out some wet leather and fine grades of abrasives (as described in posts above) and spend lots of time polishing out all the scratches that the wetstone left across the blade? I say - not likely.
Look, those small Viking knives were very utilitarian implements. Whatever survived of handles shows no more decoration then simple silver wire wrap (easy to reuse, BTW). There is no evidence of blade inlays and no decorative pattern welding(seaxes are an entirely different ball game). All the decoration was applied to the sheath mountings, which makes sense - this is what people would see. Why would they care about blade polish? Even in Japan, nobody cared to polish a working knife like they would a tanto (which, BTW, was never used for anything other then fighting).

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  #20  
Old 03-26-2004, 10:13 AM
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Sorry if I came across agressively, just trying to convay my opinion on the subject, not feeling ofended for the vikings :cool: ... wel mabe a little .
I agree compleatly that these blades would be sharpenned in the manner you describe and not babied by their owners, but I think they would have come from the smith with a polished blade, mabe not to the extent of a sword or seax but not all scratchy and crappy looking iether. I was talking about the blade as finished from the smith, these guys where profesionals, there products had to be well made and well finished.
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  #21  
Old 03-26-2004, 10:25 AM
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Yes, we can agree on this. A smith could put a decent finish on a new knife, for "saleability" if nothing else.
I would not expect a mirror finish, rather an equivalent of modern "satin finish", something like 400 grit maybe, or even 600? But this is just speculation, your guess is as good as mine...

Alex.
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  #22  
Old 03-26-2004, 10:28 AM
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yep, that's what I think too.
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  #23  
Old 03-26-2004, 01:03 PM
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First...

Welcome to the forums, Alex. I think that Jake and I are thinking of a re-enactors' mindset that seems to be fairly pervasive, esp. in the SCA. It's a mindset that excuses crappy reconstruction craftsmanship by claiming that 'that's how it was'. It just rankles folks like us.

The question of sharpening and it's effect on a working knife's surface is an interesting one. I have never seen evidence that Viking age knives were sharpened in the same manner as a traditional Puukko ( i.e. the whole bevel.) I haven't seen evidence they weren't, either. Whetstones are a common find from this period though, and I would suspect that sharpening a blade was a survival skill, and one that most people were fairly competent at, if not really good at... and I'm still going to lean toward clean surfaces... 600 grittish sounds good to me... Alas, we'll probably never know for sure...


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  #24  
Old 03-26-2004, 01:31 PM
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Quote:
Originally posted by J.Loose
First...

Welcome to the forums, Alex. I think that Jake and I are thinking of a re-enactors' mindset that seems to be fairly pervasive, esp. in the SCA. It's a mindset that excuses crappy reconstruction craftsmanship by claiming that 'that's how it was'. It just rankles folks like us.


Note: it's not just an SCA mind set. Nor is it restricted to re-enactors. I have seen the same mind set on Ren Faire folk and Acidemics alike. They look at the historical record and fail to take into account many of the effects of time it self.

At Knife Expo, I had a Ren Faire chap look at my Ballock Knife. He (tisk'ed) "that it was too bad I didn't use a dark wood for the handle like the period knives". I wasn't there (my wife heard this one) so I could not inform him that most 15th century English knives were handled with "Dungeon" wood which is the same stuff the hedge rows are made of. In other words, Boxwood!. The dark coloration is not a factor of the wood (boxwood is a light colored hardwood) but rather a factor of age.

And in point of fact of all the acidemic record I have seen very few researchers list the handles as anything other the "a dark wood". The Museum of London is a prime exception. They made a detailed survey of the wood species used. Along with other handle materials.


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  #25  
Old 03-26-2004, 03:51 PM
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I run into it alot at faires and SCA events. Someone says "hey, can I get a seax like that with a period finish? You know, with all the hammer marks in it." I've been "counted off" at a few SCA competitions for having a shiny non-period finish!! WTF!!!

I better not get started on this topic, or I'll be rambling on forever!


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  #26  
Old 03-26-2004, 03:59 PM
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Quote:
Originally posted by Don Halter
I run into it alot at faires and SCA events. Someone says "hey, can I get a seax like that with a period finish? You know, with all the hammer marks in it." I've been "counted off" at a few SCA competitions for having a shiny non-period finish!!
Where is that happening. I'm happy to say I have never experianced that in my branch of that organization. But that may well be because Dr Jim Hrisoulas is a long time contributor to our local group.


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  #27  
Old 03-26-2004, 06:16 PM
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Ha. You *are* spoiled, Scott.

I'm going to do an A&S in polishing. Heh.


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