Seax theory: Gebereht

[hammerdownnow]

Dodd, they say we only learn by our mistakes. It is much better to state what you think you know and be corrected, than to remain silent and go on believing something that may not be true. I have learned so much that way,and hopefully will continue to do so.

[Dodd]

Thank you again everyone for your kindness.
I didn't mean to distract from the resolution of conflict, but rather just to lighten the mood a bit.

Looks like everyone had something useful to contribute.

I admire your disdain of commercialization, among many of your other talents mister loose, and I"m glad we can all go on learning together here.

- Andrew Dodd

[Jonathan Gage]

The first step toward wisdom is knowing that you are unwise - Socrates.
The wise one is the one who asks questions, it either invites a new speculation or helps reaffirm and strengthen previous points of view. Keep the questions coming (my teaching experience is showing through, *gulp*)

[Dodd]

Not surprisingly, I'm also a teacher.
I teach a martial arts class freely outdoors all year round.
I"ve made friends with many instructors who seem to like what I"m doing,
since they invite me to their classes for an exchange of time.
I feel really blessed.

I needed some training tools one day, and couldn't afford them, so I tried making one. It seems I"m a quick learner when it comes to basic woodworking. Making cute little wooden knives (and an incident involving a camping trip - which is another new frontier to me) led me to ask a LOT of questions about knives. I found this and other forums, and have been overwhelmed with the quality of the people I have had the pleasure to interact with, each helping me to learn more about whatever topic my questions happened to be about, and also to help me cultivate my own wisdom.After awhile, I found I was answering the questions of others and I was surprised. Then I thankfully accepting my part in a lineage of knowledge.

Every now and again during my development of the understanding of 'knife dynamics' I"d come up with a drawing to test an idea. Looking back, it's very nice to see how I tried to come up witha solution to a problem using only what I had a certain point in time.

I learned about the Seax through my brother. He's into 'recreationist archaeology'; building primitive weapons through the most basic found items of natural origin, and then using them for their intended purpose.Well, in his studies he'd learned about some part of our ancestry long ago and developed a character sketch of a saxon (or maybe a little visigoth) farmer with a seax, which made it's way into various role-playing games to test out how he might interact with his environment. It became really inspirational, and I started trying to find modern applications of this 'broken back' shape. I think I understand a lot more about it than before.

I'm now looking to tweak my idea for what was to have been the design of a very well crafted copy of a seax for a noble that might never use it, like the seax of charlemagne, and build a real one as a gift for my brother.
He's the one with the homemade forge and arms like legs, however, so it looks like I"ll have to do the first few in stock removal.

This must be getting very long, so I'll leave you with that, and hope it is at least amusing. Thank you.

[Alan L]

Wow, I'm glad everything worked out!

As an archaeologist, I'm all for the reclamation of heritage, and as a poly-pan-theistic generally mellow guy, I'm all for live and let live.

As an occasional didactic pontificator, I apologize for the lectures! I can't help it, it goes with the tweed jacket and the pipe.

The first thing you learn in archaeology and anthropology (which are aspects of the same field of study) is that you can never know what's going on in someone else's mind. You observe, you try to explain, but all in the knowledge that you'll never really know. The hard part is in coming to terms with that! Some people never do, some give up, thinking "if I can't know for sure, why bother," some pretend they do know in a kind of misguided self-delusion. The important thing is not to stop speculating. Use Sherlock Holmes' theories of deduction, backed up by observation of fact. Come up with theories. After all, a theory is just a good idea that can be disproven by evidence. The hard part is to keep ego out of it so one doesn't argue for the wrong reasons. Well, that's the hard part for me, as a certified egomanic!

What all that verbiage is leading up to is the following theory: We know monosteel swords replaced pattern-welded swords in northern Europe. We assume it was because of advances in metallurgy that allowed better steels, in conjunction with less labor and faster production in comparison to pattern welding. In other words, the crusades were about to start and all the petty kings of Europe were in the process of beating the heck out of each other, so the demand for swords was such that the time required to pattern-weld was an impediment to business. This is admittedly a modern way of thinking about it, but hey, I'm modern. BUT: people like pattern welding. It's pretty. It's mystical. Warriors and kings are in too big a rush to have swords to wait on it, though. However, there is no such huge demand for knives. Therefore, pattern welding on seaxes hangs in there for much longer.

Hey, it's a theory. It can also be applied to why we no longer have those nifty curved-spoke pulleys on modern machinery. Which introduces the concept of fashion as distinct from style. Which means it's time for me to shut the heck up before I write a ten-page dissertation! Think about it though, and I expect to have your papers on my desk by this time next week.

[Jonathan Gage]

Sounds plausible on a few levels, and if its ok with you I would like to add that as a conjecture on my website.

I feel this thread has meandered quite a bit and maybe we should start a new one. This is my first time in a forum like this so I am not sure if this thread length is common or not.

[J.Arthur Loose]

Meandering is fine by me... it's the nature of good conversation.

But let's let this one sink to the bottom.

[J.Arthur Loose]

Some of you may have noticed by now the excessive deletes from this thread.

Jonathan and I agreed to delete the irrelevant aspects of the discussion.

I thought it was unfair for my initial negative comments to linger in the ether of the Interweb, as folks might not read all the way through things to see the resolution.

There's still some info here, so let's keep what's relevant for the record.

[prizzim]

Thought I was losing my mind there for a minute, Jol. That explains much.

I like the Seax form, I'd like to make more. My only example is this...


which is really a rude beginner's attempt at the style.

[hammerdownnow]

I like that one, and the handle. Looks like it has a little spring to it and might make a lot of cutting less tiring. It also looks like it has a lot of protection for the fingers.