Damascus Steel

[jackmcauliffe]

Damascus steel or "Damast" in German is jaust a modern word for an old thing. In spanish "damascinado" means what we know as "Tauschierung": inlaying precious metals into iron to create patterns.
So the word "Damascus" might stand for the pattern, not the city. We have no real evidence for a blade-making "industry" in the city of Damascus. Not in roman time, not in the middle ages.

It might be that in the times of the crusades there was a trading route ending in Damascus on which blades from central asia made of wootz reached syria and came in sight of the western warriors fighting there. For these, the blades came "from Damascus" and had a pattern that was (in this time) unknown in the west (european swords were constructed in other ways in that time, creating no special pattern).

It`s just a theory, but this might have led to the confusion we now have: patterned steel which is NOT pattern-welded (wootz) traded in a famous city (Damascus) comes in sight of europeans who do (at this point of history) not know about pattern-welded/otherwise patterned blades and call them "damascene blades".

The rest is just iron-technology.
As Robert has stated, forge-welding of blades exists in europe from the time when iron was first used for blades because it is a technical MUST! There is no other way to create any iron/steel thing out of bloomery iron.
The only thing we do not know exactly is the time when smiths recognised that there are differences in steels which can be used for making better tools/blades/whatever, when they began to combine different steels and when they discovered that there are techniques (etching or polishing, none is proved in europe for sure) which make differences of steels in a blade visible. The next step in such an evolution is to create patterns intentionally.

Romans did that from the 2nd - 3rd century onwards, the patterns getting more and more complex (as we can see in some blades from Nydam, Illerup,... where even mosaic-techniques were used).
The typical western-type blades of the migration period are a direct descendant of these roman blades. The evolution of the blade types and patterns is also, as ever ;-) in Miks`book.

I could not agree more, this is EXACTLY what I said two pages ago especially considering that bloom steel is folded and patterned due to its unrefined carbon content. No matter what you make with it, if it becomes polished the grain and pattern are present. Blooms of different content would almost certainly be forged together. Aristotle documents resmelting iron to create a more quality steel and this forge welded to iron creates a pattern.

SO would a patterned gladius be appropriate from just about any period.... The answer is an obvious YES! :grin: Most often it would be what is referred to by modern smiths as "random pattern" which is many layers folded or stacked and welded together. There are also both pugios and gladii from possibly the first and definitely the second century onward that have twisted core patterns which seem to be very popular running into the third century. There is a very famous one with a gold inlay of Mars just above the hilt.

Also there is no evidence that pattern welding came about as a lack of industrial infrastructure. Where is this inference coming from? There is no record of an "iron scarcity." It is just roman smiths becoming more developed with pattern making. any one person can see the obvious potential of welding patterns and it is silly to think they were forced into it. Basically one way to look at it is that they are already working to conserve quality steel by welding it with iron, so why would necessity or this sudden lack of resources drive them to make patterns?

The celts were already forging patterns into their swords before the Romans anyway. Again composite twisted core is a favourite of antiquity. If the Romans are learning so much metal work from the celts, why are we assuming that they did not begin pattern making until centuries after conquest of most of the celtic people.

I guess the romans just don't like shiny pretty gaudy objects to show off.... :whistle: