Hank Reinhardt's The Book of the Sword by Hank Reinhardt Read Free Book Online

of movies and fiction, the rapier was required to have a rather stiff blade. The rigidity was necessary, as it was a thrusting weapon, and had to at least penetrate a breastbone, and may have had to deal with mail as well. As the rapier progressed and eventually changed into the small sword, its form changed to reflect the stresses it would be subject to. The blade was generally tempered to a strong spring. This allowed it to absorb the shock it would encounter, but still be rigid enough to penetrate. The stiffness was aided by cross sections. Many cross sections had a diamond shape, some with hollowed faces for less weight. One beautiful sword in my collection, which I came to own by way of Ewart Oakeshott, has a cross section that is literally a cross. Some cup hilts have blades that are thin rigid needles. The most effective small sword has a cross section that is triangular, with deeply hollowed faces. This is an extremely light and quick weapon.
    But I digress. Let us return to the heat treating of the sword.
     
    Reproduction of an original rapier
from the collection of Ewart Oakeshott. HRC24.
     
    There is another form of tempering called "slack tempering." In this procedure the sword is heated up red hot, and then inserted into the cooling medium. It is kept there for a predetermined period, usually just a few minutes, and then withdrawn. This is done while the blade is very hot. The cooling medium has not sucked all the heat out of the blade. The residual heat then builds back up in the blade and then the sword is again quenched. This time it is left until cool, taken out and quickly straightened. This method is quick and requires less work, and was generally done on the cheaper swords. It does not give a good even temper, and results in a blade that has soft and hard spots.
    Another form of heat treating was also used. This is called "case hardening." This was used a great deal in more primitive areas where the metal working skill did not approach that of Japan, Europe or the Near East.
    The weapon was forged and pretty much completely polished. Then it was covered with some form of carbon-bearing substance, such as leather, charcoal or plant matter, generally placed in a sealed container and heated up to a red heat. It was then taken out, left to cool, and lightly polished. It was heated up one more time and quenched again. This operation left a thin skin of very hard steel, sometimes as hard as 64–65 on the Rockwell scale. The problem was that the surface hardening is only about 1/16 of an inch deep or less. The result was a very soft blade with a very hard skin. It was excellent for slicing, but rarely would it stand up to any real abuse. Javanese and Filipino knives and swords are generally made this way. Although they are highly regarded, and attributed with almost magical qualities in their areas, they really can't stand up to rigorous use.
    The problems facing the early swordsmiths, regardless of their location, was how to get enough carbon into the iron. Remember, they didn't really know what the substance was. Early furnaces lacked the ability to reduce the iron ore to iron, and to heat it up long enough, and hot enough, for it to absorb carbon from the charcoal. Thus the manufacture of iron in sufficient quantity to make a sword was a long process. The iron had to be smelted and purified, the process repeated several times in order to get some small pieces of steel. But these small pieces of steel could be welded into a larger section, and lo and behold, a sword blade! And this brings us to pattern-welded swords, Damascus and Japanese sword blades.
    As with many things, we do not know who first developed pattern welding. We do know that it was in use from at least the 2nd century AD, and continued up until about 900 AD. There are at least two Roman swords that we know were pattern welded after modern spectrographic analysis of the swords. These date from the 2nd century, and the workmanship on both is