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"Damascene" Patterns
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While I try to avoid the name
damascene" as far as possible for the reasons given
here. I cannot avoid it,
however, as soon as "damascening" patterns come up. All and sundry
talk of this or that damascening pattern so I will use the terminology, too.
This is a collection of patterns and names for patterns that I encountered
while looking around. It neither claims completeness nor correctness. As far as
names for patterns are concerned, there are no sanctified norms. What is a
herringbone pattern for you might be a pinecone pattern for somebody else. .
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It is even worse because:
- Discovering pattern welded old swords and realizing how they were made was
originally a Danish / German enterprise with special words that are hard to
translate. Alan Williams in his
book uses
German names like "Streifendamast" (stripe patterns or piled
structure), "Winkeldamast" (otherwise known as herringbone) and
"Doppelwinkeldamast" (double-herringbone).
- It looks like people (including scientists) just make up names as they go
along. One and the same pattern could thus have different names even in just
one language.
- There is a rapidly growing crowd of enthusiasts out there who make pattern
welded objects with all kinds of patterns and self-invented names. Some of
these objects, if I may say so, are really ugly, defying the purpose of the
exercise.
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Here are some examples of modern patterns made by Master smith Devin Thomas
1). You can look at (and buy) his
products here:http://www.devinthomas.com/. How he
makes these patterns I don't know. It just shows what is possible today. The
names are from Devin Thomas and he can, of course, name his products any way he
likes. The "herringbone" is classical, though. |
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Devin just
continues the traditions. Gun and sword makers in the 19th century had tables
illustrating the various kinds of "damas" you could get from them;
examples are found in
Manfred
Sachse's book or here: |
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In what follows I will give you first a long list
of names that I found in all the sources I studied - in German and English.
Then I take a closer look at some of the more popular ancient patterns found on
swords (and lance points). |
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Stripe and Woodgrain
Pattern |
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If you weld together a package of
"bright / dark" steel and elongate it into an (untwisted)
"striped rod", patternwise you can produce
- Nothing (i.e. just the bright or dark steel) if you look at right angles to
the striped side.
- Straight stripes close together if you
look at the striped side of your striped rod.
- Stripes at larger distances if you cut a perfectly flat striped rod at some
angle.
- A "wood grain" pattern if
your layers aren't perfectly flat but a bit warped as shown below
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Examples of patterns obtainable from untwisted striped rods
The sample on the right also contains two twisted striped rods. |
| Source photographs: From the Internet pages
of Patrick Barta; http://www.templ.net; with friendly
permission. |
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Here is an example from the Nydam treasure: |
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| Pattern welding; stripe pattern in Nydam
sword |
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The etched cross-section is from a different part
of the blade but shows clearly that four 7-layer striped rods have been used,
separated by some other brightish material. The rods make up the complete core
of the sword.
This is about the most simple pattern welded sword one could make.
Here are some real blades from the
Illerup Adal
finds |
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| Illerup Adal swords with simple stripe
patterns |
| Source: Photographed in the Moesgaard museum,
2015 |
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Torsion Damast and Some
Tricks |
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Not much needs to be said; I have
dealt with this most prominent pattern extensively in the
backbone. A
very simple herringbone pattern can be
produced by using just a few layers in your twisted striped rod;
two might be already
sufficient. With a bit more cunning you may produce patterns like
these: |
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The SAVL sword, incidentally, shows a nice wood
grain pattern in the welded-on cutting edge part on the right.
Here are pictures of real swords: |
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| Illerup Adal swords with twisted stripe
patterns |
| Source: Photographed in the Moesgaard museum,
2015 |
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Combining striped
rods that are partially straight and partially twisted - clockwise or
counterclockwise - allows to produce a wealth of patterns, just look through
the pictures already given. However, no smith - ancient or alive - can produce
two twisted rods with exactly identical
pitch that would produce an exactly
symmetrical pattern if put side-to-side. Since some blades seem to
have an astonishing symmetric pattern, the trick might have been to split a
twisted rod down its center as noted by Ypey. Splitting a long rod down its center is
probably not easy but can be done. |
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Left: Making a symmetric pattern by splitting
a striped (and
partially twisted) rod
Right: Folding back a stripe pattern |
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Also shown is an easier trick: folding back an
untwisted striped rod on itself. This can be sees on a number of
IIlerup swords: |
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It is clear that a
broken pattern welded sword could not be mended without major pattern
distortion, Nevertheless it was done on occasion: |
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| Broken sword welded together again |
| Source: Photographed in the Moesgaard museum,
2015 |
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This might have been a particular precious blade
with a palmette pattern. Unfortunately the museum makes no mention of this
blade and the illumination is so bad that no details can be seen. |
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Serpent / Snake Pattern |
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There is a lot of speculation about
"the snake or serpent in the sword", suffice it to mention
Stefan
Maeder's (German) 330 page opus "Steels, Stones and Snakes". I
give you a special module on the topic. |
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There are, however, remarkably few
old blades with "real" serpents made by pattern welding.
"Real" means patterns as shown below and not just a certain waviness
of the pattern as sometimes seen with twisted rods. The few "serpent
swords" or "snake swords" that we know of, and the ways for
making them, will be the topic here.
First a picture of parts of the (badly lit) "Stuttgart"
serpent sword. The badly corroded
original sword does not show much structure anymore; its composition was
revealed by X-rays. A replica based on the X-ray findings was made and does
show a nice "serpent in the sword". |
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| The "Stuttgart Snake Sword".
Replica and original |
| Source: Photographed in the
Stuttgart
museum |
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Another
replica of a "serpent
sword" was made by Patrick Barta; a close-up can be seen in one of the
patterns shown here.
The original is a 6th century AD sword
found in Vehmaa, Finland. The snake
pattern is only on one side, covering about 1/3 of the blade. Here is the
"original": |
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| The Finland Serpent Sword. Complete
blade and enlargements |
| Source: Internet; origin not disclosed.
Probably V.J. Leppäaho. "Späteisenzeitliche Waffen aus Finnland:
Schwertinschriften und Waffenver-zierungen des 9. - 12. Jahrhunderts".
Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistyken aikakauskirja 61 (1964). |
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Two "serpent sword"
drawings were provided by Ypey3).
The blades were found in Nijmegen
and Iversheim, respectively, both
in The Netherlands. These swords are from the 9th and 7th century, respectively. |
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| The Dutch Serpent Swords |
| Source: J.
Ypey; also in: " Europäische Waffen mit Damaszierung.
Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 12 (1982) pp. 381 - 388. |
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Madeleine Durand-Charre in her 2004 book
"Microstructure of Steel and Cast Iron" provides an example of a
"double serpent", unfortunately without detailed data: |
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| Serpent Swords |
| Source: Madeleine Durand-Charre; see
above |
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We have a
"veneered"
sword with two serpents on one side. Playing a bit more with the technique of
veneering a all-steel blade with patterns made from twisted striped rods leads
straight to the swords shown here. |
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The latest find is perhaps the most
illuminating one. A snake-patterned sword was unearthed in West Heslerton, North Yorkshire,
England not that long ago (no precise date is given) and investigated
in some detail. Dr. B. Gilmore reported the results in 19914). |
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The sword dates to the late 5th /early 6th century AD and is thus the oldest one
(discounting the undated Stuttgart sword). It is also the only one found in England so far. The metallurgical
examination yielded the following results:
- Its composition is rather complex, see the schematic picture below. It is
in particularly more complex than that of the older Holland / Finland swords.
- Slag inclusions and other coarse defects are seen, often in weld seams.
- The edges consist of a high carbon steel (around 0,5 %) sandwiched between
two pieces of low carbon steel (around 0,1 %). The blade was quenched,
indicated by martensite / bainite formation in the very edges of the
high-carbon steel part. Microhardness values of up to 488 HV were found.
- The weld seams show the "white line
effect", caused by an enrichment in Co and As. It appears that a
"carbon based flux" has been used in welding (whatever that is
supposed to mean).
- The center core piece was wrought iron but with substantial and varying
amounts of phosphorous (up to 0.5 %). The pattern was made by twisting striped
rods of welded stacks of very low carbon wrought iron and phosphorous iron (0.5
% - 0.8 %), respectively
- The exact building of the snake pattern was fairly involved and is not
completely clear in detail. The windings of the snake, however are connected to
changes in the twist direction.
Here is what that sword would have looked like: |
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| Schematics of the West Heslerton snake
sword |
| Source |
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How are snake patterns made? Modern
smiths have made a number of snake patterns and debate hotly in how many
different ways that can be done. There is always the easy if uninventive way
described before: Weld
three striped rods together, keep the center one untwisted. Forge the package
into an undulating shape, followed by grinding the sides flat again. This is
always possible - but wasteful since you grind off a good part of your rods,
and labor intensive since grinding takes far more time than forging. So did the
old smiths have some tricks up their sleeves that we don't know yet? |
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That is just one of the questions
around "serpent swords" for which I do not know the answer. I also do
not know the answer to these questions:
- Why do we have so few "serpent swords"?
- Was there any real significance to images of serpents as claimed by some
(see the "serpent in the
sword" module)?
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Chevron Pattern |
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Here is the chevron pattern in a
Nydam sword as drawn in
Engelhardt's book: |
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| Chevron pattern in a Nydam sword |
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Don't get your hopes up that you could see this pattern in the
Moesgaard museum. First you need to find that badly illuminated sword among
many others. After you found it you cannot really see the pattern; it's to
dark. Only if you take a picture with a good camera and enhance it dramatically
in your computer, you might get a picture. I didn't. |
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There are several ways to make a
chevron pattern with (striped) rods; below are four possibilities: |
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Examples of patterns obtainable from untwisted striped rods
The sample on the right also contains two twisted striped rods. |
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Of course you could also make "knots"
at the intersections and what not. Look at the examples provided and figure out
for yourself, which method was used: Personally, I'm not sure (in contrast to
some authors). It doesn't matter much, however, because you always need a more
or less finished blade first that you then decorate with a chevron pattern. It
can only been done by
"veneering". In contrast, with twisted stripes rods you can make a
complete patterned blade.
So far I haven't found a good recipe for making sword blades with a chevron
pattern, possibly only on one side, and with some other pattern (typically
palmettes) inside the chevrons.
Maybe its time to make a suggestion: |
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Chevron patterns could have been
made by incrustation!
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Incrustation (or "damascening" in one
major
meaning of the word) in the context of swords usually refers to metals like
copper, silver or gold "inlaid" into grooves cut into the steel of a
sword. Here is a picture of what that looked like: |
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It is clear that for the incrustations shown
above you need to cut suitable grooves into which the soft metal is hammered.
There is also another technique for decorating sword blades that we will meet
whenever I get to wootz swords but here you need to cut and hammer. |
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Now imagine doing it the other way
around: Make a steel incrustation into a copper plate. You don' t need to cut
grooves into the copper. You can hammer the hard steel pieces right into the
soft copper, just as you can "hammer" a pea into mashed potatoes, a
cherry into a cream cake, or sink a tooth into a steak. |
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So how about hammering a striped
iron steel rod into a steel blade? The are both hard so it won't work - except
if you heat up the blade, making it soft! That might just work. You can press a
chisel point into hot steel, after all. It might work even better if you don't
try to sink a whole striped rod deep into the blade but embed just some
wires rather shallowly. Let's not forget
that these guys knew how to make steel wires! They made whole
chain mail
shirts, after all. |
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Note that I'm not saying that chevron patterns were made in this
way: All I'm saying is that there are possibilities here. There is a 1000 AD
sword in the treasury of the Essen; Germany cathedral, that was made more or
less in this way (involving some cutting of grooves and wires). |
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I can see all these modern Master
smiths's out there grinning to themselves. They might know exactly how to make
chevron pattern blades, in contrast to me. Well; I'm open to suggestions,
particularly for the next part. |
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Palmette Pattern |
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Conrad Engelhardt in his
opus
magnus supplied an exquisite
rendering of a Nydam sword with a palmette pattern on both sides of a
central herringbone besides the chevron pattern shown above. Here it is: |
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Palmette pattern
Left: Lithography from Engelhardt's book
Right: Illerup sword "SAFG / RNU4 |
| Source: Engelhardt book;
Illerup
Ådal; Vol. 11, 12 |
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Engelhardt believed that the palmette
pattern was due to "damascening" = incrustations with iron /steel
wires. Maybe he was right?
I have nothing to add to what I have
said before. I do not
know for sure how palmette patterns were made, but I have
some idea. More examples can be found
here |
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All that remains to
be done is to look a mixes like "chevron filled with palmettes";
something mentioned a lot in the
Illerup
Ådal books but not really shown. Below is one of the few pictures I
could come up with. More in
this link. |
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Not knowing for sure how chevron or palmette
paterns were made, not much can be said about "filled chevron" except
that it cannot possibly be easy. One major conclusion is unavoidable: |
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These swords were major pieces of art!
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| 1) |
You can look at (and buy) Devin
Thomas' products here:http://www.devinthomas.com/ |
| 2) |
Ypey has: Flammendamast,
Schlangendamast, Streifendamast, Tosiondamast, Mosaikdamast, Gittermuster,
Welliger Streifendamast
Sachse
uses: Gestirnter Damast, Inschriftendamast, Mosaikdamast, Hufnageldamast,
Torsionsdamast, Rosendamast. and more
In the
Illerup
Ådal; Vol. 11, 12 books we find: Winkelmuster, Steifenmuster,
Zick-Zack, Rautenmuster, Weizenkörner Muster; N-Muster, Zellendamast,
Komplizierte Muster, Spiralmuster, ...
I spare you the list of English words. |
| 3) |
J. Ypey: "Damaszierung"; in:
Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde", Band 5, S. 191. |
| 4) |
B. Gilmore: "A Snake Patterned
Sword Blade From West Heslerton, North Yorkshire. Ancient Monuments Laboratory,
Report 129 / 91 (http://services.english-heritage.org.uk/ResearchReportsPdfs/129-1991.pdf) |
| 5) |
Engelhardt; Conrad: "Denmark in
the early iron age illustrated by recent discoveries in the peat mosses of
Slesvig". London 1856
http://www.muenchener-digitalisierungszentrum.de |
© H. Föll (Iron, Steel and Swords script)
With frame
Books and Other Major Sources 