Care and Feeding of Swords, Knives, & Tools
Well then, perhaps you need to take your happy ass on down to Walmart, you're obviously in the wrong place.
For everyone else, when you buy a custom made, or one of a kind piece, you are not buying a knife or a sword or an axe, you are buying a part of my life that I will never get back. You are literally holding some of my life in your hands and on my death bed you won't be able to sell it or give it back to me.
Think about that for a moment.
How much is your life worth to you? $15? No? Me neither.
And something most people don't realize is that you are not only paying for the time I spent making that one item, you're paying for the 30+ years it took me to learn how to make it to the level of skill I did.
That's all there is to it.
Yes, as a matter of fact I do!
Have you read the "About us" page? No? Well, there's something I need to ask you first, how do you like sleeping on the ground? Do you enjoy
not knowing where you're going to sleep that particular night? Or not knowing where you'll be next month? Sound confusing?
Well that's because I am the dictionary definition of a journeyman smith, as in "Journey" (not the band) and "Man", I journey, I travel for a living full-time,
which means you will travel full time. There is a lot of couch surfing, camping (hence the sleeping on the ground part, which happens with shocking regularity),
even sleeping in vehicles (that are usually crammed full of sharp/pointy objects).
Sound like fun? Yeah? Well, there's a few other things too. I work with hot steel. Damn near molten hot. What does that mean for you? Well, how do you like getting burned?
No? Well, you better get used to it, because it will be your daily reality. Also being cut, scraped, stabbed, and whacked, on a daily basis. What we do hurts, a lot and often.
Watch Forged in Fire sometime and see how much blood ends up on the floor and you'll find out really quick I'm not kidding.
Still not put off yet? Well, there is one more thing, what we do is not only dirty and dangerous, it's downright deadly. There are at least three dozen ways to spectacularly kill
yourself in a metal shop and about a third of those ways will also kill everyone else in the building with you. A great deal of your time will be spent
learning how not to kill/maim/mangle yourself or others around you in the shop, once you have that down, then you can start learning how to actually do
something useful.
Still not put off yet? Good! You may be just who I'm looking for! If you have a taste for adventure, a lust for life, and a desire to learn (and don't mind sleeping in dubious places), then you just
might fit right in, so drop me a line and we'll talk about it.
It's been my experience as someone who makes and sells blades for a living that there is nothing in our culture more misunderstood than swords. I hear some of the most ridiculous things about them, but what really gets me is how common these things are, so here are some of the more common misconceptions/myths I get asked about or hear customers telling their friends in the shop.
The myth is that the groove down the center of some swords, properly called a "fuller", is so that the wound will bleed more, or to release the vacuum so your sword doesn't get stuck in the body.
I get this one a lot, people are very surprised when they find out a real sword is very light and flexible, not some horrendously heavy thing. Swords had to be as light as possible, while still being very, very strong. Think about how long someone would have to swing a sword on a battlefield; for hours, maybe all day! So if your sword is ridiculously heavy, unbalanced, or worse yet, both, just a few swings into a real fight for your life and you'd be too tired to defend yourself, which is worse than useless, it will get you killed. A sword should also be well balanced so it is easy use, and have a flexible blade so that it will flex with a shock, like hitting another sword, and not break.
The short answer is no, never.
I hear people say this, and see them type it in online forums a lot on the subject of how swords are made. It comes directly from movies like Conan (both the OG and the remake), anime, and comic books. I have no idea where this ridiculous notion started, but I'm going to hazard a guess that someone read about how bronze swords were made and
assumed iron/steel swords are made the same way.
Well, that is not the case at all! What you would be making at that point is a cast-iron sword, which would be useless in a fight. Cast iron is brittle, and wouldn't take temper or a decent edge.
What is the best tool in the world, a hammer or a screwdriver? Depends on what you are going to do with it! Swords, like all weapons, are tools, each tool has a specific job to do and you need the right tool for the job, therefore, there is no "best sword", generally speaking.
That's like saying the screwdriver is the best tool in the world. The Katana is a tool, meant for a very specific job, cutting through Japanese armor. Use it for any other job, like cutting into European armor, and you're going to have a bad time. See the previous question for a more in-depth explanation.
*buzzer noise* Wrong!
It is true the traditional katanas had many thousands of layers, some had millions of layers, but they were not folded that many times, that would take forever. How these high layer counts come to be is a simple geometric progression sequence.Sadly not true.
Most swords, especially in Europe, were not razor sharp, as a matter of fact, during any era in a place where metal armor was prevalent you would be hard pressed to find a very sharp sword. In some places like China, India, and Japan, yes, you would find razor sharp swords because metal armor was rare.
The Japanese Katana is an excellent example of why. The Katanas were razor sharp because the Japanese did not have steel armor, their armor was a laminate of leather, bamboo, and silk. It required a razor to cut through it, so Katanas were razor sharp.
If you were to take that same razor sharp sword and attack a medieval European Knight with it, the second your sword made contact with his armor, your blade would shatter along the Hamon line (the wiggly line along the blade of a Katana is called the Hamon, it is the dividing line between the super hard and sharp edge material of the blade, and the softer, more resilient back of the blade).
In places where steel or other metal armor was the norm, like medieval Europe, then sword edges were shaped like a chisel with an approximately thirty degree grind to them to cut into/through that armor without damaging the blade edge.
This, of course, has given rise to another myth...
Not exactly, but close.
Depending on the time frame and type of sword, some, like the Renaissance era Rapier, were razor sharp. During the Iron Age through the end of the Medieval Period, most swords were not sharp, you would have a hard time even cutting your hand with one if you ran it down the blade.
However, they were not totally blunt, either. A truly blunt edge is actually round and these swords did have an edge, but more of a chisel edge to cut through metal than a sharp edge for cutting meat.
This is very much not true!
The most common way people cut themselves very badly is using a dull knife!
People will say all the time that only a razor sharp sword will cut through Tatami Mats, or bone/people, or whatever, but this is not the case at all.
I had a customer ask me if only a razor sharp sword could make a deep cut, and being the scientist/engineer I am, I said "I don't know, let's find out!". So I got some old baseballs, which are very tough to cut through, and borrowed a razor sharp cutting competition Katana from a friend.
I then attempted to cut some baseballs in half and, as you would expect, it cut through easily and cleanly, every time.
Next, I took a Katana with a European style 30 degree armor-cutting edge and tried it on another baseball. Believe it or not, it cut just as easily, just as cleanly, every time I tried it.
So, I can say from personal experience, no, you do not need a razor sharp sword to make a deep, clean cut.
Said baseballs after chopping
*Ahem* No.
I hate to break this to you, but if you got your sword at the pawnshop for fifty bucks, or the mall or a Ren Faire for a hundred bucks, it's crap.
If it says "PAKISTAN" or "CHINA" or "INDIA", etc., on the blade, it's crap.
If it says "STAINLESS' on the blade, it's crap.
As a matter of fact, if it doesn't meet the conditions I specify in the next question, it's crap, sorry.
Good tools are not cheap and cheap tools are not good! And a sword, knife, axe, etc., is only a tool! So, if your sword was cheap, that should be your first indication that it's crap.
There really is only one way to be sure if you are buying a quality weapon. I don't care what the sales person tells you about how tough it is, or how battle ready it is, there are a lot of disreputable companies out there that make total crap, but will tell you all day how tough and "battle ready" their swords are, but they are lying!
The one way to know for sure is to ask them if they will back up their work with a lifetime guarantee against major damage to the blade. If the answer to that question is "yes", then you are looking at a quality piece. If the answer to that question is "no", no matter how pretty or how expensive it might be, it's probably crap, walk away.
Every manufacturer out there that makes a truly quality product, whether they mass produce or hand make each piece, backs their work up with a lifetime guarantee because they know that if it's properly made you can't break it! Companies that make crap DO NOT guarantee their work because they know that you WILL break it sooner or later!
Without naming any names, I can think of several big name companies that claim to make "battle ready blades" that do nothing of the sort! Their reputation is nothing but hype and here is the easiest way to tell: simply go to Youtube and search that company's name, but here's the trick, ignore any video produced by them or that has any of their people in it, look at actual customer videos and see what they say about the products, or better yet, watch the demo videos that customers put up, that is the REAL TEST!
Youtube is the great equalizer when it comes to product claims, don't be afraid to use it!