Paintball

[Schmitti]

TM ... Chainsaw bars also make very good blades if you can't get your hands on other steel So when you run out of gas from chewing up zombies you can turn your chainsaw into a decent blade!

My grandfather's brother made a whole series of knives (paring knives up to Bowie length blades) out of leaf springs from cars. This was done in metal working shop in highschool 60 some years ago. All the steel was heat treated after being worked... some of the blades are still in use today.

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[ScrapIron]

Originally Posted by Schmitti

TM ... Chainsaw bars also make very good blades if you can't get your hands on other steel So when you run out of gas from chewing up zombies you can turn your chainsaw into a decent blade!

with gas approaching $5/gal this may not be a bad idea.

[ThePixelGuru]

Originally Posted by sable

thats a european swords, not katanas or wakisashi. much different shape and function.

Right - and European swordsmanship has the tendency to be a lot more high-impact than Japanese swordsmanship. This being the case, I fail to see how a steel Japanese sword would shatter while a steel European sword wouldn't.

Originally Posted by sable

you kidding me? look at the chart a few lines down. it clearly says about 98% iron.

Because it's steel, and steel is mostly iron.

Originally Posted by sable

okay. when i said, "made of iron" i didnt mean PURE iron. it is mostly iron. the mixture varies ALOT from smith to smith. its not set into stone.

pure iron would nick and scratch very very easily when struck. the mixture of the metal and the folding/hardening technique is ancient and is the result of decades of testing and learning. the final result comes from the overall technique of heating, folding, heating again, and treating of the metal.

Oh, so it's mostly iron, just mixed with other metals to form an alloy. When this happens, we call it... steel.

Originally Posted by sable

no one will ever be able to reproduce the very same technique used by ancient sword smiths who made great swords and armour. armour and blades made by the japanese and the spanish at toledo. the blades were amazing and the technique is lost. all we can do nowadays is go by what we have learned that has been passed down or read about. in the same way, no one will ever be able to reproduce a Stradivarious violin. Antonio Stradivari had a special way of treating the wood that produced an amazing tonal quality that no other can ever produce. therefore the surviving violins are highly sought after. Japanese master swordsmiths had special techniques that varied alot from smith to smith.

Actually, a couple years ago I went to the Metropolitan Museum in NYC and saw a fantastic exhibit with tons of Japanese swords, most recently forged. The Japanese art of swordsmithing is alive and well, just not widely practiced due to time and cost effectiveness.

Originally Posted by sable

when i said steel was crap i was reffering to the 440c steel repos pushed by companies like BUDK and the like.

Backpedal much? Steel isn't "good" or "bad." There's expensive steel, cheap steel, steel that's easy to work with, steel that's tough to work with, brittle steel, bendable steel, steel that stays bent, steel that springs back after you bend it, steel that has more iron, steel that has more carbon, and on and on. It's not all the same, and shouldn't be treated as such. Sweeping (and incorrect) generalizations will just get people jumping on you for talking like a know-it-all without bothering to do some easy research. I really don't mean to call you out for being wrong, but it bugs me when people make bogus statements trying to come off like some sword expert. People who don't know much about a particular topic don't bother me - it's just people who pretend to know more than they do that get to me.

Originally Posted by Schmitti

TM ... Chainsaw bars also make very good blades if you can't get your hands on other steel So when you run out of gas from chewing up zombies you can turn your chainsaw into a decent blade!

My grandfather's brother made a whole series of knives (paring knives up to Bowie length blades) out of leaf springs from cars. This was done in metal working shop in highschool 60 some years ago. All the steel was heat treated after being worked... some of the blades are still in use today.

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A friend of a friend's dad made a badass katana out of the leaf spring from a Humvee. Wish I'd gotten a better look at it - razor-sharp would have been an understatement. Pretty cool stuff. From what I hear it took him a long time, though, flattening and folding over and over. Probably built up a good hammerin' muscle, though!

[Schmitti]

As far as we can tell the ones we have were just cut to shape and then ground on a bench grinder... then heat treated and sharpened. They all had hand cut leather washer grips with steel guards and end caps.

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[drg]

There was a nice Nova on this a while back, but unfortunately it's not one of the ones with the episode online.

NOVA | Secrets of the Samurai Sword | PBS