Figured a new thread for the shift in discussion from purchasing to history would be appropriate. Here are a few photos from various museums in korea: Paekje: Gaya: Silla:
so does anybody make swords lime these anymore or has the ssangsudo and floppy sword of wushu taken 100% of the market? i can see how a slightly curved differentally hardened blade can slash through more objects than the geom of the three kingdoms-era korea, but anything sharp would do just fine these days, as firearms are more readily used for lethal home/self defense. with this in mind i think it would be cool if someone would craft and sell some replicas. btw the bay area school of forging is wayyyyy to pricey for me to begin the venture
Yeah one lifelong dream is to eventually get to do a bit of blacksmithing study. Very interesting stuff!
You, no doubt, are referring to the San Francisco bay area, but there was, at one time, a group in the Houston/Galveston bay area that was conducting smithing classes (lots of good ol' boys who want to learn how to make their own Bowie knives down there, ya know? - but as best I recall, it did include how to fold the steel/iron for a truly tempered blade, plus baking the edge wrapped in clay so it can be properly sharpened). I bandied around with the thought of attending a session or two, but it wasn't exactly cheap (but not TOO pricey IMO), and since I have made PRACTICE swords from blank bars of steel before, I decided to save my hard-earned money and to spend my time doing more fruitful MA training instead. Tales about ancient Korean warriors making their own swords is probably stretching the truth, or possibly using too generic of a word for the translation (i.e. they most likely DESIGNED their own swords, while not actually MAKING them, as in smithing the metal, etc.). In keeping with the topic of this thread, however, I did read about a unique modern technique (in a book about sword smithing) that was used by the Japanese to render a decent cutting sword for their officer's dress uniform during WWII. The swordsmiths discovered that merely shaping a sword from a bar of steel (which lacks a temper from folding it several times), would often break if actually used for serious cutting. So rather than use just a blank bar of steel, they used a softer steel bar inserted into a [flattened] pipe made of harder steel, which then only needed to be fired long enough to marry the two together. This construction cuts down on all the time it takes to fold the steel repeatedly, per the traditional tempering process, yet allows for a similar mix of hard/soft metal along the cross-section of the blade. Baking the blade while wrapped in clay to produce a 'temper line' is still required, as well as having a professional polish (i.e. sharpening) added to complete the project, but I found this *short cut* method interesting to say the least. Hopefully you did too.
speaking of shortcuts, there is a lone practce sword 'crafted' from an old plane's exterior in our hq!
If it's the sword I'm thinking of, it may not be made from the hull of an actual plane, but merely from aircraft-grade aluminium. :dunno: There are different types depending on the end use (e.g. cast aluminum is used as the housing for some automobile engines, and extruded aluminum is used for most things people associate with this metal, such as window frames, etc. - but these tend to be very brittle when compared to aircraft aluminum, which I believe has a higher magnesium content in the alloy). Aircraft aluminium is extremely lightweight yet retains a great deal of *flex* (which makes it IDEAL for a practice sword!).
probably something like Duralumin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duralumin There was a lot of that left after WWII, both from scrapped aircraft and unused. As a result there was a glut of it - and aluminium. In the UK there were numerous attempts at using the stuff: garage doors, baby buggies, studs for rugby boots, bodies for land rovers
saw this as an excellent start to seeing what swords looked like in kingdom-time korea: http://www.arscives.com/historysteel/korean.swordlist.htm
Mine is actually made from this stuff...... wasnt from an actual plane though. Was just a bit of scrap left over from something that a bloke that makes swords round this way fashioned into a sword for me. VERY light, flexible and will actually go through a board.... however wont make it through 2!
People in the States, who don't want to make their own training blade, could always contact Bob Burgee: http://trainingblades.com/
