Saexes

Pattern-welding has a long history in Europe. It becomes established as an art form and a useful weapon in the early iron age. The Celts developed the use of two or more bars of soft iron to make a weapon, spearheads, swords and knives. The bars were a form of money, so if a person collected enough bars he would bring it to a smith and ask to make it into some kind of bladed weapon. Upon doing this the smiths discovered that the bars had different colors. Then they discovered that if you twisted the bars the blade become stronger and less liable to bending. This is where it all begins.

Patter-welding evolved over many centuries, being passed from bladesmith to apprentice and so on. The Romans had a great influence on the production of steel. The legions had to have a standardized form of weapon. This meant that they had to have a good source of carbon steel. The Romans being an industrious people, developed it to a high standard.

There are archeological finds in Canterbury from the 2nd and 3rd century of long swords with a pattern, made wholy of carbon steels. This means that on the outer edges of the Roman empire there were still the traditional forging methods being practiced that existed before the Roman conqest of England. At the end of the Roman period, around 500 AD, there is an explosion of movement within Europe. The tribal peoples that were pushed up to the Rhine were able to cross the river and collonized the fertile lands beyond. There is a movement from Scandinavia to new and better lands.

This is when in England we start with the Anglo-Saxon periods (early-middle-late). This all ends with the conquest of England by the Franks in 1066. In the time before this, pattern-welding became a high art form.

We know that the Sutton Hoo burial was around 625. There were many magnificent objects found in the burial ground, including a long ship. Some of the artifacts, obviously made for the high standing official, possibly a chieftain, are of outstanding craftmanship. I am focussing mainly on the sword, as I am a bladesmith. I am not sure if it was made in England, or that is was brought to England, but to me it is an example of a progression in the skills of the smiths of the time.

There have been numerous excavations of graves of the Dark Ages, and invariably they find swords, spearheads and daggers in the graves, be it for men or women. If you know what you are looking at, you can see a gradual increase of complexity in the patterns. That is a way to date them within the Ango-Saxon periods.

Make no mistake about it: these weapons are the equivalent of our AMRAM guided missiles. I think at this stage we can compare the skills of the bladesmiths of the Dark Ages to the skills of the Japanese smiths of a much later date.

I found out about Anglo-Saxon pattern-welding purely by accident, when visiting the Tower Armouries library. I came into contact with Dr. Brian Gilmour, who in my opinion is one of the most knowledgable archeometalurgist in the field of Anglo-Saxon pattern-welding today. He showed me some drawings of blades as well as X-rays. Believe it or not: because of my years of modelmaking experience, my mind immediately broke the images down in their component parts. (When dealing in modelmaking with complex object, you always start with the smallest part, and that part attaches to another part and so on and so forth and then you have your model.) I immediately realized that it was much more difficult than what I was setting out to do in Japan. It was my serendipity moment: I knew what I was going to try to rediscover in my life!

I went to Japan, I came back, learnt some useful stuff. Now I had to put it into blade, and I choose a Saex pattern. See picture below.

Woops! This was one of my first attempts on complex pattern-welding. I choose a 3-bar twist on top of a sandwich. As you can see on the drawing, this was what I was trying to do but it didn't work. So it dawned on me that this was not easy. I had to rethink and possibly back-off and not make it so complex.

This was a simple 2-bar twist welded onto a plain carbon steel. The picture doesn't show the twist pattern very well, but it is there.

This is where I started to make blades with a few more bars. This one below has 9 bars, including one for the shark's tooth. Don't underestimate the shark's tooth. It is very difficult! I know as I messed it up a couple of times, before I got it right.

For the next blade I used a Saex pattern from a small piece and X-ray from Reading Museum.

I made this when I was with Daryl Meier for 6 weeks. This is where my pattern-welding made a quantum leap. Daryl recognized by the Reading Museum piece that I was capable of learning complex pattern-welding.

As you can see in this section, the blade is made up of 12 pieces of different types of pattern-welded steel.

The next Saex I made was a reconstruction of a Saex blade in the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, UK). Up until now this was my most difficult piece. I had pretty much nailed down the methods used in making the blades, but now I had to really reconstruct an historical pattern. Believe me, this was not easy. It took me many fuck-ups. I did learn that what you start with is not what you end up with. And if you start with what you end up with, you end with a wreck.

The most difficult of making this reconstruction was the wrought iron bar running on the point. You can imagine that the end of the point heats up very rapidly, whilst the thicker bit is still cool. End result, you can burn the point and end up with nothing. So this was really nerve wrecking to weld. Imagine having 60 hours of work and ruining it in 30 seconds.

This is my latest Saex, it comes from the British Museum. I will put in pictures of the finished blade, when it is done, but on the picture you can already see the blade. Again, you can see the various types of pattern-welding you can achieve with this technique.

I use carbon steels for the moment in making my Saexes. I will be working toward using high phosporetic steel for the white and sulfuric steel for the black part of the pattern. Both carbon and plain steels need an etching medium and I use a mixture of sulphuric and nitric acid.

Patterns