Bladesmith

Person who uses an anvil and forge to make various types of blades

Bladesmithing is the art of making knives, swords, daggers and other blades using a forge, hammer, anvil, and other smithing tools. Bladesmiths employ a variety of metalworking techniques similar to those used by blacksmiths, as well as woodworking for knife and sword handles, and often leatherworking for sheaths. Bladesmithing is an art that is thousands of years old and found in cultures as diverse as China, Japan, India, Germany, Korea, the Middle East, Spain and the British Isles. As with any art shrouded in history, there are myths and misconceptions about the process. While traditionally bladesmithing referred to the manufacture of any blade by any means, the majority of contemporary craftsmen referred to as bladesmiths are those who primarily manufacture blades by means of using a forge to shape the blade as opposed to knifemakers who form blades by use of the stock removal method, although there is some overlap between both crafts.

Historically speaking, bladesmithing is an art that has survived and thrived over thousands of years. Many different parts of the world have different styles of bladesmithing, some more well known than others.

Ancient Egyptians referred to iron as "copper from the heavens" because their lack of smelting technology limited their accessible iron supplies to what little native iron they could recover from meteorites. Despite iron's rarity, they gained enough familiarity with ironworking techniques to have used wrought iron in the manufacture of swords and blades as early as 3000 BC. They exported this technique to Assyria, Babylon and Greece through trade and as they conquered other lands and were conquered themselves.

The Proto Celtic Hallstatt culture (8th century BC) were among the earliest users of iron swords. During the Hallstatt period, they made swords both in bronze as well as iron with rounded tips. Toward the end of the Hallstatt period, around 600 500BC, these swords were replaced with short daggers. The La Tene culture reintroduced the sword, which were very different from the traditional shape and construction of the Bronze Age and early Iron Age, characterized by a more pointed tip.

Traditional Chinese blades (jians) are usually of sanmei (three plate) construction, which involved sandwiching a core of hard steel between two plates of softer steel. The central plate protrudes slightly from its surrounding pieces, allowing for a sharp edge, while the softer spine protects the brittle core. Some blades had wumei or five plate construction, with two more soft plates being used at the central ridge. Bronze jian were often made in a somewhat similar manner: in this case an alloy with a high copper content would be used to make a resilient core and spine, while the edge would be made from a high tin content alloy for sharpness and welded onto the rest of the blade. The swordsmiths of China are often credited with the forging technology that was carried to Korea and Japan, allowing swordsmiths in those places to create such weapons as the katana. Korean swords include long swords such as the yeoh do, geom, and hyup do and curved swords such as Samindo. Metal swords of double bladed leaf structure have been found throughout Korea dating back to the Bronze Age. These bronze swords were around in overall length, with a short handle.

The technology that led to the development of the Japanese sword originated in China and was brought to Japan by way of Korea. After abdicating, Toba II summoned Japan's finest bladesmiths around him in an effort to develop the perfect sword. Swordsmiths in Japan found the solution by wrapping a softer low carbon steel core such as wrought iron, in a jacket of high carbon steel and then hardening the edge. It was during the Muromachi period that the katana and tantō came into being. also crafted knives for cutting tobacco, which had been introduced by the Portuguese. The Sakai bladesmithing industry received a major boost from the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1868), which granted Sakai a special seal of approval and enhanced its reputation for quality.

The Germanic Migration period peoples also had advanced bladesmithing techniques for their level of technology. Migration Era smiths would often forge weld blades of multiple materials, and their blades were typically double edged and straight. Migration Era blades were often forged with a hard steel edge wrapped around a pattern welded core. Pattern welding was adopted from the neighbouring Romans, who had employed such technique since the second century AD.

Bladesmithing was common practice in India during the Middle Ages. A special type of steel known as Wootz or Damascus steel was often used in South Asia. The term Damascus steel can refer to two different types of artefacts. One is the true Damascus steel, or Wootz steel, which is a high carbon alloy with tremendous edge retention possibly due to its composition of carbon nanotubes and carbide nanowires, with a wavy surface texture originating from the crystalline structure of alloy metals such as tungsten and vanadium elements that occur naturally in iron ore from southern India to the surface during the manufacturing process. This is still in debate as metallurgist John Verhoeven at Iowa State University believes the nanowires to occur in most steels. The other is a composite structure made by welding together iron and steel to give a visible pattern on the surface, called pattern welded steel. Although both were referred to as Damascus steels, true Damascus steels were not replicated in Europe until 1821.

Between the 15th and 17th centuries the Toledo sword making industry enjoyed a great boom, to the point where its products came to be regarded as the best in Europe.

Damascus Steel was commonly used in the Middle East.

Bladesmithing began declining after the Industrial Revolution. With improvements in steel production, bladesmiths no longer had to forge steel and knives could be machined from flat bars of steel. As cutlery companies moved to mass production of blades and machine tools became more available, the art of forging steel began to disappear as knifemakers could grind blades out of existing stock. One of these bladesmiths was William F. Moran, who forged his knives using a coal forge in the manner of a blacksmith using a hammer and anvil to shape the steel. Moran began trying to revive the ancient process of forging Damascus steel in the late 1960s. However, no living bladesmith knew the exact techniques and without a recipe for the process, it was in danger of being lost; through trial and error he taught himself pattern welding and referred to his end product as "Damascus steel". In 1976 he founded the American Bladesmith Society (ABS). Despite its name, this was an international group of knife makers dedicated to preserving the forged blade and educating the public about traditional bladesmithing techniques. The handful of traditional bladesmiths in the 1960s rose to several hundred by 2005. When forging, the blade material is heated to a high temperature or forging temperature in a forge and shaped with a hammer on an anvil to achieve the desired shape, often to near final dimension, where very little stock removal, if any, is required to finish. Steel can be folded either to form decorative pattern welded steel or to refine raw steel, or as the Japanese call it, tamahagane. Grain size is kept at a minimum as grain growth can happen quite easily if the blade material is overheated. 5160 carbon spring steel is sometimes used for leaf springs in American trucks, making it readily available in the US. In Europe, EN 45 is more commonly used.

Many bladesmiths are able to forge a special type of steel using a technique called pattern welding, producing a metal erroneously referred to as Damascus steel. Modern pattern welded steel can be highly decorative as well as durable (if welded in certain ways with proper steels), and is often used in custom knife and sword crafting. Bill Moran is said to be the "Father of Modern Damascus Steel".