[Sca-cooks] Damascus Question

[Phlip]

Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...

> There is a picture of a small kard suitable for an eating knife--and,
> as it happens, of damascus, I think wootz--in the Miscellany, in the
> article on Islamic clothing and weapons, webbed on my site. If you
> want more pictures or pictures of larger ones, I could easily enough
> take them and send them to you.
> -- 
> David/Cariadoc
> http://www.daviddfriedman.com/

Well, I went and looked, and all the illustrations were removed. If you
could take pictures, I'd very much appreciate it- I'm getting interested
now, because all of the ones I've seen so far seem to be approximately the
width of the hilt, which appears pretty narrow. The exception was the pic
Olwen directed me to, which, to my eye, looked very much like a spear blade,
socketed similarly, but with the hilt narrower than the blade, and offset so
you don't bust your knuckle- similar to modern chef's knives, but slimmer..

The one I'm designing for Adamantius is from a picture he sent me- found it
myself in one of Devra's books (The one in French, Devra, that was $100 that
I was drooling over until you sold it?) It's interesting, in that it's very
widely bladed, looking rather like a modern chef's knife until you get to
the tip, which has a cut out in it so that (we think) it can be used as a
fork or hook to move meats about. I'll be doing his in mild steel with HC
steel inset for the cutting edge, using the period solution to their lack of
quantities of steel, to give a blade both toughness and a quality edge-
that, btw, is how the Sutton Hoo sword was put together.

At any rate, I'm very interested in any artifacts people can come up with
for cooking purposes, made in steel, since my current focus in smithing is
on cooking implements.

Back to talking about making utility knives, though. Part of the problem,
that many people don't realize, is that making a small knife is as labor
intensive as making a large knife. At the cost of steel nowadays, the
materials are pretty inexpensive- a quarter per lb for scrounged steels,
maybe a couple dollars a lb for new, specific content steel, and hilt
materials, unless you go for something really exotic, are not much more, but
a small blade requires just as much hard work and shop materials as a large
blade does.

The forging's the easy part, believe it or not- you can (and should, to
prevent carbon migration) forge the blade pretty quickly - it's the later
shaping, polishing, fitting to a handle, etc which is the time consuming
part.

Saint Phlip,
CoDoLDS

"When in doubt, heat it up and hit it with a hammer."
 Blacksmith's credo.

 If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably not a
cat.

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....