Gt Obach,
Thank you for your ‘manual’ on making a blade, it is very interesting. I don’t know about others, but I have always wondered how long time it took to make a blade. Th.H.Hendley would have known, as he lived in India at the end of 1800, the time when many of the weapons we collect were made, but he does not mention it for some reason or other.
In the book ‘Persian Steel’ by James Allan and Brian Gilmour. Oxford University Press, 2000, James Allan writes, in the chapter Arms and Armour/Centres of production that the production of arms and armour, under Timur was centralised, and that he had more than one thousand workmen making arms and armour ‘…and to this business they are kept at work throughout the whole of their time in the service to his Highness’. When I read this, I thought that this would have accumulated at a ‘mountain’ of arms and armour, and it did, but over the years; and one must not forget, that they did not only make the weapons, they also had to repair what had been broken. Due to this relatively show production process, and to avoid the enemies use of the weapons again; looting, when a battle had been won, was very important. Weapons from the south are found in armouries to the north and opposite, just like they ‘travelled’ from east to west, and from west to east.
Jens
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