Great Qama

ariel · 27th June 2020, 05:39 AM

Kai,
You hit the nail on the head: every variety of mechanical Damascus is a product of mixing/ twisting chunks of steel with different carbon content. Suffice it to take a book by Manfred Sachse and look at the endless combinations and perturbations of “ hard” and “soft” iron to realize that they all, without exception, are in fact “ twistcore”. But devil is in the details: different masters in different cultures had their favorite schemes of twisting to produce their favorite final pattern. Not for nothing contemporary Indian artisans manufacture blades with the “ bird eye” pattern: simple , quick and flashy. Turks twisted their rods creating “ Turkish ribbon”, old Vikings braided them, but Tibetans just bent their rods on themselves for their unsophisticated “ hairpin “ pattern.
It’s like music: every composer from Bach to ABBA had same do-re-mis, but arranged them differently.
This is why we can look at the Damascus pattern and guess where it came from, and why pattern A and pattern N have a lot in common implying a connection between the traditions.

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27th June 2020, 05:39 AM	#28
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	Kai, You hit the nail on the head: every variety of mechanical Damascus is a product of mixing/ twisting chunks of steel with different carbon content. Suffice it to take a book by Manfred Sachse and look at the endless combinations and perturbations of “ hard” and “soft” iron to realize that they all, without exception, are in fact “ twistcore”. But devil is in the details: different masters in different cultures had their favorite schemes of twisting to produce their favorite final pattern. Not for nothing contemporary Indian artisans manufacture blades with the “ bird eye” pattern: simple , quick and flashy. Turks twisted their rods creating “ Turkish ribbon”, old Vikings braided them, but Tibetans just bent their rods on themselves for their unsophisticated “ hairpin “ pattern. It’s like music: every composer from Bach to ABBA had same do-re-mis, but arranged them differently. This is why we can look at the Damascus pattern and guess where it came from, and why pattern A and pattern N have a lot in common implying a connection between the traditions.