North Cameroon sword

[Iain]

Originally Posted by colin henshaw

Iain,

I was wondering if you are able to comment on a point of interest to me regarding such Sahel swords and their relatives, ie. the iron used for the blades... Are you able to identify the blades in the following terms ? :-

a) Made in Europe and imported to Africa
b) Forged in Africa from scrap European iron
c) Forged in Africa from iron smelted there, using African iron ore
d) Some other category ??

Do you have a view on whether the above types of metal have an impact on corrosion levels and patterns, at all ?

Regards, Colin

Hi Colin,

a) Yes, these are the simplest in some ways. The quality difference is usually pretty clear.

b) Personally I'm not sure how to ID these. The finish, form, fullers etc. are what I usually go on to ID native versus non native.

c) Yes, some items like Tebu, some arm daggers etc. where it seems pretty clear when local ore is used.

d) I'd say none forged sheet metal items. Which are fairly easy to ID.

I have noticed different corrosion tendencies on European blades and sheet metal blades. However so much comes down to storage conditions, I'm not sure about using it as an ID method when it comes to European versus native steel/iron.

But I'm simply not much of a metallurgist!

Iain