Is the Dragon Slayer made of damascus ?

Well i always thought the dragon slayer was just made of a hell of a fine large block of refined steel proccesed from iron by godo. Yet giveing godo's skills as one of the most gifted smiths in the berserk world i think he may have folded they steel to give the dragon slayer a damascus build.. or mokume whatever metalurgy your throw at this. Normal damascus has a etched look to it which i started to notice across the dragonslayers broad side the 3 inch surface between the edges. It looks like Miura was trying to animate it like it was damascus steel.

damask steel

n : a hard resilient steel often decorated and used for sword blades

Damascus iron, or Damascus twist, metal formed of thin bars or wires of iron and steel elaborately twisted and welded together; used for making gun barrels, etc., of high quality, in which the surface, when polished and acted upon by acid, has a damask appearance.

Damascus; refers to a material which is made by the process of pattern welding. Basically what it amounts to is to laminate alternating layers of carbon steel and either wrought iron or mild steel or even pure nickel. This kind of steel is made by forge welding the various layers together then folding the forged billet over and repeating the process. By using simple multiplication, one can quickly see that after 16 folds you get approximately 65,000 layers of steel.

Pattern Weld; is a forge weld of two or more kinds of steel including a high carbon steel (assuming that we are making knives here...). Once the forge welds are complete and we have the proper amount of layers we can impart various mechanical deformations to the billet of steel thus displacing the layers. This will occur naturally during the forge welding process and the layer building folds from the impact of the hammer on the steel. However, very interresting patterns can be created by drilling holes, hitting the surface of the billet with cold chisels, twisting the metal and inlaying other metals into the billet. Actually, there is no limit to the patterning which can be created, it is basically always being improved upon by knifemakers in order to get that ultra artistic design. The layers of steel become apparent in the blade blank once it has been ground to shape, heat treated, polished and etched in an acid solution. The Etching is basically what makes the design visible.







You be the judge on this. Is godo skilled enough to make damascus blades. Swords once crafted by ancient japanese smiths once used the same process to make ultra strong wepaon's. Do you think godo could be doing the same ? Could this man have made the D.S out of such a extrodinary material ?

well genn

notice that the DS doesnt have the 'grain' that the other blades you posted have

and if that isnt enough for you, consider why godo built the DS in the first place

it wasnt built to be used, it was built to be a joke, why would a swordsmith waste his time, to intricatly weave and weld all that steel together for a sword that was to never be used?

Well, thats a Japanese technique you're talking about...not a European technique...
On that note, i believe reading somewhere that Vikings had a better technique of making steel weapons...

krebs4life said:

well genn

notice that the DS doesnt have the 'grain' that the other blades you posted have

and if that isnt enough for you, consider why godo built the DS in the first place

it wasnt built to be used, it was built to be a joke, why would a swordsmith waste his time, to intricatly weave and weld all that steel together for a sword that was to never be used?

Click to expand...

Built to kill a dragon i hear. Yes one of my point's to use such a vast amount of time to make such a weapon is crazy. I beleive godo spent a hell of a long time intrinsicly makeing this weapon. Maybe it's causeality that left him to make this blade so strong , i have no "idea". I was looking for a picture of damascus with that grainy broadside to it i know the exist i just could'nt find them.

Medieval do you know of this vikeing technique ? When i saw miura trying to draw a grainy look on the d.s blades base. It reminded me exactly of some damascus blades ive been seeing and i thought. "hey did godo actully create such a powerful blade through this process" ?

One thing you have to note. Is that damascus blades are incrediably strong , strong enough to cut small through small peices of metal plateing and cut steel pipes. Damascus steel also does not rust as easily as most normal steel construction's. How much rust have we seen on the D.S as of recent ??

Sorry i hate to make a double post but this info is on vikeing metallurgy. They didnt actully use a metal folding process to create stronger blades just a unique alloy system for... brass.

Bronze and brass

In archaeology we often carelessly speak of all copper alloys as "bronze". When speaking of Viking "bronzes", we are actually referring to alloys more closely related to present day brasses. Modern brasses are alloys of 30-40% zinc added to copper. During the first centuries AD, the Romans worked out methods of mass-producing brass. At this time it was not possible to smelt zinc ore, but it was possible to mix zinc ore with metallic copper and smelt them together thus obtaining the alloy from this process, called a cementation process.

The Romans founded brass foundries in present Belgium and Germany in the region around Aachen. The metal was exported from the continent to Scandinavia, as ready-made objects. As scrap-metal, and probably as raw material in rods. It is possible that this production continued under Germanic management after the fall of the Roman Empire.

Brasses, with a slight addition of tin or lead, are represented in Scandinavian casting all through the Migration, Vendel and Viking eras. Alloys like this have the advantage of running well when casting or solidifying slowly

http://www.vikingsword.com/serpent.html

Pattern welding, i know it makes the steel stronger than regular steel, but i dont know how much, i read in a separate article that pattern welding was stronger than Japanese Layering, but i cant find the article....

That looks a little more like the blade base from the d.s than damascus. Good stuff man. It would make a little more sence that godo would use a european patern weld than a japanese fold. ( seeing asian culture doesent seem to exist in miura's world as far as we know everyones european or arabic. )

It may be a pattern welded alloy. ( for all those who done know the blade base is the section on which the edges are formed from ) That granual surface that looks bumpy and etched before the d.s shaprened sides erupt from. aka the edges of the base.

Damascus was made obsolete by increasing furnace capacities. The Berserk world seems to be roughly equivalent of Europe in the 16th or 17th century. By that time, swords of plain steel were superior to damascus, or pattern welded steel. So it seems unlikely the DS would be made with an ancient and inferior production method.

Source: Sword Forum International

Berserk world reminds me of a ultra religous 13-14th ( or possibly 18th...) centrum euro world. Where damascus and pattern welded blades still held strong over iron produced weapons. Yet a 16-17th century does seem feasable since there is no official explanation on what the timeline is in comparison to the medieval ages.

15th century Maku had the first musket type gun's around and i hav'nt seen any yet which is why i typically doubt it .. but im not saying they dont exist in his world. There's alot to see which miura has'nt pulled out. Althrough most historians will argue that guns where put to practical military use in the 18th century. i'd say that grunbeld uses a gun.. but it's more of a modified cannon type pivoted weapon. What Gut's uses for a cannon is not commen place but due to godo's incredible wealth of armorment genius to develop super weapon's he has made a minature cannon. ( which would technically be the first minature pistol/cannon to use a flintlock pull string motion that would reflect the cannons of the 18th century .) Sorry if its a little confusing.

Im not saying at this point in the speculation that the d.s has a "deffinate "pattern weild or damascus fold. Just a alloy specific type of folding proccess which seem's to be drawn in on the blades base. This would explain it's incredible superior strength and resistance to rust.

handgonnes, (medieval guns) existed in the 14th century. The plague swept through europe in the 14th century (along with a few centuries before it...)

It is possible that Godo could have devised the cannon that Guts has in his arm.

http://therionarms.com/gonnes/gonne_toemortar.html

the link shows a mortar VERY similiar to Gut's cannon. Only problem is, I'm having trouble finding out where the first toe mortar appeared....

Makkuro, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasnt the 16th and 17th century the Rennaisance? the century after, the industrial revolution occured. It COULD not have been 18th century, and it was more likely to be 14th century....

I beleive the Rennaisance started in the 15th and continued through the 17th if im not mistaken . Yea the mortor does bear considerable resembelance to gut's arm cannon. The industrial revolution spawned gradeint steel that had stronger alloy's than the fold's of damascus,mokume or pattern weave welding maku. I beleive the berserk world exist's in a time a wee before machinery tho. I might be wrong tho about placeing the strength and resistance grade steel at the industrial revolution type era tho. I beleive the european discovery was around that time however.

Oh ya thanks for the link maku. Whered you see that part about 16th-17th century superior steel blades. Im not saying its not there , just i didnt see it ?. This does introduce a new idea , since godo's a forge master ( and Miura wrote this book who does live in modern times with knowledge of forgeing tecniques ) what if he used a little more of a modern technique to forge his blades and the fold them ? Here's something useful i did find from the sword forum however.

http://www.swordforum.com/forge/roadtodamascus.html ( here's a opinion of a forge master )

Damascus steel, the stuff of legends. In almost every iron working culture this material was revered and bestowed with magical qualities. A crafty weathered old smith made the elements do his bidding in his dark, mysterious smithy as he performed the impossible, fusing solid, different metals to create a weapon that could slay the mightiest dragon and never fail its master. Is it the pinnacle of the metal formers art? Can we have the perfect blade with steel that is malleable and tough intertwined with super hard steel with scary cutting ability?

Click to expand...

very cool topic ive enjoyed reading it some very good speculation

Ummm thanx , nice avatar.