Part 20: Episode 20: Damascus - The Middle District

Episode 20: Damascus - The Middle District

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Notes -
- Head here for Damascus steel pictures Also, while I'm on the Wikipedia-linking track, here is a link to Damask, one of the believed origins for the Damascus steel namesake.

- I usually do commentary with a notepad-type program open on the side, so I can scroll through my notes as a refresher. Right when I started to get in to the stress-strain stuff, it glitched out somehow and I decided to wing it from memory TRY AND SPOT WHEN! I would've re-re-recorded this, but I actually hit most topics I wanted to, given the time available. In spite of leaving things out, I didn't have much time to spare for elaboration.

- The tie-in from the stress-strain topic in to the Damascus steel topic wasn't as well defined as I was hoping, largely due to what was mentioned above.

• If you've got poor yield strength, a blade will get bent and deformed pretty easily.
  
• If the tensile strength is low, then a bend or kink could easily lead to it "necking" and eventually snapping, which can be depicted by, say, pulling some gum to the point of tearing. It's just a cross-sectional thinning that occurs near the failure. If you remember brittle vs ductile from good ol' science classes way-back-when, those two are tied in to tensile strength.
  
• If something has a low fatigue strength, then even if it has good yield and tensile strength, it won't last too long! If you want a convoluted description, it's basically the strength of our strengths! Savvy?
  
• Finally, there's impact strength. How does it apply to a sword? Well, having your sword break mid-fight would make for a pretty lousy day; let's just leave it at that.

Anyhow, those were all pretty major concerns for folks using run-of-the-mill blade metals. Damascus steel had a reputation of surpassing all other metals in these strengths by quite a ridiculously large margin. Given the cost and time involved, though, it wasn't something you saw your Average Joe using.

- Another thing that I forgot to mention: the banded pattern that Damascus steel results in is obtained through a process known as "pattern welding." Pattern welding refers to combining multiple metals of differing composition (through "forge welding"), usually resulting in a visible difference.

- I described stress-strain stuff as dumbed down because most of what I recall ties in to the crazy math. Five years later, this topic is still giving me nightmares about stress tensors. I actually had one a couple of nights ago Anyhow, if someone spots some nonsense in stuff as I'm going through, let me know!