Likes Likes:  1
Page 1 of 8 1 2 3 4 5 ... LastLast
Results 1 to 15 of 117

Thread: Stainless steel???

  1. #1
    Geoff. Guest

    Default

    Are stainless steel blades any good to preform tameshigiri? Any suggestions? Thanks.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    May 2000
    Location
    Washington State, USA
    Posts
    3,324
    Likes (received)
    48

    Default

    When buying custom knives, the general advice I've read recommends against stainless in blades longer than 6-8" because it's a bit brittle. Triple or quadruple that length, and I'd think the problem would be compounded.

    The high-carbon steel used to make railroad tracks is supposed to be good, however.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Sep 2000
    Location
    FLorida
    Posts
    72
    Likes (received)
    0

    Thumbs down Stainless Steel Blades for Tameshigiri

    I have personally seen two stainless steel blades snap in half during tameshigiri. And the students were cutting beach mats ! We do not allow these in class due to the high risk of injury caused by the flying piece of steel after it breaks. Serious practioners should spend the money to get a quality sword which will last for quite a while.

    Gojudude

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    Lindenhurst, Illinois
    Posts
    1,114
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default

    GM Koo has recently begun to make arrangements to import Korean swords (shin guem) from Korea. When it was suggested that SS swords could be had for much less, the student was met with a quiet reflective look and a patient explanation that approximates those made earlier in the thread (too brittle; too dangerous; poor balance).

    Despite his patience, or because of it, I have since kept my suggestions to myself.

    Best Wishes,

    Bruce W Sims
    http://www.midwesthapkido.com
    Bruce W Sims
    www.midwesthapkido.com

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jul 2000
    Location
    NSW Australia
    Posts
    260
    Likes (received)
    0

    Exclamation Stainless Steel Tameshigiri

    Hi,

    In the early days we used 440 S/S blades (from United Cutlery etc.) for tameshigiri, due to economical considerations. We had no problems! We have since moved on to high carbon steel blades (tameshigiri-to, manufactured in S/E Asia), due to the insistence of our Sensei.

    As long as you use correct tenouchi (grip), utilise excellent hasuji (blade angle) and proper kirisen (cutting line) one shouldn't have any problems.

    Regards,

    Paul Steadman

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    Lindenhurst, Illinois
    Posts
    1,114
    Likes (received)
    0

    Lightbulb Well no kidding!!

    "As long as you use correct tenouchi (grip), utilise excellent hasuji (blade angle) and proper kirisen (cutting line) one shouldn't have any problems. "

    Dear Paul:

    If I could do all that, I could use a spatula to good effect! In the meantime I need all the help I can get!

    Best Wishes,

    Bruce
    Bruce W Sims
    www.midwesthapkido.com

  7. #7
    Guest

    Default

    Paul...buddy...

    Don't do that anymore. Especially don't cut thick bamboo with a 440 stainless blade. You are risking serious injury. Stainless steel is way too brittle to be doing really serious cutting. A broken sword flying around is a recipe for disaster. Just because it didn't happen... yet... doesn't mean it will not in the future.

    The Japanese developed the unique metallurgy of their swords for good reason. I recommend that you go to the forum at http://www.bugei.com and ask Howard Clark if you want a technical explaination of why this is so dangerous. He understand sword metallurgy at the highest level around.

    Toby Threadgill

  8. #8
    Dan Harden Guest

    Default

    When buying custom knives, the general advice I've read recommends against stainless in blades longer than 6-8" because it's a bit brittle. Triple or quadruple that length, and I'd think the problem would be compounded.

    The high-carbon steel used to make railroad tracks is supposed to be good, however.
    __________________
    Joe
    http://ejmas.com

    *******************************

    I think the comments are a bit simplistic. In and of themselves "Stainless steels" are a far more diverse and complex group than to make simple comparisons to carbon steels. The various methods used for hardening/tempering are as diverse as the steels themselves.
    When discussing stainless steels, many people refer to the old types usually used by factories in cheap cutlery; 440A,b,and C being the most common. There are a wealth of stainless steels out now, with excellent performance capabilities that smiths are very well aware of, and the public knows little about. While I agree that the use of them in swords can be exceedingly difficult,it is not impposible. It is just that most smiths and ANY factory are not up to the task at hand. Personally, having tried them,I don't use them in swords.
    Knives are different story though. Many smiths have, and would, agree with me, that the performance characteristics of a well forged and shaped stainless steel blade will surpass that of carbon blades. Brittleness? Maybe in a factory blade or a maker who wasn't knowledgable of the materials available and the differential tempering processes.
    I could make you a blade of Differentailly hardened cpm420v that will withstand any abuse you wish to offer it. AND, it will outcut any plain carbon steel you wish to place it up against. I would love to sit back and suck up a few suds as I watched you "intentionally" try to break it in half in a vise!
    The notion of the "bendable blade" is usually carried too far. The tests put out by the various knife groups afford a much to soft and bendable "back" in my opinion. Then again so do many of the Katana offered. When I place my knives in a vise for a bending test and the bend "sets" at 90 deg.(as is the norm in many of these tests) I consider it a failure. It should spring back under tension. I have had knives that threw a 215lb guy back with released force.

    An edge will generally perform well in the 58-59 rockwell C range for most steels. The back and tang will be far better off in the spring tempered state than in a hardened state (factory knives) or in a softened state as is frequently found in differentially tempered smithed knives.
    There are several "powder metallurgy" stainless steels offered these days that will outperform most any other steel offered. Too, one should consider it of paramount importance to understand the effects that blade geometry plays in the functionality of any tool. Distal tapering, edge geometry, ridge height etc., play as equal a role in determining the ultimate failure of any tool as do the type of steel and the tempering offered.
    I could offer you a plain carbon steel blade, uniformly tempered in the 60C range and ground with a hollow ground edge with an equal "back" thickness from the riccaso to just below the point. Then place it up against an ATS34 stainless steel blade distally tapered with a canard edge with a rockwell of 58 on the edge and 45 on the back.

    Guess which one will win?

    And only a "part" of the performance parameters were directly attributable to the steel used.


    *****************************************


    Hi,

    In the early days we used 440 S/S blades (from United Cutlery etc.) for tameshigiri, due to economical considerations. We had no problems! We have since moved on to high carbon steel blades (tameshigiri-to, manufactured in S/E Asia), due to the insistence of our Sensei.

    As long as you use correct tenouchi (grip), utilize excellent hasuji (blade angle) and proper kirisen (cutting line) one shouldn't have any problems.

    Regards,

    Paul Steadman


    Paul.

    With all do respect. Tameshigiri is not all the same. I cut through live trees and steel cable with my katana. I know several smiths who do the same or equal. These tests are far more tortuous than cutting up grass or bamboo. Cutting these soft objects is no true test of a blades abilities. In my opinion they are BARELY adaquate tests of the ability of the men wielding them.
    It isn’t that the stainless steel swords you were using were “safe” due to your te-no-uchi or ha-suji. They could have been drawn back so far on the rockwell scale that the entire blade was essentially soft. That is the reason they didn’t break. It is also the reason that many others from different “shops” >DO< break. They are hardened through and through. Those blades can kill you when they break. Well, then again so will a poorly constructed plain carbon steel blade.
    All in all I would say you were lucky NOT to have had a mishap. It is probably a good idea to stay away from stainless steel swords in general. More so for the questionable pedigree than simply for the materials offered


    Don’t buy into the myth of the all mighty Japanese sword steel either. It was crude, smelted garbage, that had to be folded many times to remove the impurities. More should have been written about the skill of the men involved, who arrived at anything half way decent out of the junk they were handed to begin with!
    The stunning good looks are more of a byproduct born out of necessity than anything of intentional design. The folding process, necessary to remove the slag and impurities, and to distribute the carbon happened to produce some interesting visual effects. The lack of Manganese (an oxidizing inhibitor) is what helped to keep the steel darker than conventional steels when Nugui is applied.
    The result of the folding did nothing more than to homogenize an impure product. In its time it was the best method to attain an essentially uniform carbon distribution. After the attainment of a somewhat uniform carbon distribution, the complex folding patterns like Kobuse and San Mai, are completely unnecessary for the stresses placed on the blade. This has been proved out in tests performed by smiths in several countries. In fact, they did little more than add another potential for wled failure. The resonances set up in a blade at the moment of impact on hard targets do not require a soft support core (kobuse)or the support of a springy skin (san mai). And as far as cutting goes, provided all else is equal;

    any modern plain carbon steel will equal it (From ANY country).

    Plain carbon steels, with the addition of vanadium will out cut it.

    Others, with the addition of both vanadium and nickel will both out cut it and out perform it.

    The nickel and the vanadium keep the Hamon well into a diffuse Nioi. The vanaduim, in addition to inhibiting the formation of large grains, creates vanadium carbides that are harder than the martinsite formed by carbon carbides found in the more simple "tradionally" smelted Japanese product. The nickel naturally diffuses the formation of large grains and greatly increases the ductility (with blade geometry being equal)
    There are several American smiths (including myself) who would put the performance of their blades (not the polish) up against any Japanese steel out there. Old or new.

    More nonsense has been written about the supposed “perfection” of the Japanese sword than any other sword in history. The majority of it being written by scholars with no practical knowledge of metallurgy or martial art “dreamers” who have bought into, and carried on, the myth. In its time, it was an excellent tool. But so were many other indigenous peoples blades. The complex folding patterns of some of the Viking blades were far more complicated than the Japanese ones. They expressed a deep and profound knowledge of the materials, the shaping , heat treating and ultimate requirements of the tool.
    What made the Japanese sword stand above the rest was the totality of the processes in its manufacture. The quality of the steel being only one part of the equation. The refined structure of many smiths steel produced a small grain that when properly hardened, maintained a small grain (this shows as Nioi in the Hamon). But! There were many failures. You can find many weld openings and inclusions in Koto to modern blades. You will also find many enlarged granular structures as evidenced by Nie in the Hamon, which produced a weakened blade. While some smiths and collectors enjoy the look of Nie, its presence reveals a compromised blade. Beyond the quality of the steel,it was the knowledge of the shaping of the blade that did much to contribute to their legend. First and foremost, were the complex tapering, both in thickness and width. Secondarily it was the quality and perfetion of those lines. Add to that, the unsurpassed polish and finish as well as the fittings that expressed so much care and skill that these blades were fitted with. It was the totality of these processes that garnered the admiration of knowledgable men.
    I suppose I should add (and some would argue that this was myth as well) the highly refined skill of the wielders of these terrible instruments of death.

    Dan
    “who had the distinct pleasure of having a Nagunobu blade bend while his own blade kept on cutting.”





    [Edited by Dan Harden on 09-27-2000 at 06:44 AM]

  9. #9
    Join Date
    May 2000
    Location
    Washington State, USA
    Posts
    3,324
    Likes (received)
    48

    Default

    I'm sorry, Dan, I assumed that Geoff was asking about commercial swords costing under $500 rather than custom pattern welded swords costing over $2,000. Therefore I assumed that the short answer would do, especially as the short answer only took me a couple minutes to write instead of an hour. But, as one knows what happens when one assumes, the following is an essay about steel.

    Because they require almost no maintenance, swords intended for display are commonly made from 440-series or 420-J2 stainless steels. Unfortunately these steels are not especially suitable for heavy use, which includes whacking makiwara and tatami. But then, that was not really what they were intended for, either. SwordForum.com discusses the problems of 440-series and 420-J2 stainless at http://www.swordforum.com/metallurgy...ssuitable.html . See also http://www.cancom.net/~hnilica/metals.html .

    Now, if you intend on whacking things but still want the low maintenance provided by a stainless steel, a much more suitable sword metal is the Swedish K-120 stainless used in many Chen blades. For details, see http://www.swordforum.com/faq/faq-chen.html and http://www.damasteel.se ; also follow the links found at http://www.newsteel.com/features/NS9909f3.htm .

    Another MUCH more expensive alternative is having a smith pattern-weld a custom sword using stainless rather than tool steels. The pattern-welding process is often called Damascene, but this is not accurate because that term properly refers only to medieval Indian steel called wootz. (The name "Damascus" in this case does not refer to the Syrian city but to a type of cloth known as damask, whose patterns wootz resembled.)

    If you want to read more about pattern-welded blades, try James P. Hrisoulas, "THE COMPLETE BLADESMITH", "THE MASTER BLADESMITH", and "THE PATTERN WELDED BLADE" (all Paladin Press). Online, also see http://www.techfak.uni-kiel.de/matwi...ed/t5_1_1.html

    Finally, if you have specific questions, a fellow who will try to answer them resides at http://www.anvilfire.com.

    As for breaking swords, that's easy. The first way recalls a demonstration done on "That's Incredible" years ago. Some Great Grand Master was going to show John Davidson how he used his incredible ki to break iron bars with his bare hands. Unfortunately host Davidson accidentally bumped into the bars first and they shattered -- seems they'd been dipped in liquid nitrogen prior to airtime. The other way is the old-fashioned way -- you issue the thing to a private, tell him that this is his general-purpose tool to be carried with him everywhere he goes, and then wait at the supply room door with the replacement parts.

  10. #10
    Guest

    Default

    Dan & Joseph,

    Excellent posts. Geoff thats probably everything and more than you ever wanted to know about sword metalurgy. Hey, ask on E-budo and you will receive... maybe in spades! LOL

    Dan,

    Have you seen one of Howard Clarks L6 Super Katana's?

    I cut with one recently and was quite impressed. Amazingly traditional looking hamon all things considered.

    BTW, How have you been ?

    Toby

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    Lindenhurst, Illinois
    Posts
    1,114
    Likes (received)
    0

    Default

    Dear Dan and Toby:

    Fascinating responses.

    This question is a bit off to one side but have either of you read the material carried in a relatively recent book on Aikido and its relationship to Chinese arts? The reason I ask is because the was quite a bit of metallurgical information in there, though I must confess I had a hard time following it. I believe the gist of the material was to identify relationships between metallugical developements in the Far East as it related to smelting methods found in Northern Europe. The various psoitions were supported by assessing the chemical composition of materials excavated in various sites in Scandinavia, China, Korea and Japan.

    Thoughts?

    Bruce
    Bruce W Sims
    www.midwesthapkido.com

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Jul 2000
    Location
    NSW Australia
    Posts
    260
    Likes (received)
    0

    Thumbs up

    Thanks guys,

    Advice taken. We don't use S/S blades anymore! When we did we were only cutting soft material (grass mats, rolled wet newspaper etc) nothing hard-core. All the best.

    Regards,

    Paul Steadman

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Jun 2000
    Location
    Palo Alto, Ca, USA
    Posts
    1,324
    Likes (received)
    1

    Default

    Dan:

    I have heard a lot of people say that the supposed quality of the Japanese sword is a myth. The question is: compared to what? I have no doubt that modern smiths, equipped with modern scientific knowledge and training and modern tools and materials, could easily produce blades superior to medieval Japanese blades, at least in terms of their cutting performance and durability. Indeed, it would be exceedingly odd if we couldn't.

    However, comparing a medieval Japanese blade to a modern Western one is not a fair comparison. It would be necessary to compare a medieval Japanese blade to a medieval European one to get a fair comparison. The question then would be: how do European blades from a certain historical period stack up against Japanese blades from the same period, assuming that they are both products of competent smiths?

    Even this might not be a fair comparison, since the armor they were going up against was different, thus resulting in different designs. Still, it would be the only way to begin to arrive at a reasonable comparison.

    Earl




    Earl Hartman

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Aug 2000
    Location
    Lindenhurst, Illinois
    Posts
    1,114
    Likes (received)
    0

    Lightbulb OK-- dumb question time---

    I was reading the posts over again and it comes to me that people truly value a sound, sharp instrument with which to cut. At first thought, this seems to make very good sense. However, now as I give it a bit more thought I wonder if it is possible to depend on the quality of the sword to compensate for marginal technique. The model that I am using for this question would be, say, an Aikido student who routinely uses speed or muscle to make a technique work rather than polish the technique itself. Within obvious limts, how much do you all feel a high quality sword actually contributes to the accomplishment of the cut. My founding for this question is the anecdotal material which crops up from time to time about sword masters who could execute extraordinary cuts with marginal swords. I think what I am asking is -- to what degree is it possible to do the opposite and perform extraordinary cuts with superior swords and marginal skills?
    Thoughts?

    Bruce
    Bruce W Sims
    www.midwesthapkido.com

  15. #15
    Eldorobo Guest

    Default stainless steel

    Well I got to put my two cents in. I have cut quite a few times and only once have I used a "real sword" all the other times I have used 440 stainless steel swords in fact the same ones you can get fron AWMA for about 99 dollars. Now the handles needed to be shaped and wrapped the right way and the length shorten to give the sword more tang. But it has become a fine cutter. I have never seen one break but I have seen them bend but then I also have seen a thousand dollar hammered blade bent from cutting goza. If you don't know what you are doing then yes you might break a blade but if you preform your technique right then the 440 sword will cut. I remember a qoute from a instructor at a seminar. "A hammered blade will forgive mistakes a 440 will not." Yes it is more diffcult to cut with but when I used a hammered blade I didn't even feel the target (I thought I missed the target) Will I ever stop cutting with a 440 blade maybe when I get a hammered blade and get use to it but until then I will keep cutting with my cheap 440 blade. Now I would say that 440 blades are good for single target only I would never try more than one goza with it. And most likely it would not be good for heavy targets like double wrapped goza like those used in some tournaments for vertical cuts but still for training with single goza it does great.

    Eldorobo
    no insult intended no apology offered

Page 1 of 8 1 2 3 4 5 ... LastLast

Similar Threads

  1. Stainless steel katana in action
    By dirk.bruere in forum Member's Lounge
    Replies: 13
    Last Post: 13th October 2007, 12:43
  2. Why You DON'T Use Stainless Steel Swords!
    By Carlos Estrella in forum Sword Arts
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 1st April 2006, 06:38
  3. Stainless Steel Bowls?
    By DCPan in forum Member's Lounge
    Replies: 16
    Last Post: 28th October 2004, 18:58
  4. Why stainless?
    By Ren Blade in forum Sword Arts
    Replies: 4
    Last Post: 25th February 2004, 20:19
  5. Stainless steel swords
    By Battousai in forum Sword Arts
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 20th April 2002, 14:40

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •