11-29-2011, 04:29 AM
I just read through this thread. It does make me cringe! The Romano Celtic sword is too horrible to contemplate. La Tene has nothing to do with Romans, it is a pre-Roman mid European iron age culture and that blade is soooo wrong in every aspect. Why spend any money on any blade if you have to rework just about everything it comes with?? You are better off buying a piece of flat steel, outlining the shape of a sword, taking of the edges to get a nice swordshape, grinding away till you get something sharp and pointy and take it from there. You can even half-forge a blade in a good hot charcoalfire like a barbeque with an old bellows, banging it out on a bit of railroad track using a pound hammer on the bits you get up to red, just get a strip of mild construction steel and flatten the edges on both sides (hardpacking them), cut the full tang with a powertool or hacksaw and start filing away or use a belt sander till it looks like a sword with an oval cross section. Practice, and you can go for a rhomboid shape.
Some Roman blades have fullers, depends on which type you are doing. Many are either rhomboid (diamond cross section) of oval. Gladii are most often both rhomboid, and oval only the Puttense Vimose Pompeii gladius has fullers as well. A good few spathatypes do have fullers (alongside rhomboid, oval and facetted), but these are mainly later ones.
A word on "tempering", John. A steel blade is returned to its original hardness through quenching after it has been heated to over it's critical temperature (like when forging it). Quenching is done by immersing the steel in either water or oil. Carbon rich steel will become brittle again through quenching. To remove this brittleness, the blade is tempered. It is re-heated to reduce it's brittlenes. This is a pretty exact process, the amount of temper (which is actually weakening it to making the blade less hard/brittle) is judged by the colour of the polished steel. Drawing the temper of a blade makes it fit for use, it prevents the blade from shattering on impact. Overtempering a blade will make it too soft, it will bend on impact. Should you overtemper a sword, it is not lost, just repeat the proces of heating to non-magnetic, quenching and then tempering.
Sorry if this all sounded slightly terse, but I really feel we should move away from discussing Indian crap products as if there was anything to gain buying and reworking them for any sort of re-enactment purposes. This sort of "advise" will do little to help Dan get a half decent sword for bouncing around the countryside. If you want a wallhanger or a conversation piece, please, buy whatever shit is on the market, but stop calling it a "historical Roman sword" or what have you, as many poeple trying to sell you this shit will. Dan, if you want a half decent Roman cavalry sword for the third century, just buy a Deepeeka one with slide and round chape. Do not attempt to hit anything with it, though, please.
Some Roman blades have fullers, depends on which type you are doing. Many are either rhomboid (diamond cross section) of oval. Gladii are most often both rhomboid, and oval only the Puttense Vimose Pompeii gladius has fullers as well. A good few spathatypes do have fullers (alongside rhomboid, oval and facetted), but these are mainly later ones.
A word on "tempering", John. A steel blade is returned to its original hardness through quenching after it has been heated to over it's critical temperature (like when forging it). Quenching is done by immersing the steel in either water or oil. Carbon rich steel will become brittle again through quenching. To remove this brittleness, the blade is tempered. It is re-heated to reduce it's brittlenes. This is a pretty exact process, the amount of temper (which is actually weakening it to making the blade less hard/brittle) is judged by the colour of the polished steel. Drawing the temper of a blade makes it fit for use, it prevents the blade from shattering on impact. Overtempering a blade will make it too soft, it will bend on impact. Should you overtemper a sword, it is not lost, just repeat the proces of heating to non-magnetic, quenching and then tempering.
Sorry if this all sounded slightly terse, but I really feel we should move away from discussing Indian crap products as if there was anything to gain buying and reworking them for any sort of re-enactment purposes. This sort of "advise" will do little to help Dan get a half decent sword for bouncing around the countryside. If you want a wallhanger or a conversation piece, please, buy whatever shit is on the market, but stop calling it a "historical Roman sword" or what have you, as many poeple trying to sell you this shit will. Dan, if you want a half decent Roman cavalry sword for the third century, just buy a Deepeeka one with slide and round chape. Do not attempt to hit anything with it, though, please.
