Hank Reinhardt's The Book of the Sword Read Online Free PDF Page B

learned their smiths could make a better blade, they tried to keep it a secret and sell their iron weapons at a premium. After all, the swords were stronger, tougher, lighter, and could be made longer, and, it was felt, be more effective.
    It is human nature to keep your foe at a distance if possible. It is widely believed that a longer sword can give you an advantage. (This is only partially true. History shows us that a shorter weapon, used properly, is better than a long one. Consider the Greek phalanx and its twelve-foot-long spears versus the Roman short sword, the short Zulu assegai battling the traditional long African throwing spear, the Spanish sword-and-buckler men against the Swiss pikemen, and even the long rapier against the small sword.) Since the iron sword was a better product, why not get top dollar for it? Although this is just supposition on my part, I have a strong feeling this is what happened.
    Restricting the flow of knowledge can only last so long, and in the end the knowledge of iron working spread over most of the world. Although the knowledge of how to smelt the iron and forge blades was pretty common, the ability to make fine swords was not.
    There were many "secrets": secret formulas for smelting the iron, secret formulas for forging, and above all, the secret of properly tempering the blade. Smiths all over the world were pretty successful at restricting this knowledge. There was also a lot of mystery to this art, real and imagined. This "mystery" coupled with "the grass is always greener" concept, led to the legends of Toledo, Damascus, Japanese, and Persian swords, and the fabled Indian wootz steel (of which more below).
    In a pre-industrial society, the ability to work iron and produce weapons and tools was considered almost magical, and its practitioners were linked to the gods themselves. Although the degree of reverence varied from culture to culture, the blacksmith was a powerful figure, and the blacksmith who produced weapons was even more important. This was true in many societies. Even the practical Romans had Vulcan, the crippled smith of the gods. Indeed, this crippling of the smith may have had some basis in fact. Both the Norse god Weyland and the Roman Vulcan were lame. Obviously this could be simply borrowing from one religion to another, and I am certainly not an expert on mythology. Certainly it is a good way to keep a good smith from running away. But we can read, and see, the importance of the smith in early societies. In Japan, Persia, China, Europe, and even in tribal Africa, the smith was of great importance and highly valued.
    It is easy to see how this can happen. Consider taking a lump of metal and changing it into a shining sword blade that is capable of cutting through flesh and bone, and even mail. The whole process can appear magical! Since nothing was known of chemistry or metallurgy, even the practitioners themselves could think of it as magic!
    Let me add something here on a personal level. I do not believe in magic. I am a hard core realist, and might best be described as a pragmatic empiricist. Having said that I am also forced to admit to having witnessed things I simply do not understand.
    I have seen Jim Fikes, a blacksmith living in Jasper, Alabama, at this time, forge and temper a knife; while others, using the same steel and methods, do the same thing, at the same time. Then testing time comes around. Jim's knife holds an edge much longer, and can be made sharper, than any of the others. This is not hearsay, but it is true, as I was doing the cutting. I made the effort and cut the material as identically as I could, and the results were amazing. I still don't believe in magical swords, but I can be persuaded that there could have been knives and swords that were amazing.
    There was one important reason that allowed this "mystery" of making a sword or knife to continue and flourish. The reason was very simple. The makers themselves did not know why the