Tibetan long knife with unusual folding

[josh stout]

Some have you have seen this before, but I never found out what the folding pattern on this blade is, so please let me know what you think. This is a traditional Tibetan knife/short sword with an acute angle tip. The pommel has been replaced, so I am only showing the blade, but the blade is quite interesting. At the tip it resembles standard hairpin folding.

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j65/p ... bbe986.jpg

However, as the blade widens, the pattern resembles the feather pattern of twist core. I do not think it is twist core though. It looks to me like a couple of rods were bent into a chevron design. I think they may have been set up as hairpin rods running backwards from the normal direction up the blade, so the blade would have had a double ended hairpin rod design except the backwards rods were bent into the chevron design.

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j65/p ... 614c7d.jpg

What do you think of this guess? Have you seen anything similar?
Josh

[Peter Dekker]

Nice pictures!

To be honest, I'm not sure how these are made but I will ask someone with a lot of experience in recreating odd pattern welds who ought to have a clue. I think you're right that it doesn't really appear to be twist core because you'd expect to see the line where the twisted bars were joined.

I did in fact see a very similar folding pattern in a private collection on a very nice hollow ground zhibeidao. I also seen one that even had double rows of this twist-like thingy.

From making a forge folded ring with my causin (who is a goldsmith) once, I do know what a similar pattern *could* be achieved by cutting V shaped grooves into the steel and then flatten it to a level surface again. Layers under the top layer will come up in the pattern you have cut out of the metal before. Of course, this is much easier with the brass, silver and copper we worked with at the time.

-Peter

[josh stout]

I don't think the pattern is made by cutting, like the "ladder of Muhammad" patterns in crucible steel. I have not seen Tibetan blades that use that technique, and I have not seen a reference to them using it. Also, I can trace the lines from one chevron to the next. They are all one continuous piece.
Josh

[Peter Dekker]

You're right.. upon closer inspection I now also see that you can follow them from one to the other...

This must have been one labour intensive piece of steel.. Too bad the rest is not original anymore, I would have been interested in seeing what the rest looked like.

-Peter

[josh stout]

There is an old iron guard of typical shape that was mostly wrapped over with copper wire (my guess is in the 1970s judging from the crumbling plastic insulation on the wire), an original small piece of wood under the wire, and then a copper pommel that replaced the original. It looks like the newish copper pommel has silver repousse inserts that might have been cut from the original pommel and added to the new one. The photos were before I rewrapped the wire to just cover the small wooden section like it supposed to.
Josh
http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j65/p ... 377491.jpg

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j65/p ... 332e40.jpg

[Kenneth, H.]

Isnt this pattern the socalled 'hair pin' pattern, created by stacking bendt V-shaped plates of steel into eachother?
I dont recall exactly how this was done, but I do recall reading some input on this specific pattern on SFI a way back..

Best regards, Kenneth A.H.

[josh stout]

The picture of the tip shows that it was indeed a sub species of "hairpin folding", except, instead of long parallel lines showing a simple stacked construction, the center rod(s) were bent into a herringbone pattern. A similar pattern could be made by twist core, which is not unknown in Tibetan pieces, but in this case the pattern was made by bending the rods into the shape you see. My supposition is that the inner rods were placed in an inverted hairpin folding position so that the pattern is reminiscent of the double ended hairpin folding showed on one piece in LaRocca, but then the inner rods were bent into this unusual pattern.
Josh

[Scott M. Rodell]

Just for comparison, here's a Tibetan Ral Gri we sold at Seven Stars-





You can find a useful article on Tibetan Swords at: http://www.vikingsword.com/ethsword/tibet/index.html