![]() This modern illustration of a Roman bloomery shows the same process which Early Medieval people used to refine blooms of iron from iron ore at lower-than-melting temperatures. This bloom was then refined by heating and beating it to drive out the impurities and some of the carbon, to produce billets of finished steel. As we saw in our article on medieval steel-making, for most of the Medieval period, the kind of steel available was made in a bloomery: where iron oxide was baked with charcoal in a big conical clay furnace, producing a ‘bloom’ made of pure iron mixed with carbon and impurities. ![]() Bronze weaponry was obsolete by the start of the first millennium CE, so the material for making medieval swords was steel. The first step in creating a Medieval sword is the acquisition of proper materials. Let’s take a stroll through the halls of history, and see how to make a Medieval sword. No mere blacksmith could make a Medieval sword! How to make a Medieval sword evolved over the millennium-long era we call the Middle Ages (500 CE – 1500 CE) – but the mastery and skill of the artisans who practised their professions remained critical to the whole process. Even in the Early Medieval period, blade-makers were but one craft amongst many, within a network of skilled artisans whose specialisms were all needed to produce different parts of the sword, and who frequently produced weaponry to be traded or sold. As we can see in our snapshot into the life of an Anglo-Saxon blade-maker, none of that is the case. We think of it as a solitary occupation, performed by blacksmiths, only for extremely wealthy individuals. (via Wikimedia Commons)Īlmost everything we think about Medieval sword-making is wrong. The spectacular Franks Casket, carved from whale bone, was made in 8th century Northumbria, and it depicts an Anglo-Saxon forge on the right-hand panel, with the legendary Anglo-Saxon bladesmith Weyland at the anvil. His fellow masters, the polisher with his water-wheel by the river and the bronzeworker in his smelting-house on the hillside, would release the shining inner spirit of this weapon, made to the glory of this strange new God. This blade was not to be stacked with the others, to be traded for furs and amber from the hungry Danes. Inside, the folded steel ran like dragon’s fire, and its balance was wicked. Plunged into the slack tub of icy springwater, it was black and scaled and beaten – but the master bladesmith knew it was his finest work. Let the ploughshare-maker look upon my craft with envy, he thought to himself. The master set them upon the blade, and hammered them home – inscribing the blade with unfamiliar runes to the martyred God of the Christians, as his lord had asked. ![]() The boy, exhausted and breathing hard, almost dropped the glowing fragments of twisted metal, left to bathe in the heat of the forge for the final task. ‘Bring the twist-iron here, quickly, now’. With a grunt of satisfaction, he gestured to the boy. The master carefully balanced the blade upon a finger, testing its movement with a practised care, muttering an invocation to Woden, his father’s old god, to guide his hammer-hand. Pausing only to heap on another handful of his master’s special reserve of expensive black coal, bought from a Danish trader three summers before and kept dry and safe in the lord’s hayloft, the boy returned to hefting the bellows with all his might.ĭark had fallen and owl hunted beneath waning moon before it was done. Though his thirst burned from the raw air of the forge, his master needed every shred of heat he could squeeze out of the fire. ![]() Be it in a past life, an alternate identity, or as the modern hero himself, that volatile nature has occasionally Hawkman him to do some less than heroic things.The blademaker’s boy wiped the sweat from his eyes with a fire-blackened rag, leaving a grey smear across his face. In any incarnation, he can be a man with a temper, to say the least. These two conflicting identities, multiple universes ending and rebirthing makeovers, and various writers trying their best to make some sense of the original Hawkman concept while still trying to tell their own story, have burdened Hawkman with one of the most convoluted backstories in comics' history. Hawkman was either the modern reincarnation of ancient Egyptian prince Khufu or Thanagarian police officer Katar Hol. They also favor the use of weapons from the ancient past, like maces, swords, spears, nets and the like over conventional or even high-tech weapons like laser blasters. Each iteration of Hawkman has used a harness created from the mysterious Nth metal which, when coupled with large feathered wings, allows him to fly, and the characters also possess enhanced strength and healing, among other skills.
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