DAMASCUS BLADES, are swords or eimeters, presenting upon the surface a variegated appearance of watering, as white, silvery, or black veins, in fine dines, or fillets ; fibrous, crossed, inter laced, or &c. They are brought from the E. t, being fabricated chiefly at Damascus, whence their name. Their excellent quality has become proverbial ; for which reason these blades are much sought after by military men, and are high priced. The oriental processes have never been satisfactorily described; but of late years methods have been devised in Europe to imitate the fabric very well.
Clouet and Hachette pointed out the three following processes for producing Damascus 'blades : 1, that of parallel fil lets; 2, that by torsion ; 8, the mosaic. The first, which is still pursued by some French cutlers, consists in scooping out with a graving tool the faces of a piece of staff composed of thin plates of different kinds of steel. These hollows are by a subsequent operation filled up, and brought to a level with the external faces, upon which they subsequently form tress like figures. 2. The method of torsion which is more generally employed at present, consists of forming a bundle of rods or slips of steel, which are welded together into a well-wrought bar, twisted several times round its axis. It is re peatedly forged, and twisted alternately ; after which it is slit in the line of its axis, and the two halves are welded with their outsides in contact ; by which means their faces will exhibit very various configura tions. 8. The mosaic method consists in
preparing a bar, as by the torsion plan, and cutting this bar into short pieces of nearly equal length, with which a fagot is formed and welded together ; taking care to preserve the sections of each piece at the surface of the blade. In this way, all the variety of the design is displayed, corresponding to each fragment of the cut bar.
The blades of Clouet, independently of their excellent quality their flexibility, and extreme elasticity, have this advant age over the oriental blades, that they exhibit in the very substance of the metal, designs, letters, inscriptions, and, gener ally speaking, all kinds of figures which had been delineated beforehand.
Notwithstanding these successful re sults of Clouet, it was pretty clear that the watered designs of the true Damas cus cimeter were essentially different. M. Breant has at last completely solved this problem. He has demonstrated that the substance of the oriental blades is a east-steel more highly charged with car bon than our European steels, and in which by means of a cooling suitably con ducted, a crystallization takes place of two distinct combinations of carbon and iron. This separation is the essential condition; for if the melted steel be suddenly cooled in a small crucible or ingot, there is no damascene appearance.