Hi ya'al
I happen to own a white arc and two other jian. The other two are not lk though.
And i am also a bladesmith so i have some input there.
I did some testing with mine on varius things which included chopping up 2x4s, cutting into tool handlewood from home depo ect, Goat bone ect. And these tests are not abusive to the steel or sword.
What is abusive is bad edge allignment to impact and torquing on a cut. Skall does alot of wrist turning and batoning which makes me cringe. Two handed he turns his hips and drops his wrists to give a good arc, one handed he isnt doing either if you notice and batons it at the end of the arc instead of midway with a slide and often %×÷=s up his allignment and twisting the wrist as he comes off.
This is very abusive to the blade. If he pivoted correctly or dropped/pulled the wrist down and back in allignment with the arc... Well hes just not getting the best of his one handed play in any video he does.
A good cut (which is simply defined as creating a void or severing)chops, splits and slices at the same time and theres a certain messure to where on the arc and angle acheives a push /pull effect. Its not always easy to get but generally sinking the hips, pivoting and using the core body does the trick. Turning the wrists as if you are turning a steering wheel like skall does... Isnt good for the blade or the cut either... I like skall but god doeth that irk me. I still find i do it occasionally on a pool noodle from odd angles barely but not to the degree of having a rounded angle just a very very minor curve. It does has its place in the topic of lethality and injury but i dont feel thats a good topic for this website and it attracts the wrong sort of people chiming in. Nor will I respond to it.
My other two jian will cut through a mounted 2x4 in a single cut and i can get maybe halfway through a board just sitting free on the stand with them as well. My white arc doesnt have the mass to do this honestly. It tends to just gash it instead of biting in because its too light. Cuts through 3/8"ths willow branches with ease though. I have a tree that overhangs my driveway, so every few weeks ile go hack off the overhang.
I found that i had a love hate for my white arc and heres why.
The first problem i had was with the scabbard and that it balances higher then the hanging point, the scabbard is a bit too loose and iv been offered suggestions for a patch fix from LK staff for that. The general problem with it hanging off the belt is a very quick lunge step can cause the blade to dislodge from the scabbard and since it hangs higher then the belt... Well you get the picture.
I found that was fixed a little if the scabbard was on the inside of the belt and not the outside, which is the traditional/historical way to wear a sword in most cases. But with how fricken long it is, its harder to draw it. Part of that isnt the blade/scabards fault, but part of it is, the scabbard needed to be heavier. Running with it on the belt caused alot forward back swing and a bad case of bouncing in and ouf of the scabbard pre fix.
The wood ring was also just glued to the notch with the glue visable instead of being bound which... Is user fixable I guess. Scabbards arent the sword, theyre an accessory and its an odd thing to get flustered over, given they are replacable.
the second was that being 5'10" with shoes on; I found that I had to often change the angle and lift the wrist higher when cutting from lower angles to avoid the ground. But unless youre super tall, everyone would have that issue with 38 inches of post tang blade length? That really isnt the blades fault though. Its really long.
The blade itself is rather light but has a slightly higher then normal balance point then expected which makes it feel heavier then it is, and that isnt a bad thing for this sword and facilitates better cuts but the swords total weight feels like 2 lbs when its really under a pound and a half. It is a thin long blade. Again this... isnt really that bad concidering the 38 inches of blade and a balance point of 11 or so inches.
If this blade was mounted with a basket hilt it would be the perfect rapier. Just saying. It would be as perfect as it gets though it wouldnt be a jian anymore. A rapier with a serious cutting edge and no plunge lines: THE DREAM!!!
Also the steel is not the historic puddled steel with an insane layer count of folds. Which is melted steel thats been allowed to cool while going down a slide of clay. Its a low layer fold of a of modern tool steel and a high manganese steel for the contrast... So its not exactly a replica in behavior. And yes that does change everything in a way for value, its not a true replica otherwise these good chinese lads wouldnt be selling anything they make for the extremely generous price of under 500$. You can pay 700$ for something it very rarely comes close in quality. AND its historically accurate in dimention minus the steel. folks at LK are some outstanding blokes.
I like to think that swinging a 4lb 6oz hammer for 5 hours gives me a more decent arm then most and when i have a helper i spend the day swinging the 10lb sledge hammer folding or drawing bar stock. And im a country lad that chops firewood. I can swing and chop like a mofo compared to most people doing just katas (and i still do katas too) That said it simply didnt have the mass identity required for medium cutting under the 1 foot line from the end of the tip.
For water bottles and gallons i couldnt tell they existed, cuts mats and pool noodles with ease and came stupid sharp.
The edge on the other hand experiencint minor dulling on 2x4s in the spots the manganese steel is exposed. But you know thats normal?
I could also cut a handle hickory tool handle wood a fourth inch and crack the other side but couldnt just kill the 1 inch hickory round like i could with my other swords. With my 3lb octohedral jian that balances at 6 inches above the gaurd I could cut the handle wood right off and snap it in the lower section at the same time sending the peices flying a good 15 feet not exagerating. Two handed swing test obviously. Even in the range of percussion between the com and cob on the white arc (God that sweet spot is low on the blade too for how long it is) it failed my: " break a spear test" that the heavier blades passed. The wood is like a rake handle from home depo made of hickory, little over 1 inch thick for that test. Why the test?
Its a military sword and theres some happiness in seeing if I can do it.
But for a wandering scholarly gentleman the blades perfect, just didnt live up to my expectations of a war sword.
On stabbing: it goes through a water bottle or pool noodle like it isnt there but still is too light for significant function on the 2x4, but it tended not to sink into the board that well unlike a heavier blade, not to the extent of skewering the board and having it be suspended by the blade.
Bend to 90 it passed multiple times without set. Full fencing lung thrust on a tree it bent easy enough without issue or tip damage. Which is impressive.
And (dont hate me) a friend a I, did a friendly sharps duel with cowhide jackets on and protective gear. I did get a two tiny chips on the tip and my friends rapier also got two chips equally on his tip section from the steel contact. Mostly we did tip parries and a minor cut only, no stabbing. It was serviceable with minor stone grinding but one side of my tip round is lopsided by a hair now.
The damascus oddly didnt fade since its from different colored steels and not from an etch. Which is nice. We also tested it on the thick leather by itself, it did hack the hide and stab through it easy enough but wouldnt cut on a gentle touch. So without a serious impact with resistance versus say a cloak it might be ineffective. Most light swords dont do much better honestly.
And no there isnt a video for that, sharps shouldnt ever be filmed for anyones entertainment morally.
------ ok heres now where i talk steel and not about the white arc... But on sets ect.
I see alot of over generalization about steel; which isn't factual, and if it makes sense/ doesnt make se sethats fine, it IS technical bable just fwi. You can skip this part.
First thing is wether or not the steel happens to be free machining or not. If it is, its way fricken weaker in just about every department. Sometimes you even see upwards of .5% content of phusphur/sulphur where the alloy standard is like... In the .005 range.
Thats a huge leap.
And thats BY DESIGN: so the steel can be cold forged and ground easier. ESSENTIALLY: its easier to damage and weaker for ease of production, and that turns into weaker swords that: take sets, scratch, chip, crack and break easier, not to mention if you have a piss poor quench... The unstable austenite at the core if not tempered immediately turns back into other phase states depending on how its cooled. Not that you EVER want a blade made out of enbrittlement martensite/cementite grain broundries all the way through in the first place.
Im a big fan of Kevin Cashen's stable retained austenite core if you cant tell.
Continueing with this:
In the softer phase states it work hardens faster when it takes a minor set which you wont see... But happens every time its significantly flexed. You see this alot on annealed steel used for fencing tools. (Weaker states being pearlite, ferrite with grains of cemetite mixed in... And sometimes bainite in its plethora of forms)
Why? Well this answer is because iron forms a matrix with 8 atoms on a cube. The sulfur/phosphur is either replacing one of those iron or attaching itself to another element being alloyed in to replace an iron atom. Like chrome and manganese, in which case you have 7 iron atoms, a single manganese which has a sulfur bonded to the manganese atom.
Most fail chemistry in highschool or forgets it... Not too much of a worry if that didnt connect but swapping out iron for non metal elements isnt a good thing.
Your Si content basically does the same thing and that also ends up where impurities end up, sulfur and phosphur being major impurities. Si tends to be benificial to steel in this way and higher manganese content promotes more MnS which is less harmful then say: an alloy band of sulfur. Yuck. Iv had multiple bad batches of free machining steel, from about 5 different suppliers for 01,A2, W series and 1095.
Flip side is if youv ever seen clean steel being machined; the grindings form a wire like a weed whacker spinning around which can cut up your machinery or cut your arm to the bone. Free machining just grinds off into powder. Nice and safe. Its drillable and can be cold formed. Which is what youd want for most production products
But not for swords.
And if you take clean steel and grind it, it wears down belts, heats up like crazy and needs to be cooled off more frequently, and post quench you really have to worry about that because it goes to tempering right quick. But higher abrasion resistance, toughness, stable ductility is something you want in a blade. Having a structure which doesnt come apart is a big deal for a sword but for say a machine part its generally better to have a snap damage wise then a twisted bar monkey wrenching gears as it were.
You can chop up alot of bad blade behavior quite a bit to this factor though, cheap ass steel.
Moving along to edge rolling, tends to be the product of bad swings way off allignment and wrist twisting like I mentioned above. The steel takes a set. You can strop and wear it strait, you are again... Forcing the steel to take a set. You can wear the steel to sharp again and this... Isnt really sharping it so much as forging it. Youre bending the edge back and forth repeatedly and eventually that will cause failure in the steel and increase the rate you see chips and cracks. This is where your free machining steel really sees issues.
You can see this with a super thin peice of annealed sheet metal (which is pearlite ferrite and carbide grains also known as spherite or cementite); if you repeatly
Bend the same spot back and forth it will work harden, get stiff and then snap. Wire and cable tends not to be free machining for that reason. Clean steel you can almost wobble it thin quite a bit before it gives the same way.
Now we talk hardened steel. Observe a plain steel spring which is through hardened and plain martensite.
Or a truck axel/ leaf springs. I like a truck axel for an example but usually someone mentions a leaf spring. The axel takes all sorts of abuse and then takes a set and then doesnt break. Similiarly the springs take all sorts of abusive things like rocks and chunks of semprini hitting it at high speed and the steel doesnt care in any way your common production sword might. (Swords coming damaged from stacked weight? Really? And its supposed to be a SPRING?
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Plain martensite can be hardened to 95% martsensite easily; can be indented and even forged outwards (which is taking a set) can be over stressed to take a major set like you see with the truck axel scenario... A sword can have the same properties when heat treated the same way. A nice good sharp spring.
Where you see failure on sets is usually because of a case harden of enbrittlement with a semi annealed core that has an unstable mix of phase states.
If the steel is austenized under the stable range: it has the first issue that the prexisting carbides might not be dispelled and block consistent grain growth. Where the grains might be bigger in other spaces they dont exist.
And when cooling at this temp the carbon migrates from the grains and forms spheriod cementite or iron iron carbon carbide in the ferrite grain junction boundries. It also forms faster on the preexisting carbides if they were retained. (Which annealed steel is: pearlite and spheres of carbides! Hey hey!.
When heated and then cooled to form the cm or cementite this mix of austenite and cementite converts to martensite with the cementite between pushing back and adds alot of hypertension adding to immediately hardness and holds and edge better and is more adamant, but when it gives it really gives. The plain martensite on the other hand just has normal ferrite grain boundries with little to no carbides with a reduced carbon content and is more ductile. So it can flex or take a set easier and the grains can dislocate and relocate. Its still forgable to some degree without issue. (This is what happens when it takes a set or deformity, the grains are physically detaching and reattaching like unsnapping two legos and moving one over) your cementite spheres in the grain boundries really dont like to take a set and would rather break. Thus the term enbrittlement. They block the dislocationnand relocation of the grains as well.
You can very easily get away with a tip of the edge having carbides and the rest of the steel be plain martensite too. Its pretty common given the very edge of of the steel cools alot quicker, especially if its about dime sized or rounded off.
The tempering of plain martensite/ferrite boundries expands at temp and just simply allows it to hinge easier... For a annealed core youre giving the unstable material time to migrate its carbon at an expanded state. But again if youre using an unstable temp you might have lost alot of martsensite letting it air cool.
You might see this with videos of smiths doing an interupted quench where they dunk it for a few and then try to straiten the steel before it turns into martensite, the inside temp didnt drop past the range where the steel converts back into ferrite and cementite, meaning its unstable and dissolves during that time its cooling off. It also might not have a balanced grain structure and since steel isnt ever homogenous in any scientific definition... You have patches which might have hit stable austenite at a lower temp and dont revert with the rest of steel, or the grains grew too early if the smith/maker didnt cycle it to achieve equaliberium. Tempering there for two hours or so helps the uneven structure migrate its carbon in a less deterimental way.
SO now we talk about katanas where this is really an issue.
You see this sort of thing alot with katanas, the inside doesnt get a good soak or cycle, you get an unbalanced and brittle structure or the person tries to go from annealed steel and just heat only the outside edge and then quench it...
Versus cycling it, and then doing the inerupted quench on the edge to get it past the section it breaks down while the core gets to experience that range, followed by a quench to cold.
Its that uneven grain structure which has been improperly formed that has the issues of snapping on a set or being hit. Combined with the embrittled edge.
Where plain tempered martensite and retained austenite with an even grain structure has the advantage is both retain the ability to be ductile. The steel would rather indent then break.
And if its just a plain martensite quench, you can wittle it down to basically nothing and its all hard, as proven by some very very old knives and swords.
And if youre not of faith:
You can take a brand new peice of 1095 which is annealed and do what matt jensen does to the spine to break it, and it wont break, just get damaged. What he does to kill a blade by slamming hardened steel on the spine isnt the result of the steel having an innate property; its flat out that someone messed up. If you dont beleive it you can look up a steel supplier like AKS or KnifemakerUSA, pay the 20$ or whatever for an annealed bar and try what matt does to break the bar.
I like to use peices of annealed spring steel as they come and just sharpen a side for a hot cut bar, 100 hammer strokes to the backside beating it through smelted steel for a fold doesnt kill the bar one bit. Maybe once every so often ile stress releive it with a normalizing cycles and then leave it as normalized steel.. It gets tougher after that but thays maybe after a few months of use?... But never will it do what Matt experiences breaking his spines.u Its a bullsemprini concept.
Edit: editted to add, its also possible to on a full quench to have slightly larger internal grains when they are sized evenly and smaller grains on the outside... Creating a hypertension effect that makes a blade harder and stiffer, but is still ductile, it just takes a massive amount of force to bend it. I do this on my blades and can smash them against hardened steel all day long and just have indentations. Perfectly stiff blade but will still pass a 90 degree bend test... The perception of flexibility is kind of off, most of the time youre looking at a thin bar and alot of leverage, or an annealed core. You can jump onna cut of leaf spring and say well it doesnt bend easy... But when it was on the truck obviously it was flexible.
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