Forgive me if this has been discussed before but I am very interested in whether or not the European art of pattern welding ever really died out.
H R E Davidson in her excellent book 'The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England' 1962 did some work with an experimental blacksmith to try and rediscover the techniques used by old English smiths, because, it was thought that these skills had disappeared. It was largely due to her book and work from her colleagues that pattern welding became so widely known in the post World War 2 world.
But did it really ever die out? I know that smiths in Germany during the 20s and 30s were using the technique. What I don't know, for sure was whether this was part of a tradition or whether they had worked the techniques out for themselves.

Any ideas?

Paul

I've seen many European blades and firearms from the 17th thru 20th century made from pattern welded material, I think the technique was only lost to historians and not to smiths.

I once read something on a forum. Somebody claimed that pattern-welding died out due to the christianization of Europe. This special skill was considered to be pagan and therefore outlawed/forbidden.
I think this is a........well, a rather strange idea to put it nicely *g*

People stopped to do pattern-welding simply because they got better at producing steel - larger amounts and better quality. So they could afford to make mono-steel blades, those were easier to make and just as good or even better.
If Im not totally wrong the whole purpose of pattern-welding was to produce a high quality blade despite the "shortage" of high carbon steel. The body of the blade was made of several layers of steel and iron of varying hardness. Then the smith folded and twisted those layers and finally the high carbon steel edges were forged on. I hope I didn't make any serious mistakes *g*

I don't really know if people completely stopped doing pattern-welding, but it sounds plausible to me to assume that they continued to do so for pure asthetical purposes. Just wild speculation on my part since I don't have any evidence.
Maybe someone with better knowledge could could comment on that.

I may testify that in the brescian area, which is the core of Italy's firarm production (just two names, Beretta and Franchi), the art of pattern welded barrels was lost after ww2, when all the old artisans died.

Until then exquisite pattern welded barrels had been produced.

None of them seems to have passed his knowledge to present day artisans.

I interviewed the two local armorers who helped Peter Johnson when he was studyng the brescian Spadùna sword.

They do some damascus work in a XV century forge (Maglio Averoldi in Ome).

They told me they had looked for some surviuving artisan who could give them lessons in damascus and pattern welding, but they found none alive, while there was still memory of their existence a few generations ago.

From what I have read, no. Pattern welding never 'died out' except in terms of practicality.

In Alex W. Bealer's book The Art of Blacksmithing, he mentions that German smiths turned out pattern-welded blades in WWII. His book does have some misinformation accidentally mixed in (he mentions katanas being able to cut through machine gun barrels) but in this case I think it's reliable. If they were turning out pattern welded barrels in the 20's and 30's, and blades in the late 30's early 40's, unless all of the German smiths were killed, the technique was never forgotten by smiths on a whole.

It's not a very complex concept, in any case. Steel and iron are welded together fairly often (scissors and axes, for example). It only takes a little etching to see the difference in colour, and assuming you're able to faggot weld, you're set!

They are not exactly the same thing, but the damascus or pattern welding proccess was used to make shotgun barrels in the 18 and 19 hundreds. Like most things, the emphasis might have changed, but I don't believe the skills were ever completely lost.

-Grey

There could also be a question of changing fashions; the 13th century was a lot more "minimalist" than the previous centuries, with less embroideries and such. This has been seen as a departure from the Byzantine fashion.

Another factor could be the crusades, wich increased demand for simple, cheap weapons.