Namban Tetsu

[Bugyotsuji]

A propos of nothing, I was visiting a friend's house and he showed me a piece of 'Namban-tetsu'. Nothing remarkable, you might say, but indeed it was. It was in a special black presentation box and tied onto a green cushion, much as a Kozuka or a Tsuba might be, with ink brush writing on a white label describing the contents. I have never seen Namban Tetsu like this before, but I was told that it usually came in this shape, and was considered *extremely precious.

 

Question: Has anyone ever come across one of these before? If not, can you guess what shape it was in? If you know the answer, please hold off for a few hours to see what people's guesses might be! :D Thanks.

 

*Well, certainly more precious than its worth in weight as a lump of ballast steel!

[Stephen]

For those who have yet to read about Namban tetsu

http://www.tokensugita.com/NT.htm

[Eric H]

1) Puck size ca. 10 cm/5 cm

2) Ingot ca. 20 x 5 x 2 cm (L-B-H)

 

Eric

[Bugyotsuji]

Nice link Stephen. Thanks.

 

Those puck/ingot sizes are quite small aren't they, Eric. They are quite close in volume. It was the specific shape that interested me, as much as, if not more than, the reverent packaging... and I am not sure if either puck (rounded object?) or ingot sound like what I saw. Perhaps the Dutch steel of differing shapes and sizes was melted down and reshaped for fair distribution throughout Japan, but of a recognizably different shape than a ball of Tamahagane?

 

I wonder if what I was told is too much of a generalization or is in fact 'true'. Hmmm...

[Mark Green]

YES! Great link Steven.

Thanks for posting.

Mark G

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

Back in Japan eh, Piers ? Guess you're not expectiong "Yotan" as answer...

 

It was in a special black presentation box and tied onto a green cushion, much as a Kozuka or a Tsuba might be, with ink brush writing on a white label describing the contents.

 

Guess at a certain point Nanbantetsu begun sorta of collectible. This Tsuba looks more like an ingot than an handguard :

 

 

 

 

 

[Stephen]

really like that type of Tsuba, thanks for showing Carols

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

My pleasure, Stephen.

[Bugyotsuji]

Carlo, what is Yotan? You are saying Hyotan, right? Yes, I seem to be back here, for better or for worse.

 

A few hours have passed. The ancient Britons often carried their yet-to-be-worked iron/steel as rings, I have read somewhere. Japanese swordsmiths plunged their incomplete swords into giant (eg Bizen-yaki) pots full of oil.

 

The little ingot I saw yesterday was in the rough gourd shape of a Hyotan, with a larger clump at one end, then a waist, and then a smaller bulb, finally drawn out to a stalk. I'll see if I can remember to take my camera next time I visit.

[Nobody]

FYI; viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1368&p=9157&hilit=hyotan#p9157

[george trotter]

Good link Stephen...it ties in well with the boxes of iron billets found on the the VOC ship "Vergulde Draeck" wrecked here in West Australia in 1656 (I mentioned this in a previous thread as a possible source of namban testsu). I wonder at the comment that iron was not used as ballast as I know of at least one VOC ship that used broken cannons as ballast. Usually though, from excavated VOC wrecks here (4), all were stacked with clay bricks...later used for building houses in Indonesia...the ships returned to Holland with Chinese porcelain in boxes as their ballast.

 

Regards,

George.

[Bugyotsuji]

FYI; viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1368&p=9157&hilit=hyotan#p9157

 

Gulp!!! Always a step ahead! Now I do not need to take the photo any more! :lol:

 

Many thanks, Koichi san.

[Eric H]

Interesting, but the measure and the weight?

 

Eric

[Nobody]

Refer to Table 1. in the following paper.

Ref. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/els/110001457670.pd ... 317207&cp=

[Eric H]

Thanks but no access to the file

Eric

[Jean]

same for me

[Nobody]

Then try this link, and see the original Japanese paper on the right.

Ref. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/110001457670/

[Eric H]

Very enlightening

 

it is concluded that "Hyotan" shaped Nanban-tetsu steel is not good for forging, "Saijo" shaped Nanban-tetsu steel is good for forging, "Koban"-shaped one is difficult to forgeweld and "Tajo"-shaped one is intermediate.

"Saijo" is a square timber-shaped steel, so I was not totally wrong in my guess.

 

Thanks Moriyama san

 

Eric

[Brian]

Piers,

Interesting topic, thanks. I would still love to see a pic of one boxed as you described. Must have been fairly well thought-of to go to that trouble.

 

Brian

[Bugyotsuji]

This has set me to wondering why they were made into different shapes originally. Did someone 'know' the element content? Was the shape an indication to others what type of steel it was, I wonder? Does 'Hyotan' have some sort of associative meaning like 'lemon' in English?

 

Brian, I've now got the camera in the car so I'll see if I can get some time to go round there tomorrow.

[Stephen]

insert smilie for Great Thread!

very interesting

[bluboxer]

The linked paper states in the synopsis that Namban-tetsu is Indian wootz.This steel is a crucible steel and is/was normally produced in cakes of various sizes.The different shapes may be an artifact of a sorting or grading process that relied on the physical properties when the steel is heated and worked.Properties such as elasticity,how well the steel is consolidated under the hammer etc.

The higher quality steel was then formed into the "Saijo" shape for transport?

Also states that Hyotan shaped steel is high in phosphorus which is a bad thing to have in steel.

Interesting topic!

[Eric H]

The linked paper states in the synopsis that Namban-tetsu is Indian wootz

In my understanding NO... has nothing to do with wootz...wootz was the raw material for oriental damask.

 

Eric

[John A Stuart]

Eric, look up the origin of the word 'wootz', location it was made and the Portugese trade routes, and the controversy of how much Indian steel may have become used in swords and not ordinary blacksmithing. The proofs are lacking. John

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

Carlo, what is Yotan? You are saying Hyotan, right?

 

Sorry for misspelling and late reply (I was travelling), yes, Hyotan, gourd. it's the shape the ingot takes when the crucible is cleaned out. Small ingot, small crucible.

Not all crucible steels are wootz/pulad.

AFAIK wootz/pulad/bulat used for persian and indo-persian swords and gun barrels from the Mogul period onward had (some are still existant) the shape of an almost perfect semi-sphere with

the top section flattened. This is due to the fact that steel had been left slowly cooling into the crucible and then the same has been destroied to free the material.

The gourd shape seems like the crucible has been cleaned into another expendible item, giving to the ingot the shape of a "gourd" cut longitudinally.

The surface of the cooling steel was much larger suggesting a quicker cooling and different type of (crucible) steel.

 

Of course this definitively doesn't mean that the other shapes can't be linked to wootz/pulad, but it's another thing that let me hesitant to suggest any definitive attribution to "this was wootz

while this wasn't" when talking about nanbantetsu.

 

Of course ingots can be shaped in any more transportable form under the cooling but smithing an ingot of Wootz has been described as "wrestling a bear" so much it's difficult..

 

These are good reading :

 

http://materials.iisc.ernet.in/~rangu/text.pdf

 

http://damascus.free.fr/f_damas/f_quest ... indiaw.htm

[Eric H]

Excerpts from Carlo's first link:

with shipments of tens of thousands of wootz ingots being sent to places such as Persia. India was not only known during this period for its mastery in making the raw material of steel, but was also highly reputed for its swordsmithy as exemplified by accounts of the unsurpassed excellence of a swordsmith of Thanjavur.

 

A distinction may be made between true Damascus blades in which the layered wavy light-and-dark pattern was an intrinsic property of etched wootz steel and pattern-welded Damascus blades in which patterns were created by welding layers of lower and higher carbon steel such as the Samurai swords of Japan.

In this context "pattern-welded Damascus blades...is also to understand wrought iron, the method used by the Europeans.

 

Wootz is a crucibel cast steel (acier de fonte ou cristallisation). It is a unitary product, whose pattern, respectively whose structure was created by crystallization and segregation. The art of the smith was to generate from this raw material coming from India the specific patterns, there are known against 40 different patterns.

According to Anossow and Belaiew there were in existence 3 methods to obtain Damascus-steel...

 

We have in Switzerland one of the largest collections of oriental Art in Berne, the collection of Henri Moser Charlottenfels.

Henri Moser has sacrificed 4 sabres and 2 knives all from Persia and according to the pattern from the better qualities, to analyze using modern technics at the „Eidgenössische Materialprüfungsanstalt, Zürich“

It is not possible to mention here all the tests and results.

Eric, look up the origin of the word 'wootz', location it was made and the Portugese trade routes, and the controversy of how much Indian steel may have become used in swords and not ordinary blacksmithing. The proofs are lacking. John

Assumed the Portugese transported "wootz" in large quantities, why nothing is seen of this miraculous indian steel in swords, sabres, epees made by the Europeans, Toledo f.e. had a famous reputation. Damascus steel, wootz, from India was exclusively used in India and the Orient (Persia, Afghanistan, Turkey etc.) and hence never in Japan.

 

Eric

[John A Stuart]

There is the rub. We know it was imported to Japan, but, how was it used? Not for swords maybe, unless decarburised for some part of the blade (speculative at best). There is no titanium component in Indian steel, but, Japanese sourced iron sand is rather high in it. What effects did that have? That is why I say 'the proofs are lacking'. John

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

I would like to add a comment about the possible use of Nanban steel in late Muromachi and very early Edo.

 

For the very nature of this board we focus on blades only, hence the duscussions about the use of imported steel in Kawagane etc.

 

But the swords in the timeframe mentioned represent only a part of the tremendous need for steel of that period, and maybe not even the greatest part.

 

We should remember the vast armies of Ashigaru and the incredible amount of handguns produced in those years. Can't remember the source but I'm pretty sure to have read Japan

at those times had the highest guns-per-capita ratio in the world and this ratio was achieved in an astonishingly short period of time.

To this we have to add the need of steel for Ashigaru's armor. Even if far to be as complete as the good ones, an Ashigaru armor still required a good amount of steel.

My guess is that most of the imported steel, whatever the provenance and quality, was used for these items, especially guns.

At a certain point of Korea's invasion it was specifically required that *all* reinforcements had to be equipped with Teppo. This higlight the importance such weapons had at the time.

IMHO the historical context in the whole should be considered in discussing the matter. Of course this doesn't exclude the use of imported steel for swords or the blending of

wootz with tamahagane to increase the carbon content, just gives us a possible different priority list as far as steel need goes.

We know for a fact that some Nakago inscriptions are mentioning the use of an old gun barrel steel to produce the blade, considering it of very good quality.

It is possible that the high reputation of Nanbantetsu is not due *exclusively* to its performances under the form of a blade but for other reasons as well.

 

Just a possibility I think we should add to all the others considerations.

[Bugyotsuji]

Just a quick note. I went round and took a series of shots, holding it in my hand for different angles, but my computer has suddenly decided not to recognize the memory stick any more. Been struggling for an hour: very frustrating.

 

Someone I know paid 700,000 JPY for one of these little Hyotan Nambantetsu ingots. Are they so rare now? I was told they were in this Hyotan shape already as they arrived in Japan. The main lump was extruded and pinched to a flat area the size of a quarter dollar; this was further extruded and given a quarter twist to end like a slightly rounded but very thin/flat tip of a screwdriver.

 

We are told that Hyotan had a high Phosphor content, but the survey shown in Nobody's link was done on a sample of only three ingots. Not a very wide base, I feel.

[Eric H]

"John A Stuart" We know it was imported to Japan

Do we?...perhaps Moriyama san can help and present a document.

 

As add on the chemical analysis of the persian blades compared with those modern Solingen steels, around 1920...in this case those persian blades exhibit an unfavorable amount of phosphor as can be seen. That raise the question, would Japanese swordsmiths use a material that do not correspond to their requirements. You agree this steel is far away from watetsu.

BTW in another thread written by omidaijo/Roger

 

Namban tetsu was a highly sought after and expensive commodity...and there were boatloads of highly sought after steel at the backdoor in Nagasaki.

 

Well, I think if Nanban-tetsu was available in such large quantities, why was it so expensive?...

 

Eric