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Those ~$400 Angus Trim swords are made of..
"Harmonically balanced 5160 tempered steel, along with a geometrically stable design and distal taper"
..iirc that's simply spring/leafspring steel, right?

hey Tony

it is just leafspring but 5160 is a great steel.. harmonically balanced .. i'm not sure if it is the same thing but i have seen some of Howard Clark's apprentices HT steel .. they use clay lumps spaced at intervals along the blade.. that way the blade is ht'd at resonance harmonies of the steel and any shock or resonance gets dampened before it gets to the handle..

i'm not sure about that .. i think they are just putting hard and soft spots next to each other, which can only be really tested by destroying the blades.. .. Dan's idea seems to be that the Res C handle absorbs the shock so the steel can be HT's properly and the m,aximum strngth, edge holding ability etc extracted..

of course this may be all wrong <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

ug

Most of my knives are harmonically balanced. I put my harmonica on the spine and it usually doesn't fall off..that's the test. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Geometrically stable? My knives have never changed shape on me that I know of. Perhaps I've had more physics than was good for me (brain damage <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />) but it sounds like a bunch of marketing mumbo jumbo to me. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

The beauty of leaf steel is that it can be bent repeatedly within its design limits and returns to its original shape without fatigue and eventual failure. That's one of the reasons 5160 is a very good sword steel.

Beyond the attractiveness, I thought a wavy hamon was used to ensure the transition between hard tempered and soft tempered steel was less abrupt allowing the sword to bend farther without breaking.

F5 like you mean it! JYD #15