"Swingman" wrote in message
...

Nova recently did a show of a blacksmith/swordsmith reverse engineering a
viking sword, pretty interesting if you've ever done any banging on hot
metal yourself:

The reverse engineering thing is quite common among the museum crowd. ;~)
My "hero" in that respect is Wallace Gusler... Wallace redeveloped the 18th
century (and earlier!) technology to make guns. If you've ever seen the
movie The Gunsmith of Williamsburg you'll understand why I feel this way!
There is DVD titled "Forging a Flintlock Rifle Barrel" with Jon Laubach that
is available from www.americanpioneervideo.com that you may find interesting
(as well as others including The Gunsmith of Williamsburg). I worked with
Jon at Williamsburg on the "dumb" end of barrel welding and reaming (hand
turned reaming bench). I visited with him this summer too... learned a LOT
from him!

Looking at tool marks on original pieces, whether iron, silver, copper,
wood, stone, etc. gives clues to how things were done. I think the trick is
finding the patterns across different similar items. This as, as those of us
here on the rec know all too well, there are myriad ways to do things...
some excellent, some good, some bad and some just plain ridiculous. Also
figuring out if the work was done by a beginner vs. an expert is important.
I've seen original Shaker pieces that probably (clearly?) were the work of
beginners and if they were the only pieces I'd ever seen I wouldn't be
terribly impressed with the Shaker's work! One questionable one that comes
to mind had half-tails on the ends and the tail board curled (cupped) at the
edges.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient...ing-sword.html

I'd seen ads for that... will check it out.

John