Something happens to me when I watch sword fights. As if the magical hand of War God takes me by the scruff of my neck and carries me on the wings of Karma back to ages long past and perhaps ages that never were. Ages in which honor mattered, and a quest was first spiritual in nature and power and financial rewards were furthest from the mind of those who waged war.



As I said, this age may have never been but the dream of gave rise to Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table.

In one of the highlander movies, the hero, Connor MacLeod, engages a powerful adversary. Having watched this immortal rise from the dead several times, the unexpected was common place.

But then it happened.

Something totally impossible.

The two immortals began to fight on the forbidden holy ground of a church, the two swords clashed and they shattered! Totally and irrevocably shattered. This fight between good and evil was beyond the tolerance of the swords.

In the follow up scenes Connor goes back to his roots in the remote Scottish highlands where he had lost his first love. There he tries to forge the new sword blade, tries and fails repeatedly.

Each time he pulls the partly formed blade from the steaming water, he takes one look and tosses it away. You see the disgust and disappointment in his face and perhaps desperation.

What was it that he was looking at? Why did he toss the swords away?

Then one day love softly steps over the hard rocks of the highlands and in her hands carry a gift, a shining block of metal stamped by a magical mark. Alex Johnson played by Deborah Kara Unger hands over this block to Connor.

This is what Conner needed.

This special metal with mysterious qualities imbued by magic was the missing piece. This scene showed that even a trained immortal warrior cannot forge the sword to fight evil without the right metal ore that is touched by magic.

Alchemists refer to the source of this magical transference as elixir, in mystical spiritual circles around the world, it is also referred to as the HU (pronounced "hue"), Kalame-Elahi or the Sound Current that transforms the mortal man to the divine being. To many mystics, this source is the Inner Master, a manifestation of God that can appear in the physical plane as well as all the spiritual dimensions.

Regardless of its content, this element brings in the unknown and merges it with the known. And in all its variations, love is the primary catalyst.

Did the script writer of Highlander have this in mind when he used the beautiful Alex Johnson to hand over the magical block to Conner? Did the director consider this setting by placing Conner in the location where he first experienced love after his resurrection?

A perfect setting if you ask me.

So, what does all this have to do with blades in general and Damascus blades in particular?

Damascus steel or Damascened steel also known as water steel is used in custom knife and sword making, pattern-weld and wootz (true damascus).

According to wikipedia, "Wootz, is a steel alloy having a pattern of bands or sheets of micro carbides within a tempered martensite or pearlite matrix. Developed in India around 300 AD, (although some say as early as 200 BC). the word wootz may have been a mistranscription of wook, an anglicised version of ukku, the word for steel in many south Indian languages."

When you turn a Damascus blade in your hand, complex patterns reflect on the surface. These are the result of the internal structural and the unique forging methods used in creating a Damascus blade and they give it a mystical appearance. It seems that it carries magic and it is not only a mundane blade. Skilled sword smiths can manipulate the patterns to create complex designs in the surface of the steel.

Could it be that the right ore in the hands of the right sword smith can re-create the legendary Excalibur Sword?

Since many of us do not have access to these legendary figures we have to rely on mundane practices such as checking the Rockwell scale. This scale is a common determination of hardness in metallurgy used in the United States. Its popularity arises from its speed, reliability, robustness, resolution and small area of indentation.

In simple terms an indentation is made and the depth of penetration is compared to the reference material. The depth of penetration is converted to a scale in which the harder the material the higher the number.

Common values are:

? Very hard steel (e.g. a good knife blade) HRC 55 to HRC 62 or so

? Axes, chisels, etc. HRC 40 - 45

Readings below HRC 20 are generally considered unreliable, as are readings much above HRB 100.

May you find the right sword smith to forge your spiritual blade.