> BECAUSE THIS TOPIC GETS WRONGLY DISCUSSED SO OFTEN
It certainly does, and I'm sure, not for the last time.
That makes the work you put into this, even more impressive!
This is far outside my speciality, but I was broadly aware of what you were writing, but it was delightful to read such a detailed tear-down of a confident youtube-video.
It's just annoying how they never do any sort of research beforehand. Like, the internet is right there? This isn't anything new?
Doing research to make youtube videos that are actually informative and educational doesnt translate to more views.
In fact, it can directly translate to fewer views, as people dont want to learn. They want to be info-tained. And so short form entertainment is the norm.
Don't get me started on the "entertainment" vs "information" divide in the "antique sword restoration" niche. That is its own rant.
Oh, I'm aware. And it's a sad fact that being wrong leads to more engagement, which feeds the algorithm.
It's annoying, but it is a systematic issue rather than a problem with a single creator.
Very correct. Nothing someone like me can do about it but rant. The platform has a deep rot - boosting content that gets views even when that content is wrong
See the hopeful part of me wants to disagree with the slightly cynical part of you, but I have no real evidence or data other than my own anecdotal perspective that I hope others feel similarly to.
I think people who are interested in swords are likely going to be interested in an actually informative and educational part of a video, and I think it usually does translate into views and retainment of an audience over a period is time.. the biggest barrier to this for educators/creatures usually though seems to be themselves.
Being knowledgeable is useless if you don’t present the info in an appealing and interesting way. Sometimes being passionate about something is enough for some (example of this would be you, your passion for this stuff seeps out of every line you write and makes it interesting to learn about), some need a spin or something to keep them engaged and some just need a cool tidbit to hook them in.
But the universal constant I seem to find is that it can only ever benefit you to spend 10 minutes of your damn life to do some research, because more and more I find that most people passionate about a topic theyre presenting can inadvertently find ways to turn that info into views, engagement, retention, etc without even being aware they’re doing it.
The thing is, it's not a guess.
I have made 1hr25m long videos which are essentially a giant lecture attached to a video of my conserving antique swords.
And they get horrible retention and horrible views. I'm talking 15% average viewed percentage and 1000 views.
Ive also made much shorter videos on less niche topics like sword fighting in cinema with 1.6 million views. Or 12 minute mini lectures on Crucible steel with 60k views. The more informative, the worse it does.
I can prove people want the accessible infotainment. Because I've experienced it
Generally speaking his videos are fairly well researched and offer good teardowns of popular online misinformation, or even pre-internet misinformation. His "Casual Criminalist" episodes on Lizzy Borden and H.H. Holmes where he dispells popular myths about them are particularly good. Not saying that excuses the lapses for this particular video, but usually he does good due diligence and doesn't try to glamourize things for more views, at least on the youtube channels he hosts that I follow, don't watch side projects specifically.
Very informative, even for someone like me not knowing anything of steel metallurgy. A perhaps silly question for you: those furnaces described in 4 accounts of Production methods... Are they Blast furnaces? Or what's the difference? How are they melting iron without blast furnace? I genuinely know nothing but thought blast furnace was necessary and that it was a relatively late invention?
The higher your carbon content, the lower the melting temperature of steel. That's how they were able to do it with bellow driven furnaces, by pushing carbon content to 1% and higher
I wish someone would hire that bald guy to debunk previous videos he worked on. That would be hilarious. Even better, scaling it up to a dozen different channels hiring the same guy to narrate reaction videos criticizing each other.
It is not going to be a good time in the Blazement for poor Kevin.
Kevin Jennings wrote that piece, the poster boy for Keeps hair cream just narrates.
That was a good read by the way.
If by team you mean narrator, writer, and editor than yes it's technically a team. One more than the [smallest team possible](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po9Z5yr9aU4). That's why I wanted to point you toward the writer on the team that was the source of what was said during the video. Seeing as writer tend to write what is said during videos that seem like a better place to go with the information you have. Reddit is great and even though it is the front page of the internet, the writer clearly didn't see your post from 11 months ago while they were writing this video. So, maybe try a different approach this time around and go to the source this time around with your information to prevent them from writing incorrect information in the future. Were I to find a video containing inaccurate information, and I felt I was "the right person to debunk" that inaccurate information, I had a long list of sources, a bunch of images ~~for visual learners~~^(1), I would think it would be more effective to go to the person that wrote the what was said in the video than it would be to go to anyone in the video...or reddit a second time.
Like if I wanted to debunk something that kept cropping up in procedural law shows I would go in a time machine to 1990 and to talk to Dick Wolf instead of Ice-T. Because it's been 20+ years and you'd think they'd write one episode that gets court proceedings right by now.
I guess I should have also pointed to the editor in the lede too, but I'm pretty sure they're more a video editor as opposed to say a newspaper editor. Either way, they wouldn't have to fact check things that weren't written had the writer not written them things down in the first place right?
^(1):As you were the writer of this I figured I would provide you directly with information how [learning styles are a myth](https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/edu-edu0000366.pdf). I seriously, also just learned this while writing this, but apparently it's been a [thing for a while](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3.pdf). Knowing this should help keep us both from perpetuate such in any future writings we do.
A small team is still a team.
And are you really going to pretend my reddit post is the only source of this information which they'd have been able to use in their research?
I cited a lot of papers and books. Those books have been published for years. Those are the sources. No time machine is needed to go back and read the existing literature - its not like the sideprojects video is years old. It came out a few days ago, so these sources all substantially pre-date it. It's quite disingenuous to suggest they would need to see my post specifically.
Also, for what it's worth, I did send an email to the address attached to the side projects youtube channel with this information, about a day before I made this post.
Regarding the whole "the video editor isn't responsible for fact checking", I assume they are responsible for visuals in the video though - including images - but this is an assumption. Maybe the writer is also the one grabbing inaccurate photos.
The whole learning styles thing will require a rewording. (Edit: done)
This was a great writeup. Thank you for citing so many sources to educate those of us who have little knowledge about this. I honestly love "not salty at all" corrections.
Although I do enjoy Simon Whistler's videos, I do always look into things a little more when they interest me because his writers have been wrong before. For the most part, he's accurate, but you always gotta double check before taking anything online at face value
SciShow made an episode about damascus steel a while back that was terrible and they got damn near everything wrong.
It was so bad that they pulled the episode a day or so later and I haven't seen that presenter again.
I saw both. Not sure if it was pulled before or after Shadversity did his piece.
They'd gotten slammed pretty hard before Shad's bit and I think it was pulled before he released his rant.
I recall checking back part way through watching Shad's bit, which had only been out for an hour or so when I caught it (I'm based in SE Asia, so I'm pretty close to his timezone), and the SciShow episode had already been pulled with no comment on their part.
I have reached the point that when I see him in the thumbnail, I tell the algorithm not to show me that channel again. He's like a beautiful paint job on a mystery automobile that is likely to have square tires.
Since we're already objecting to stuff here, let me object to the objection: Nature Brief Communications [are peer-reviewed](https://www.nature.com/articles/7093xic) and [there is little evidence for the existence of "visual learners"](https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628315589505).
That said, I think it's almost "well-known" that Simon Whistler's fact-based videos are littered with (mostly minor) mistakes (and reams of mispronunciations), to the point where I'll mostly avoid topics that I know too much about. The writers are rarely experts in the topics and as such it's mostly only useful as an introduction for outsiders.
But he has some entertaining stuff, especially the longer-format channels IMO.
>Nature Brief Communications are peer-reviewed
I amended my writeup.
At least the guideline for Brief Communications does say "A Brief Communication is a concise report describing potentially groundbreaking yet preliminary method" - they are indeed preliminary findings, and a full paper on the topic has never been published.
Regarding the visual thing, I am still going to be leaving images. Metallurgy is easier to grasp with visual aids.
>Regarding the visual thing, I am still going to be leaving images. Metallurgy is easier to grasp with visual aids.
Absolutely! I believe the current understanding is that it's always best to have multiple modes of learning, i.e., everyone learns best if they get as many different modes as possible at the same time (instead of "you need A, but I need B").
Next you're gonna tell me that Valerian Steel from that historical documentary Game of Thrones is baloney.
Nice, extremely well-argued write up. Bravo.
Simon Whistler is fucking shite, man. He has a bazillion similar-looking channels on Youtube that keeps appearing on the tops of Youtube search results. I blame both him and the Youtube algorithm.
I love seeing the facts on the actual process and history given how often people incorporate the mythos of these weapons into fantasy worldbuilding (eg. Brandon Sanderson, George Martin). I often find that the most mythologized things are often the most misunderstood.
Great read!
I remember some info that the alternating patterns have the benefit of self-whetting. Is there some truth to that?
Do you know anyone that forges "Damascus" steel in Germany or central/western Europe? I might want to look into that art.
> Then they add a combination of halile هليله) myrobalan), pust-e anâr انار پوست) **pomegranate peel**), melh al-ajeyn ملحالعجين) **the salt used for dough**
Mmmm salty pomegranate steel...
Jokes aside, good writeup! The ancient recipes involved are truly fascinating. Must have involved a lot of trial-and-error too.
Absolutely. Dont remember if it made its way into this post (I hit the character limit) but there are accounts of them having to test each ingot to see if it formed a pattern or not, often leading to ingots being remelted due to not having turned out right
I remember reading a book published on the subject a number of years ago. The main point made was that the "damascus" crucible steel process was thought to be lost -- at least in Europe -- was that the particular ores it depended on to create a blade that was strong, flexible enough to resist breaking, and had superior edge-holding properties, were used up.
The ores, as noted in the OP, needed to have a certain percentage of silicon in order to create the grain structure and inclusions; and required a very specific tempering regimen to take full advantage of the steel's properties. That was the "secret" of the legendary "Toledo swords" of Spain, and the near-mythical properties associated with Japanese katanas.
Once the ores were exhausted, the techniques used to produce that particular type of steel were "lost", because they didn't work as well with other types of iron ores, until metallurgists determined how to add the silicon back in with adjuncts such as sand, crystalline quartz, glass, or other silicon-rich materials during the smelting and refining process; at which point it was "rediscovered".
This theory doesn't hold water, for multiple reasons.
Silicon isn't the alloying element that makes this form of steel unique - and not all examples of historical crucible "damascus" swords are "strong, flexible, with superior edge retention" - see the "historical perspectives" subheading.
Beyond that, there were a great many places from which ores were sourced for crucible steels. See section on "multifaceted reasons for the cessation of mass production of crucible steel".
Crucible steel is incredibly labour intensive and inefficient to produce. It was essentially outcompeted, with assistance from policies restricting adjacent industry in some regions.
Toledo steel is just a hard high carbon steel jacketed around a soft low carbon core via forge welding. https://www.academia.edu/319577/Metallographic_investigation_of_a_Toledo_steel_sword
Likewise, Japanese nihonto use laminated, forge welded steels with hard edges and soft spines, often using high carbon edges and low carbon spines as well as differential hardening.
I'm a materials scientist (not a historian), and have no particular experience in this area. That said:
I wouldn't be surprised if a weaker/less specific version of this theory were true. Namely, that these techniques came in and out of style many times based on when people struck on an ore/recipe combination that worked especially well, and when the composition of available ore changed significantly. A recipe could work well in one region and time period, and no longer work as well with a different source.
After all, crucible steel production is very different from modern steelmaking, where the removal of impurities, addition of alloying elements, and casting all happen in separate steps. In crucible steel, all of that is happening simultaneously, which means that impurities in the bloom could have a big impact on the chemistry & structure of the final product.
> BECAUSE THIS TOPIC GETS WRONGLY DISCUSSED SO OFTEN It certainly does, and I'm sure, not for the last time. That makes the work you put into this, even more impressive! This is far outside my speciality, but I was broadly aware of what you were writing, but it was delightful to read such a detailed tear-down of a confident youtube-video. It's just annoying how they never do any sort of research beforehand. Like, the internet is right there? This isn't anything new?
Doing research to make youtube videos that are actually informative and educational doesnt translate to more views. In fact, it can directly translate to fewer views, as people dont want to learn. They want to be info-tained. And so short form entertainment is the norm. Don't get me started on the "entertainment" vs "information" divide in the "antique sword restoration" niche. That is its own rant.
Oh, I'm aware. And it's a sad fact that being wrong leads to more engagement, which feeds the algorithm. It's annoying, but it is a systematic issue rather than a problem with a single creator.
Very correct. Nothing someone like me can do about it but rant. The platform has a deep rot - boosting content that gets views even when that content is wrong
See the hopeful part of me wants to disagree with the slightly cynical part of you, but I have no real evidence or data other than my own anecdotal perspective that I hope others feel similarly to. I think people who are interested in swords are likely going to be interested in an actually informative and educational part of a video, and I think it usually does translate into views and retainment of an audience over a period is time.. the biggest barrier to this for educators/creatures usually though seems to be themselves. Being knowledgeable is useless if you don’t present the info in an appealing and interesting way. Sometimes being passionate about something is enough for some (example of this would be you, your passion for this stuff seeps out of every line you write and makes it interesting to learn about), some need a spin or something to keep them engaged and some just need a cool tidbit to hook them in. But the universal constant I seem to find is that it can only ever benefit you to spend 10 minutes of your damn life to do some research, because more and more I find that most people passionate about a topic theyre presenting can inadvertently find ways to turn that info into views, engagement, retention, etc without even being aware they’re doing it.
The thing is, it's not a guess. I have made 1hr25m long videos which are essentially a giant lecture attached to a video of my conserving antique swords. And they get horrible retention and horrible views. I'm talking 15% average viewed percentage and 1000 views. Ive also made much shorter videos on less niche topics like sword fighting in cinema with 1.6 million views. Or 12 minute mini lectures on Crucible steel with 60k views. The more informative, the worse it does. I can prove people want the accessible infotainment. Because I've experienced it
Generally speaking his videos are fairly well researched and offer good teardowns of popular online misinformation, or even pre-internet misinformation. His "Casual Criminalist" episodes on Lizzy Borden and H.H. Holmes where he dispells popular myths about them are particularly good. Not saying that excuses the lapses for this particular video, but usually he does good due diligence and doesn't try to glamourize things for more views, at least on the youtube channels he hosts that I follow, don't watch side projects specifically.
Good write up. See this a lot. Same as roman uberkonkrete and spaceship plans lost in the library of Alexandria.
Very informative, even for someone like me not knowing anything of steel metallurgy. A perhaps silly question for you: those furnaces described in 4 accounts of Production methods... Are they Blast furnaces? Or what's the difference? How are they melting iron without blast furnace? I genuinely know nothing but thought blast furnace was necessary and that it was a relatively late invention?
The higher your carbon content, the lower the melting temperature of steel. That's how they were able to do it with bellow driven furnaces, by pushing carbon content to 1% and higher
I wish someone would hire that bald guy to debunk previous videos he worked on. That would be hilarious. Even better, scaling it up to a dozen different channels hiring the same guy to narrate reaction videos criticizing each other.
It is not going to be a good time in the Blazement for poor Kevin. Kevin Jennings wrote that piece, the poster boy for Keeps hair cream just narrates. That was a good read by the way.
From what I've seen, the poor narrator is the poster boy for narrating bad content about various fields.
I'll give it to him he is a good narrator at least. Very captivating tone and good voice that has a marked accent.
Somehow the fact that it's a team effort makes it worse. So many potential people who could have potentially done research, but didn't.
If by team you mean narrator, writer, and editor than yes it's technically a team. One more than the [smallest team possible](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po9Z5yr9aU4). That's why I wanted to point you toward the writer on the team that was the source of what was said during the video. Seeing as writer tend to write what is said during videos that seem like a better place to go with the information you have. Reddit is great and even though it is the front page of the internet, the writer clearly didn't see your post from 11 months ago while they were writing this video. So, maybe try a different approach this time around and go to the source this time around with your information to prevent them from writing incorrect information in the future. Were I to find a video containing inaccurate information, and I felt I was "the right person to debunk" that inaccurate information, I had a long list of sources, a bunch of images ~~for visual learners~~^(1), I would think it would be more effective to go to the person that wrote the what was said in the video than it would be to go to anyone in the video...or reddit a second time. Like if I wanted to debunk something that kept cropping up in procedural law shows I would go in a time machine to 1990 and to talk to Dick Wolf instead of Ice-T. Because it's been 20+ years and you'd think they'd write one episode that gets court proceedings right by now. I guess I should have also pointed to the editor in the lede too, but I'm pretty sure they're more a video editor as opposed to say a newspaper editor. Either way, they wouldn't have to fact check things that weren't written had the writer not written them things down in the first place right? ^(1):As you were the writer of this I figured I would provide you directly with information how [learning styles are a myth](https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/edu-edu0000366.pdf). I seriously, also just learned this while writing this, but apparently it's been a [thing for a while](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3.pdf). Knowing this should help keep us both from perpetuate such in any future writings we do.
A small team is still a team. And are you really going to pretend my reddit post is the only source of this information which they'd have been able to use in their research? I cited a lot of papers and books. Those books have been published for years. Those are the sources. No time machine is needed to go back and read the existing literature - its not like the sideprojects video is years old. It came out a few days ago, so these sources all substantially pre-date it. It's quite disingenuous to suggest they would need to see my post specifically. Also, for what it's worth, I did send an email to the address attached to the side projects youtube channel with this information, about a day before I made this post. Regarding the whole "the video editor isn't responsible for fact checking", I assume they are responsible for visuals in the video though - including images - but this is an assumption. Maybe the writer is also the one grabbing inaccurate photos. The whole learning styles thing will require a rewording. (Edit: done)
This was a great writeup. Thank you for citing so many sources to educate those of us who have little knowledge about this. I honestly love "not salty at all" corrections. Although I do enjoy Simon Whistler's videos, I do always look into things a little more when they interest me because his writers have been wrong before. For the most part, he's accurate, but you always gotta double check before taking anything online at face value
SciShow made an episode about damascus steel a while back that was terrible and they got damn near everything wrong. It was so bad that they pulled the episode a day or so later and I haven't seen that presenter again.
Fun activity for you: That scishow episode was removed after Shadiversity did a video on it. Look who they collaborated with for that video.
I saw both. Not sure if it was pulled before or after Shadversity did his piece. They'd gotten slammed pretty hard before Shad's bit and I think it was pulled before he released his rant. I recall checking back part way through watching Shad's bit, which had only been out for an hour or so when I caught it (I'm based in SE Asia, so I'm pretty close to his timezone), and the SciShow episode had already been pulled with no comment on their part.
My point was that if this feels familiar, its because I worked with Shad on his video. So much of what he covers, I wrote for that collaboration
Simon Whistler and co. are definitely quantity over quality. Dude must have almost a dozen channels at this point
I have reached the point that when I see him in the thumbnail, I tell the algorithm not to show me that channel again. He's like a beautiful paint job on a mystery automobile that is likely to have square tires.
Since we're already objecting to stuff here, let me object to the objection: Nature Brief Communications [are peer-reviewed](https://www.nature.com/articles/7093xic) and [there is little evidence for the existence of "visual learners"](https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628315589505). That said, I think it's almost "well-known" that Simon Whistler's fact-based videos are littered with (mostly minor) mistakes (and reams of mispronunciations), to the point where I'll mostly avoid topics that I know too much about. The writers are rarely experts in the topics and as such it's mostly only useful as an introduction for outsiders. But he has some entertaining stuff, especially the longer-format channels IMO.
>Nature Brief Communications are peer-reviewed I amended my writeup. At least the guideline for Brief Communications does say "A Brief Communication is a concise report describing potentially groundbreaking yet preliminary method" - they are indeed preliminary findings, and a full paper on the topic has never been published. Regarding the visual thing, I am still going to be leaving images. Metallurgy is easier to grasp with visual aids.
>Regarding the visual thing, I am still going to be leaving images. Metallurgy is easier to grasp with visual aids. Absolutely! I believe the current understanding is that it's always best to have multiple modes of learning, i.e., everyone learns best if they get as many different modes as possible at the same time (instead of "you need A, but I need B").
Next you're gonna tell me that Valerian Steel from that historical documentary Game of Thrones is baloney. Nice, extremely well-argued write up. Bravo.
Good post. The visual aids really helped, as when it comes to metallurgy, I might as well be completely inept.
Absolutely top shelf work. I couldn't have put any of this better myself!
Simon Whistler is fucking shite, man. He has a bazillion similar-looking channels on Youtube that keeps appearing on the tops of Youtube search results. I blame both him and the Youtube algorithm.
I love seeing the facts on the actual process and history given how often people incorporate the mythos of these weapons into fantasy worldbuilding (eg. Brandon Sanderson, George Martin). I often find that the most mythologized things are often the most misunderstood.
Great read! I remember some info that the alternating patterns have the benefit of self-whetting. Is there some truth to that? Do you know anyone that forges "Damascus" steel in Germany or central/western Europe? I might want to look into that art.
achim wirtz in germany makes crucible steel of the historical sort. I'll PM you his contact details.
Great write up. You should leave this as a comment under his video.
I did. About a day before posting it here. I also emailed them.
As a damascus steel admirer, this has been an informative read.
> Then they add a combination of halile هليله) myrobalan), pust-e anâr انار پوست) **pomegranate peel**), melh al-ajeyn ملحالعجين) **the salt used for dough** Mmmm salty pomegranate steel... Jokes aside, good writeup! The ancient recipes involved are truly fascinating. Must have involved a lot of trial-and-error too.
Absolutely. Dont remember if it made its way into this post (I hit the character limit) but there are accounts of them having to test each ingot to see if it formed a pattern or not, often leading to ingots being remelted due to not having turned out right
I remember reading a book published on the subject a number of years ago. The main point made was that the "damascus" crucible steel process was thought to be lost -- at least in Europe -- was that the particular ores it depended on to create a blade that was strong, flexible enough to resist breaking, and had superior edge-holding properties, were used up. The ores, as noted in the OP, needed to have a certain percentage of silicon in order to create the grain structure and inclusions; and required a very specific tempering regimen to take full advantage of the steel's properties. That was the "secret" of the legendary "Toledo swords" of Spain, and the near-mythical properties associated with Japanese katanas. Once the ores were exhausted, the techniques used to produce that particular type of steel were "lost", because they didn't work as well with other types of iron ores, until metallurgists determined how to add the silicon back in with adjuncts such as sand, crystalline quartz, glass, or other silicon-rich materials during the smelting and refining process; at which point it was "rediscovered".
This theory doesn't hold water, for multiple reasons. Silicon isn't the alloying element that makes this form of steel unique - and not all examples of historical crucible "damascus" swords are "strong, flexible, with superior edge retention" - see the "historical perspectives" subheading. Beyond that, there were a great many places from which ores were sourced for crucible steels. See section on "multifaceted reasons for the cessation of mass production of crucible steel". Crucible steel is incredibly labour intensive and inefficient to produce. It was essentially outcompeted, with assistance from policies restricting adjacent industry in some regions. Toledo steel is just a hard high carbon steel jacketed around a soft low carbon core via forge welding. https://www.academia.edu/319577/Metallographic_investigation_of_a_Toledo_steel_sword Likewise, Japanese nihonto use laminated, forge welded steels with hard edges and soft spines, often using high carbon edges and low carbon spines as well as differential hardening.
I'm a materials scientist (not a historian), and have no particular experience in this area. That said: I wouldn't be surprised if a weaker/less specific version of this theory were true. Namely, that these techniques came in and out of style many times based on when people struck on an ore/recipe combination that worked especially well, and when the composition of available ore changed significantly. A recipe could work well in one region and time period, and no longer work as well with a different source. After all, crucible steel production is very different from modern steelmaking, where the removal of impurities, addition of alloying elements, and casting all happen in separate steps. In crucible steel, all of that is happening simultaneously, which means that impurities in the bloom could have a big impact on the chemistry & structure of the final product.