That is fine Ink, it was unsubstantiated and easily disprovable statements about superiority/inferiority that moved me to post. Like I say, it is an obscure subject, with lots of wrong ideas about.
Take for instance, the hammering together and folding of pieces of metal to make a sword. It was done at an early stage of steel-making in all cultures. It is, however, a process made necessary by a lack of furnaces hot enough to make large, homogeneous billets of steel from which to forge swords. So the various small bits of steel/steely iron that could be produced had to be forge-welded together and folded until the layering is fine enough that the metal is for all intents and purposes homogeneous in quality. It is a complex, almost mystical process, requiring great skill, and a great amount of time, and a true artist as the craftsman.
It is also unnecessary if your iron-working technology *has* progressed to the point where you can easily produce single pieces of steel large enough to make as sword from, as was the case the in Europe as early as the 14th century. A sword made from a single homogeneous piece of steel at least as strong, quality control is more precise, and is far, far cheaper to make. This last point might interest you Ink, you lean libertarian politically IIRC. You see, some historians cite the relative abundance of iron resources and the relative cheapness of edge weapons as a reason that European commoners were harder to effectively disarm than their Oriental counterparts, a circumstance which arguably led to the various traditions that ultimately gave rise to Classic Liberal notion of the right to keep and bear arms.
A more practical moral to this story might be that for a "use" sword, cutter or practice weapon, you will get just as much performance out of well-made weapon of simple steel as an outrageously expensive "Damascus" type or what have you.
trust me I know about swords, it is a passion of mine.
I have studied sword making, and the history of them in all cultures. I love the sword whether it be a Katana, claymore, bastard, two hander, hand and half,cutlass, whatever I love them alllllllllllllllll, but the Katana is my Favorite.
I was gonna buy the Damascus Viking sword "Godfrey" held it in my hand, It was beautiful selling for $300, instead I picked the "miyamoto" Katana, it is just something about the Samurai and there history that I love. like I said I own the Katana by Paul Chen called the "tiger" do a search on it, it is absolutely amazing around 1800 layers, clay was used in the tempering proses, so the edge is extremely hard while the back is soft, the edge registers around 60 on the rockwell scale,while the back is about a 40. the Hamon line is awesome. real ray skin, double pinned Tsuka, iron tsuba sick...
