Thank you Jeff, you are very good at explaning things
.
In the book ‘Persian Steel, The Tanavoli Collection’ by James Allan and Brian Gilmour I have found some interesting things. On page 114 James Allan quotes Tavernier, “This steel is sold in pieces as large as our one-sou loaves and in order to know that it is good and that there is no fraud involved, they cut it in two, each fragment being enough for one sabre”.
Appendix four is an extract from the account by Second Captain Massaliski published in
Annuaire du Journal des Mines de Russie, 1841, pp 297-308 (in this book page 539). “Armourers frequently use the remains of old damascened sabres to make new ones which they sell at great profit. Through being repeatedly sharpened the blade eventually become worn, become too narrow and thus lose three quarters of their value. It is these old sabres which skilled armourers make use of. To do this they heat them and draw them out into a thin blade having the width of a good sabre and the length of two. They then prepare a blade of ordinary iron, cover it precisely with the blade of Damascus, and weld the whole together. A good armourer performs this operation very skilfully. However close examination will almost always reveal where the steel blades have been welded to the iron blade.”