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Originally Posted by Battara
I also wonder if folks think that since northern blades are not laminated like the southern blades, they must be scrap crap. The problem with this is that the Spanish and others shared techniques that refined steel to better tolerances than the south, and thus no need for the type of laminations that were needed by the southern Philippines, Indonesia, and even Malaysia needed at one time.
What also made this worse is the use in WWII of leaf spring steel for blades (which oddly enough is not bad steel).
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Battara, I'm afraid like my bad penny analogy earlier the dreaded laminated vs mono steel will keep coming up. Laminate looks cooler than mono steel but that is really all it has going for it. Laminate as you mentioned came about as a necessity, the available steel was rare and the other metal was not very good. So combined they made something useful. Unfortunately many are still enamored by magic and ignore technology. I still hear that today's current smiths cannot do what the smiths of history did. Ancient lost secrets and all that. It's usually debated by those that are mostly clueless about metallurgy. The heat treat is more important than the steel. But that's a discussion for another day. For the record leaf springs are usually 5160 steel. Philippines smiths (the more modern ones) like to use ball bearings which are 52100.