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Originally Posted by mross
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.
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I think the assertion is right that Filipino "steel" was faulty in comparison to their asian and moro counterparts. Moro weapons have always been compared to spanish, japanese and even other european blades. However barely if any Filipinos blades are even looked at by the Spanish or Americans. In fact during te Fil-Am war, most Americans were scared of the Moros as opposed to Filipinos wielding knives.