Quote:
Originally Posted by kai
Hello Xas,
Yes, if a sword would be fully made from these common sources of modern steel with limited forging, the resulting blades would be monosteel. 1084 steel is an especially good choice in a low-tech setting since quenching will be successful under a fairly wide range of process parameters; also the hardened blade can still be easily sharpened and will not be prone to breaking. 1095 steel could yield better edges/hardness if quenched correctly but this is more difficult. Thus, 1084 is a good choice for longer blades in a rural setting.
If monosteel would be folded onto itself several times in a traditional SE Asian blacksmithing forge, it might exhibit (non-contrasting) laminations again.
In many cases though, this precious steel would have been only utilized as the central layer of steel for the later edges of the sword and sandwiched between 2 layers of laminated mild steels made from salvaged other materials (cheaper and less likely to break due to lesser carbon content).
BTW, leaf springs from Japanese trucks continued to be of laminated steel (IIRC even after WW2).
Regards,
Kai
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Dear Kai:
Thanks very much for the deluge of info and learnings! Really good stuff. One really needs to do legwork (in this case, metallurgy knowledge) to connect the dots and figure out the hows and whys of PH+Moro tradblade construction.