i believe its more a matter of economy.... .... for myself.. i can't really tell much of a difference between my modern type wootz steel and 1084, W1, or 1095 steel.... but.... I can buy a 3/4 round of W1 for 7 bucks but my wootz cost me at least 70 bucks to make the 3lbs ingot.... and even with forge experience, the success rate to produce a sword length is low... (lots of things can go wrong) ..... but that is just a modern scenario....
in the past... i believe economy and quantity would be reason..
even bloom steel like the vikings made or the bloom steel the Japanese made would be a slow process...
look at this post Jesus made on replication of tatara
http://forums.dfoggknives.com/index....topic=6220&hl=
viking blades would be similar but patterns would be formed with different bloom steels
here a tutorial jake did
http://www.powning.com/jake/commish/progress1.shtml
also here's a video Dan just did on his patternwelding..
http://www.ferrum.cc/en/online/videos.html
Long process forsure...... but it's important to note that the processes still survive today and are still sought after.... wootz, tamahagane, among a sea of very affordable mass produced blades.
Greg
ps.. warnings... i do have a bias towards wootz
