Hello Michael,
Quote:
Unfortunately one of the best ways to determine the skill of the smith is to examine the granularity of the steel. The only way to do that is cut a section off and examine it.
|
Polishing the blade (or at least a window) should usually suffice to get a glimpse of the microstructure of the steel.
Polishing will also yield an impression of the hardness of the edge and blade in general; tough to quantify/compare between different people though!
Regards,
Kai