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Originally Posted by ariel
Hi Marius,
I agree with you: my first choice would be a remounted older blade;
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Yep. This is also my first choice.
With the observation that the old blade could have been remounted somewhere in the 20th century as well.
While I somehow agree with Mahratt that the wootz production didn't stop overnight, and there were old wootz ingots as well as older blades available, from all I know, the loss of wootz technology appears to have been a rather swift process, that spread over no more than a few decades. And this appears to have happened at the end of 18th century and the very beginning of 19th century.
And even if older wootz ingots and blades were available throughout 19th century, it was the technology of turning the wootz ingots into the final blade product that it was equally lost. That's why centuries old attempts to reforge older wootz blades have failed miserably, until the technology was PARTLY rediscovered by Anosov, Verhoeven and Pendray.
It should be noted that at the time Anosov, who is credited to be the first metalurgist to scientifically attempt to rediscover the technology, published his research on wootz steel in 1841, the technology was assumed lost since several decades.
However, the existance of an abundance of old wootz blades in Indian arsenals, could perfectly explain the presence of 19th century weapons with old, watery wootz blades as the technology of reshaping (through cold working processes), re-polishing and re-etching a blade remained unchanged. See below for example the photos of another Indian pesh-kabz (in almost mint condition) with what I believe to be a re-mounted blade.
Last but not least, I have seen and also owned Persian and Indian wootz blades quite certainly made in the first half of 19th century and they displayed the crystalline type of pattern, not the classic watery type. A very good example for this type of wootz would be the Persian khanjar illustrated in the thread at the link below.
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ighlight=motif