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Old 9th June 2010, 12:56 PM   #2
A. G. Maisey
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Join Date: May 2006
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Its actually a wee bit more complicated than that, Neo.

The most common old type of pamor is high phosphoric iron, or "white iron". This gives a rather subdued tone in greys to a pamor.

Once you move from this to the various other materials used in pamor it becomes somewhat more difficult to differentiate by sight alone.

Pamor Luwu owes its contrasting qualities to nickel content, and that nickel content can cover a pretty broad range, so if you get some Luwu with high nickel content, it doesn't look a whole lot different to European nickel.

With meteoritic pamor it depends on how its made, as to how it looks, and again, its not easy to judge from just looking at it --- we need to feel it.

Then we have pamor that used Dutch coins as the contrasting material, and as with meteoritic pamor, you really need to feel the material to have some idea of what it might be.

I've only mentioned the simple, easy stuff above. It can get a whole lot more difficult when you have pamor that has been worked in non-standard ways, or where some unusual material has been used.

I'm talking about sight judgement in the physical presence of the blade, not sight judgement from photos, and most certainly not sight judgement from images on a computer screen.
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