Hello Michael,
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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.
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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