Yatagan Beauty from Balkan, help needed

[estcrh]

Originally Posted by Roland_M

I'm sorry, but these are no heat treatment "clouds", these are ultrafine layers of steel (there are structures inside the clouds).

Roland, the structure of the metal looks exactly what one could find in some traditionally made Japanese sword. In a Japanese sword the temper line at the edge is created when the hot blade is quenched in water, sections of the blade are coated in a clay mixture, when the hot blade is quenched the metal coated with the clay cools at different rates creating the different looking patterns (differential heat treatment, simplified version). This method was not just used by the Japanese, other cultures used it as well. From the pictures you provided your yatagan blade looks like it could have received a similar treatment, there could also be a completely different explaination.