New shamshir: hoping for a diamond in the rough.

[10thRoyal]

Originally Posted by GePi

I find these actually quite interesting, and like the khyber knifes with militarized hilts they are legit and there are quite a few examples still around. Here are two from Artzi, one with a more simple wootz pattern, perhaps local, but the other one with a really nice older Persian blade.

Those are excellent examples! The second has an almost identical style grip to my own. I guess I need to do a more thorough search of examples.

I managed a marginally better etching with the Ferric Chloride. It does look more like wootz towards the edge now but gets less so towards the spine. Almost like it was heat treated composed of multiple steels.

[mariusgmioc]

Yes, it appears to be Persian wootz but the etching is very poor.
You need to polish the blade to grit 2000 or even 2500 to be able to better reveal the pattern.

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=21732