Talk:Nikana Prime/@comment-72.235.230.197-20160221085838/@comment-85.23.198.132-20160223082249

You people should just look this shit up in the Wiki instead of spouting ingorance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel

The Japanese conversely used a variation of the pretty uiversal pattern-welding technique (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_welding), which Western Eurasian weaponsmiths had relegated to purely decorative use by ~1000 AD on account of having developed better and less labour-intensive methods. I've read the Japanese hung to it more due to the comparetively abysmal quality of the raw iron they were stuck with than anything else; the characteristic "folding" process helps distribute undesirable impurities and suchlike evenly hence avoiding concentrations thereof becoming structural weak points.