Talk:Nikana/@comment-124.82.119.105-20140429085751/@comment-88.112.194.81-20140626143813

Oh look, another katana fanboi. Newsflash: lower-ranking Japanese warriors who couldn't afford to purchase replacement swords willy-nilly actually *favoured* katanas of relatively soft iron, as when subjected to abuse such tended to bend instead of breaking and were relatively easy to fix. This rather echoes certain Roman observations of some Celtic blades, which apparently tended to start getting kinda bendy after hard use in combat - the owners would correct the matter by propping them against the ground and straightening them with their feet. Kind of a safe bet those were NOT the topnotch pattern-welded specimen high-ranking warriors and noblemen used...

As for the manufacturing techniques, bah. Number of folds isn't a big deal since it rises exponentially - obligatory-education math should tell you it doesn't take too many foldings to start hitting the thousands. More to the point this method, teknik'ly known as "pattern welding", was already known to European weaponsmiths by 2nd century BC at the latest at which time the Japanese were IIRC still stuck at *bronze*. By the end of the first millenium AD it was par for the course for any high-quality blade, spear- and axe-heads included, and by the First Crusade had been largely superceded (save for decorative purposes) by more advanced smelting and ironworking techniques which produced similar results with less effort. The Japanese were kinda stuck with it in order to compensate for the mostly rather lousy quality of their raw iron - AFAIK *ferrous sand* was a major source. No Noric iron or Toledo steel that, to speak nothing of the holy-grail Wootz ("Damascus") steel from northern India.