06-15-2015, 06:08 PM
Actually, this is quit simple. It is all about definitions. When making iron in those days, the quantities of the bloom (raw iron straight from the furnace) were often too small to make a sword. Each bloom from the iron winning process was hammered out and folded and hammered out again to get rid of the impurities. Finger thick rods were hammered out and sold as stock to blacksmiths. These either combined the low carbon rods to make a blank for a sword, or first improved (some of) the rods by case hardening, which introduced carbon to create a steel. But they had to beware, as medium carbon steel is a real pain to succesfully weld! Now some mines had ore naturaly enriched with chroom, phosphorus, vanadium, arsenic, all which could improve the quality of the iron. So iron from these mines yielded better swords then mines which did not have ore with natural enrichments. Combining the rods and welding them together produced a sword blank. So to some extent, ALL pre Industrial were welded, if only to get a blank large enough to hammer into a sword. Using a stock of iron from one single source would produce a mono-iron with no distinguisable patterns (but stringy iron all the same), combining various sources would lead to a recognisable pattern when polished, as Jack says. Miks calls this "Streifendamast", with long lines visible from the proces of welding the rods to make a blade.
