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Post by LG Martial Arts on Aug 30, 2013 23:57:21 GMT
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Post by chrisperoni on Aug 31, 2013 0:03:09 GMT
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Post by LG Martial Arts on Aug 31, 2013 0:09:45 GMT
Wow! I hadn't seen your post before logging in and posting the article myself! Awesome!
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Post by Darksword Armory on Sept 3, 2013 14:27:56 GMT
It is lovely to see good information about swords get into articles like this...I actually emailed the link to this one to Eyal after I read it.
Best regards to all,
Robert Marks
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Post by etiennehamel on Sept 3, 2013 14:39:19 GMT
the only thing i don't agree with is the number of folds written in the article about tamahagane... it's 12-14 but i know some schools does it differently so i will just take it with a grain of salt ^^'
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Post by Timo Nieminen on Sept 3, 2013 20:42:52 GMT
There's more wrong with it that than.
Tamahagane is not pig iron, tamahagane is bloomery steel (if high enough carbon, and bloomery iron otherwise). The carbon content of tamahagane is not too high; mostly it's too low. The folding is not to get rid of carbon, but to get rid of slag and to produce a more homogeneous steel. (Same reason why bloomery iron/steel was folded in Europe, Africa, SE Asia, China.)
Katanas are not pretty much useless in the hands of anyone who hasn't gone through exhaustive training. They've been used quite successfully to kill people by non-exhaustively trained people (the majority of the soldiers in Japanese armies were not exhaustively trained). They've been used to kill people by untrained people.
Just swinging a traditionally-made katanaas hard as you can will not undoubtedly (isn't this word meant to mean something?) end in it shattering to pieces. There are plenty of cases of idiots swinging such at resistant targets (like solid chunks of iron) and having them take a set, rather than shattering.
It's true that traditional iron and steel swords weren't cast. Today it would be possible to do it, and make something that will withstand a lot more than being a wall decoration.
And one could pick faults with the wootz section (but they would be minor, and I think the result of sloppy writing rather than factual error).
None of these are big errors, and you could say all of them are smaller errors than the misconceptions they are aimed at. But stuff aimed at correcting misconceptions should be correct.
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