[Ian]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the new pictures. They seem to solve the riddle. If you look at the picture with the "running tiger" mark in the top left corner, you can see the same intermittent marks on the actual blade edge. It appears the offending tool was used to sharpen the edge. Perhaps a hand held tool against a fixed blade, or perhaps running the edge along a fixed tool.

At some point the blade and tool became misaligned. and the grinding tool departed from the edge and rode up the blade, creating a sweeping series of marks along the blade, initially deeper near the edge and getting less so along the way as the blade was removed from contact. The same problem looks as though it occurred several times, although less seriously.

I doubt this happened with the original manufacture of the blade. Probably some time later, by someone who did not know what they were doing. The sharpening tool might have been quite small, maybe something like a Dremel wheel. I've seen attempts to "decorate" Filipino blades using a Dremel wheel and it looks somewhat similar to your marks.

Incidentally, in the "running tiger" picture, you have a good example of the usual faint grinding marks running obliquely across the blade. Those look like a "fine grind" finish. The next stage would be polishing, but the HuSa blades don't often get polished smooth in my experience.