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Originally Posted by Ren Ren
The character "rou" has the meaning "to bend something while heating on fire." But I could not find a direct indication of blacksmithing  |
When smiths wish to laminate or create layers in an elongated object, such as a blade, they typically notch the red-hot bar with a chisel, start the bend by hammering over the edge of the anvil, and continuing the heating and hammering until the two sections are cheek by jowl, then ultimately fused together. Repeated as much as deemed necessary. In pre-industrial, hand craftsmanship, iron was often carburized into steel by cementation processes that left a skin of high carbon alloy on the bar. The repeated folding and hammering served to further diffuse the carbon into the body of the finished object and create a linear fibrous structure. When polished and etched, a pattern of sorts is visible as evidence of the process. Even in Western countries its use continued for higher quality cutlery even after industrial processes were used to make steel for large applications. You can see it on good knives from countries like England, France, and Germany made throughout the 19th cent; the process was known since the Middle Ages and the product is generally known in English as "shear steel". Variations of this have been used in virtually all cultures which have made blades out of material other than crucible steel (like wootz, the genre being a horse of an entirely different color).