Blade-smithing skills and comparing blade quality (across all cultures and periods)

[kai]

Hello Michael,

Unfortunately one of the best ways to determine the skill of the smith is to examine the granularity of the steel. The only way to do that is cut a section off and examine it.

Polishing the blade (or at least a window) should usually suffice to get a glimpse of the microstructure of the steel.

Polishing will also yield an impression of the hardness of the edge and blade in general; tough to quantify/compare between different people though!

Regards,
Kai