Age of indian sword?

[Drabant1701]

Some sugested that the blade may be wootz or welded steel, I polished a bit of it and etched it. Apparently I am not good at etching, or theres nothing to etch.
To me it looks like layered steel? What do you think? Pardon the bad pictures.

[Gavin Nugent]

Nice old sword. The hilt decoration and type is known and 19th century, it seems many hundreds must have been released from an armoury well over ten years ago as I have crossed many dozens in my travels and had a few too.

Gavin

[Gavin Nugent]

Originally Posted by Drabant1701

Some sugested that the blade may be wootz or welded steel, I polished a bit of it and etched it. Apparently I am not good at etching, or theres nothing to etch.
To me it looks like layered steel? What do you think? Pardon the bad pictures.

Keep trying and look more past the bottom of the blade. Many of these types are nice wootz blades and are often scarf welded to a mono steel forte or a poorly forged wootz base.

Gavin

[dj]

I have a couple questions:

1) What did you etch the blade with to try and reveal the patterns you are looking for?

2) In other types of antiquities, disruption of the original patina is considered detrimental to the piece. Is there a standard practice, or accepted practice with blades?

Perhaps there are threads here on these questions, but I am new here and haven't run into them yet.

Thanks,

dj