/jp/ - Otaku Culture

So /jp/? Who wins?

Pattern welded steel is actually pretty shitty if you think about it. To made a sword you need a steel that’s both hard (so that it can hold an edge) and not brittle (or else it will shatter under impact). Iron is malleable, by adding carbon to iron you produce steel that’s both harder and more brittle. So to produce a steel suitable for a sword you need to very carefully control the carbon content in the steel so that it has just the right balance of hardness and malleability.

Pattern welding works because it’s basically a way to mix two piece of steel with different carbon content together to produce a single piece with a carbon content the average of the two, hopefully this amount of carbon is the ideal amount for a sword. But European forged steel and crucible steel are of much higher quality because the use of coke-fired crucible capable of reaching 1600 °C which allowed precise control of the carbon content of the steel produced as well as allowing mass production.

Hence not only was European steel high quality, but Europeans could produce so much of it that they used it for swords, armour, cannons and even eating utensil, unlike Japan.

Pattern welded steel is actually pretty shitty if you think about it. To made a sword you need a steel that’s both hard (so that it can hold an edge) and not brittle (or else it will shatter under impact). Iron is malleable, by adding carbon to iron you produce steel that’s both harder and more brittle. So to produce a steel suitable for a sword you need to very carefully control the carbon content in the steel so that it has just the right balance of hardness and malleability.

Pattern welding works because it’s basically a way to mix two piece of steel with different carbon content together to produce a single piece with a carbon content the average of the two, hopefully this amount of carbon is the ideal amount for a sword. But European forged steel and crucible steel are of much higher quality because the use of coke-fired crucible capable of reaching 1600 °C which allowed precise control of the carbon content of the steel produced as well as allowing mass production.

Hence not only was European steel high quality, but Europeans could produce so much of it that they used it for swords, armour, cannons and even eating utensil, unlike Japan.