Editing Sword (section)

=== Folded a thousand times ===
[[image:Forging_Techniques.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Various Japanese forging styles.]]

''Ah, Guroriasu Nippon Sutiru, Foruded Ova 1000 Times....''

This is, as you might expect, bullshit, even if it contains a (small) grain of truth. Japanese swords were created by combining three types of iron alloys, which (if you drop weaboo names) were basically low carbon steel, high-carbon steel and extra-high-carbon pig iron. The limitations of Japanese smithing techniques made it so smelting of those alloys happened below their melting point temperature (or, in other words, they became soft and malleable but not liquid), hence they were unhomogeneous and contained lots of impurities. So it was ultimately plain common sense to "knead" the mix (like you would do with bread) to get an homogeneous bar by stretching it on an anvil, folding it back, forge-welding the 2 parts together again. Repeat, repeat and repeat until (almost) all of the impurities were driven out.

This process, called lamination, was meant to spread the carbon content in the steel and remove inclusions by bringing them to the surface where they could be hammered away as slag. It also created layered laminated steel with layers of hard but brittle high-carbon steel and soft but plastic low-carbon steel (actually pig iron and high-carbon layers initially, but by the time laminating was done enough carbon would burn out of them to change their type) which combines the strong points of both, so the blade could be almost as sharp as hard steel and almost as flexible as soft steel. (You have to give it to them, the Japanese swordsmiths really did do a good job considering the limitations they had to work with.) This was however an horribly time-consuming process (and thus costly), not to say prone to errors. And even if everything works correctly, the very act of working the steel means you lose some every time you work it: external layers of steel burn off, slag detaches from the workpiece, small pieces fly away with every hammer strike - so you would try to keep work to a minimum. Keep in mind that the number of layers of your sword doubles with every fold: 2-4-8-16... and so on, so after 10 folds you get 1024 layers, and after 20 your steel is as homogeneous as it can get due to having over a million layers that blend in each other, losing all the sexy benefits of laminating. One thousand folds would theoretically get you more layers than there are atoms in the perceivable Universe (it's 302-digit number in case you wonder), you'd also end up with only a small fraction of steel you started working with, and almost all the carbon in it would burn out long before you reach 100 foldings, leaving you with almost useless soft iron. A traditionally forged Katana isn't folded a thousand times (perhaps a dozen, if even that), though it does possess over a thousand discernible layers in its structure when looked at with a microscope.

Other nations also used techniques similar to folding (welding) to get over impurities and make layered steel sandwiches, but then one day some smart Indian smith invented crucible smelting to make much purer steel right of the bat, and after that another Indian smith invented tempering which was cheaper, easier and more cost-effective than laminating. Some enterprising Chinese and Arabian traders spread these techniques all over Asia and Europe, so people there immediately stopped folding/welding their Glorious Steel and adopted the better (mostly less time-consuming and hence cheaper) technology. All, of course, except for the isolationist hicks that decided to isolate themselves from the rest of the world and only found about these technologies when Commodore Perry gently knocked their front door off.

A huge chunk of the reputation of Japanese swordsmithing comes from the fact that, by the time Europeans forced their way into the island, swords had became largely a ceremonial part of officers' uniforms in the Western militaries and so little attention was given to their crafting that their quality had become quite poor, not even half as good as they were made but a century before. Low-tech Japanese swords, on the other hand, were still crafted for actual battle and killing people rather then pointing at the enemy to inspire your troops, so they were of the highest quality their technology allowed. Naturally westerners were amazed by the quality of Japanese swords compared to their own stamped mass-produced junk (and keep in mind this was during a low point for Japanese swordsmithing due to reduced demand for swords- a law passed in 1876 banned the public carry of swords for all but a small number of military officials), and here's where the Glorious Nippon Steel bullshit took its origins.

One a sidenote: none of the swords the IJA used during WW2 were Katanas, they were actually similar-looking Guntō; mass-produced with modern means. The ones made for NCOs were produced from train tracks while the officers got hand made units, and due to a shortage of the steel traditionally used for making swords they were often made from steel that wasn't layered at all. While effective when compared to mass produced bayonets, this was the age of automatic weapons where bringing a blade to a gun fight was pretty much suicide in most instances- as a matter of fact, since they were made with the same mass production process that led to the decline of sword quality in the West, these swords were actually ''worse'' overall than the old Katanas. Anybody who claims that they got a genuine Katana from killing a Japanese soldier in WW2 or that their grandfather picked one off the body of a dead officer are full of shit, since construction of traditional-style katanas didn't restart until 1953. While modern katanas are of much better quality, this is due more to the extensive quality control standards placed on swordsmiths by the Japanese government rather than the quality of the steel itself. That said, you can always buy mall ninja grade trash that looks like a katana but is actually stamped stainless steel less deadly than a heavy stick.

Odds are if your buddies claim to own a genuine katana at all they're either mistaken or lying; genuine katanas cost $3,000 at the very least, and that's before factoring in the cost for a licence to own them due to their legal status as art objects. That if they can make it on to the waiting list, as only a few thousand are produced a year. It's much more likely they own a replica made with modern machine production techniques and composed of ordinary stainless steel. While stainless steel may not get rusty and works fine for kitchen knives, it's much too brittle to be used for any sword that isn't purely ornamental.