Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "Absolute Mad Lads - The Alien Protester, Frank Chu" video.

  1. Frankly, anything that makes a big deal about traditional Japanese metalworking is questionable. Traditional Japanese metalworking was all about getting a slightly above average, at Best, quality iron/steel out of absolutely shit tier ore. They did this largely by (near enough to) perfecting techniques that in Europe were displaced by easier, more efficient methods that gave better results but required either better ore or that one first figure out Other technology... that required better iron to begin with. Traditional Japanese metalworking is, to my recollection, Very good at getting decent quality out of scrap metal... but that used to be a job people did profesionally in its own right in Europe, and they were also pretty darn good at it. Basically, there was a time period when Japan was exceptionally technologically advanced relative to the rest of the world... it was basically the mid to late 1900s. Now, you can Usually count on something fancy that was actually made in Japan to have had uncommonly high Quality Control applied to it, ensuring absolutely everything was done Exactly Correctly (for whatever value of 'correctly' was applicable). But you will pay through the Nose for that, and you're paying for the trained expert to have followed the stated method perfectly, not for the method in question to be anything exceptional. Importantly, the things that applies to are generally NOT mass produced in factories! So, yeah, things like this might not automatically a scam, but they're also usually not worth the money.
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