Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "What I think About the Katana and Japanese Swords in General" video.

  1. At the end of the second Punic war, the Roman armies easily slaughtered any army that was sent against them in the eastern Mediterranean, even fighting in great numerical inferiority. Had they superior weapons? No, they were veterans of 19 years of war vs some ot the best generals of their time. Compared to them, the others were amateurs. At the end of the Sengoku era, the Samurais were pretty good too.
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  2. Almost all the mystic regarding the katana devloped during the paceful edo period, when the practice of it transfered from the battlefield to the dojo. Mind that firearms (that were extremely common during the later Sengoku period. Probably at the time of the battle of Sekigahara there were more muskets in Japan than in the entire Europe) had been banned, and the katana was the symbol of the ruling class (the samurais).
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  3. Mind that the testudo was a formation used only in particular situations, not the usual battle formation of the Romans, while the Oplite Phalanx, and the Macedonian Phalanx were the usual (often the only) battle formations of those cultures.
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  4. Steel swords were die casted only in Hollywood movies. With medieval tecniques you couldn't obtain liquified iron or steel. Only with the introduction of blast furnaces, starting around 13th century AD, you could obtain liquid pig iron, that had to be reduced in a finery forge to obtain forgeable steel bars. Migration era European swords were folded. They were obtained starting from small bars of different hardness (those that culd be obtained in a bloomery), patter welding and folding them several times, to diffuse carbon content and reduce impurities. The process was abandoned when, with the diffusion of the Catalan forges in Europe starting from 8th century, bars of good quality homogeneous steel became available, and so a sword could be forged in a single piece. That was not possible in Japan, since the tatara was a rather primitive bloomery, so you could obain only little pieces (50-100g) of acceptable quality steel from it, so, if you wanted something that resembled a bar of homogeneous steel, you had to pattern weld and fold it. The folding in itself has no structural effect.
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  5. In middle age THERE WAS NO WAY TO PUT LIQUID IRON INTO A MOLD, BECAUSE THERE WAS NO WAY TO OBTAIN LIQUID IRON. The liquid that came out of a blast furnace was pig iron/cast iron, not pure iron or steel. European swords had never been made of cast iron. Swords were exclusively forged, that means hot hammered starting from a bar until you obtain the desired shape. Pattern welding and folding were the only way to obtain a steel sword first than 8th century in Europe, because there was the same problem than in later Japan. Out of a bloomery you can obtain only little pieces of workable steel. If you want to do a steel object of the dimension of a sword, you have to pattern weld those pieces and fold the bar obained to even the carbon and impurity content. Starting from 8th century in Europe, since bar of good quality homogeneous steel became available, and so a sword could be forged in a single piece, folding was not only no more needed, but even detrimental of the quality of the blade. Folding does not increase the quality of steel. Every time the metal bar is folded, defects in the contact surface between the two folded parts are created. Japanese kept on using the pattern welding tecnique because the tatara, the furnace they used to smelt iron, was a rather primitive bloomery, and so only little pieces of workable steel can be obtained from it. If you talk to a modern blacksmit to sand-cast iron, he'll look at you like an alien. BRONZE was sand or stone casted, not iron.
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  6. Seppuku. ;)
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