Following a visit to the back room of the Museum of London to look at Fighting knives last Monday I was quite heartened at the large number of blades that showed signs of Piling ,some with all piled steel blades and many with what looks to be steel and iron laminates .
Many of the pieces were heavily etched (over etched ) and showed wonderful structure both piled across the blade and looking much like modern damascus or tamahagane.I think we are a little misled by the term "Monosteel" for blades in the medieval period with the exception of wootz ,real monosteel did not appear in Europe until Hunstman in 1740 (feel free to corect me if this is not the case).
Does anybody know of any evidence for etching to reveal the folded nature of medieval blades (in origionals) or were they kept shiney to hide their inner beauty?
All the best Owen

Hi Owen, this thread may be of interest to you... http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...ht=etching

Thanks it appears that this has been visited before .
I wonder If the Ideal of a homogeneous monosteel would have been a good reason to not etch a blade,after all in a burnished form these blades do not look to be of a piled construction at all .