Quote Originally Posted by chancecatalyst View Post
I propose a test. Somewhere amongst us there must be a Goldedge and a Wonderedge that are useless/chipped or broken/beyond repair. I'm pretty sure I could arrange some testing here at school. I don't know about tensile testing, but the key thing would be to manage to get samples under a Scanning Electron Microscope, where any hardening should be evident as a higher martensitic composition of the microstructure.

As Glenn said, I don't think they were doing controlled cooling to such drastically low temperatures for these vintage blades, but still, if there's enough of a difference that people can supposedly tell, then it should be visible in the microstructure.
We'd need a few to be sure it wasn't sure to individual heat treat differences.