You be right. It is a special alloy produced in a special way. As 6 gun said, pricey for the real McCoy.
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The idea of Tamahagane never came in mind in the first place, it's because I honed a layer of it, it became visible,...
The scratches, if you mean the diagonal ones, they will be cleared when finished, or do you mean other scratches?
Thank you, here are some magnifications, hope they work, the finished pics will take a few days I'm afraid...
Attachment 144258Attachment 144259Attachment 144260
I believe this threat could help
http://straightrazorpalace.com/japan...amahagane.html
Kindest regards
The kamisori, in the pic is showing the Omote side where the main steel is actually soft iron, that has been forged enough to form layers.
You get that kind of effect on high quality Japanese forged knives that are not made from tamahagane.
here is a very nice example of the effect:
http://i42.tinypic.com/5kra8h.jpg
There are several things going on that are immediately visible.
1. It is folded and welded material. No it cannot be said to be tamahagane. That is the raw smelted material. To build up a blade is orogshigane. But "-gane" means steel.
2. There is a scratch pattern from 1100 to 0500 and one from 0200 to 0800 or so. Those are scratches.
3. There is a wave pattern running from 0900 to 0300 that represents the folded material.
4. There could be cracks in the steel. One of the short odd lines runs across all the other patterns from west to east or vice versa.
4a. There are a couple of the longer ones that could be inclusions/flaws between welds/folds. If they are they are non fatal flaws because they don't cross the edge. They aren't pretty but not fatal.
Yes in fact I have seen it on German and American razors too, Folded steel is a process, it is not always Tamahagane
Basically many steels can be folded, but that doesn't make them Tamahagane
Sorta like all Eschers are Thuringens, but not all Thuringens are Eschers :p