Thread: Tamahagane with other kanji???

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.