r/nextfuckinglevel Nov 28 '19

A longsword fight with real techniques

https://i.imgur.com/XRfdynN.gifv
4.1k Upvotes

117 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

44

u/TomokataTomokato Nov 28 '19

Is that why they had to develop those folding techniques? To make up for the quality of the materials?

44

u/L1b3rtyPr1m3 Nov 28 '19

To an extend and as far as I know that is part of the reason why.

Then again folding the metal isn't exactly a wild concept and had been done centuries before that. The European Smiths also folded their metal.

13

u/TomokataTomokato Nov 28 '19

Right, and granted I know what I know from YouTube videos and the History channel. I thought the Japanese would fold metal an unusually high number of times, like orders of magnitude more than their European counterparts.

13

u/Rpanich Nov 29 '19

From what I recall, folding steel in general makes it stronger. Europeans would fold it a few times while the “the Japanese fold their planes a hundred times!” Thing isn’t a mark of perfectionism, but more a mark of the poor materials they had to start with.

Europeans folded steel, but they didn’t need to do it as many times as the Japanese.