11-08-2019, 11:07 PM
I think your speculations are essentially correct; I’m sure there were some exceptional (for the time) blades and craftsmen, but the standards that they had to beat to be exceptional were low compared to what’s available today. I can’t find it right now, but there’s a youtube video where someone forged a replica of a famous sword using primitive/ancient methods, and it came out pretty good, but my guess is that it doesn’t compare well against modern low-end steels (as far as material is concerned, craftsmanship was incredible). One of the things that made that video interesting was that the project could fail at several points (not by fault of the craftsman), so there was a fair amount of luck involved, and the process lacked the precision and repeatability of modern equipment and techniques.