folding 5160

You can fold just about any steel, but why?? The reason the Japanese smiths folded their steel was to reduce the carbon content to what they wanted, and to remove impurities. Modern steels are pretty clean already, and we can buy whatever carbon content steel we want. (within the ranges it's made, obviously)
 
If you are folding to create a hada, I would use 1050 -1080 steels. The extra alloy elements in the 5160 will not help,and may hinder. As Phill said,there is no reason to fold a katana blade unless you are doing tamahagane ,or you want a "thousand layer blade" for the pattern.
 
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