Strange blade steel on an antique knife

[not2sharp]

This is a closeup of the blade on an unidentified 120+ year old knife. The blade was probably made in Burma or Thailand and it is mounted as a very small dah. It is an interesting old knife, but the oddest is the texture of the steel. As you can see in the picture above it looks almost as though there is a clear crystal surface over the steel. What looks to be deep pitting in the picture is actually fairly smooth, and if you look closely at the right side of the picture you can see continous texture lines running right through the darken areas.

Can anyone explain what we are looking act? Someone suggested it might be meteorite????

n2s

 

[Mike Hull]

A lot of old blades made throughout that area, and down through Indonesia were meteorite. I don't know that yours is, but it's probable.

 

[not2sharp]

My impression has always been that when meteorites has been used as an iron source the resulting forged blade would be virtually identical to blades forged from any other nickel bearing iron source. I am not sure that would explain the strange surface on this blade. Perhaps someone found a decent size meteorite fragment, kept the original texure, and made this through stock removal????

n2s

Here is the rest of the knife.

 

[Mike Hull]

Meteorites, by themselves don't make good blades. At least that's my understanding.
Maybe it's just one of their regular pattern welded blades. They certainly knew how to do that a long time ago, and never forgot.
I don't know if that much stock removal was a possibility. It certainly would be a huge waste of a limited resource, considering the number of blades that could be forged from a chunk that size.


Edited to add; pattern welded blades, whether meteorite was added to the mix, or just two disimilar metals, If they were polished, you would have to look VERY hard to see any pattern. That probably came about as the result of natural etching(corrosion).
Blacksmiths who made blades in this country during WWII for example, made pattern welded blades quite often , due to steel shortages. The ones I have seen were finished like regular steel, as they didn't want a pattern showing. Funny how things change.

 

[not2sharp]

Meteorites, by themselves don't make good blades. At least that's my understanding.

It probably would have little or no carbon in it. NASA would be very happy should they ever find one with carbon.

n2s