[Silver Surfer]

See

[Solomon]

For an old tradesman, that's sad.
So many master craftsmen have disappeared.
Some call it progress.

[wulfgar]

They can make swords 5x better using modern methods than any ancient sword marker ever did. All that banging around was to remove impurities from the metal. These days you get completely pure steel cheaply. After this the one real art that remains is tempering.

The Chinese traditional sword is the spatha design which was universal in the late iron age on the Eurasian continent. The design had to be good steel to work, otherwise they broke easily. A spatha had to be a flexible springy steel and have a highly hardened edge. Good ones tended to remain rare and were highly prized. They fell out of favor in Europe as increasingly heavy armor was used.

The Chinese called it the "philosophers sword" since use required highly developed skill.