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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 7500841" data-attributes="member: 58172">In the case of particular ulfberht swords, they seem to be made locally.The ulfberht steel exists for various types of blades. These blade types are what one expects corresponding to the hilt types. It seems the blades, the guard and the pommel, are all being created around the same time in the same place.That said, mixing and matching blades, guards, and pommels, is common. But the seriation of sword types is fairly well understood, so odd combinations tend to be obvious.Archeologists mention a desideratum to reexamine all known medieval blades that exist today! To confirm if there are any blades that are high carbon but without the +VLFBERH+T logo. An other issue is, the clay furnaces (as well as any hypothetical crucibles) tend to be broken open and destroyed to extract the steel bloom. So there is lots of evidence of slag, but scarce evidence for what the furnaces themselves look like. If there are unusual firing methods, such as crucibles, they are difficult to detect. But maybe an analysis of the slag can reveal the presence of a process that produces high-carbon steel blooms. At that point, it would help to pinpoint where and what the technique is.Sigh. More questions. More questions.</blockquote>