Kenneth,
There's the old saying about not looking a gift horse in the mouth, but the teeth on this horse are worth another glance. Don't sell this one short -- a couple of your close up photos do show evidence that the blade is of QIANGANG construction, in other words a high-carbon steel edge plate inserted into the softer steel/iron body and forged tight into a single bar. Look carefully and there is a narrow, darker zone with a sharplly-defined, undulating border separating it from the neighboring iron. The detail shot of the tip are shows it most closely.
As you were polishing, did you notice that the steel at the edge encountered less resistance as you rubbed it across the stone? In other words, that the edge tended to "skate" more smoothly and that you needed more pressure to get the abrasives to "bite"? That's a sign that the edge is harder than the back, and an inserted high carbon layer will do that.
If you were to dash some dilute ferric chloride solution on the (degreased) surface, you will notice differences in coloration that will indicate if the blade is uniformly or differentially heat-treated.
Peter Dekker is right -- just because a blade from China is from the 20th cent it doesn't mean that it's just cranked out of monosteel. The large knives used in Chinese restaurants and butchershops are still mostly of laminated carbon steel (the $6 stainless jobs from Asian supermarkets won't stand up to the rigors of dismembering piggies and fowls) I've handled a fair number of wartime dadao and they all appear to be laminated as described above. Mind you, they are not works of art but the functional aspect is still there. Frankly, I have more faith in the structural integrity of these dadao than I do in some of the copies of modern firearms made by the Chinese during the war -- some of those are pretty dicey in terms of tolerances and fit, not to mention the packing-crate lumber the stocks are milled out of.
Among the mainstays in my workshop are a number of planes and chisels made in China from the early 20th cent. through the "Mao Dynasty". Some are handmade, others from factories and all are of laminated steel. They tend to take and hold far better edges than many of their American and European counterparts yet are as easy to hone as my Japanese tools.
WW2 Da Dao
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- Rank: Chang San feng
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Most firearms manufacturers have been identified, there's a book titled ARMING THE DRAGON (I don't have author/publisher info, it's a pretty basic paperbound thing sometimes sold at gun shows), but swords are not covered. Considering that the blades themselves seldom have any markings at all (and when they do, they are invariably unit marks or dedicatory inscriptions), trying to identify manufacturers might be difficult. This is compounded by the fact that there are a number of recognizeable styles of guards, blade shapes, blade/hilt length ratios and so forth, implying that there might well have been several sources for these knives. Close examination of the tool marks on the various components indicate that besides the possible use of powered trip-hammers and grinding wheels at larger facilities, most of the production processes may have been manual. I note this especially when examining blade fullers; there is a notable difference in shape and finish when these channels are cut with chisels and then ground smooth by hand, as opposed to being routed out by a milling machine.
Phil
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Re: World War Two Dadao Training Methods/forms
You might find this interesting, the techniques of presented in this Dadao Form are very similar/the same as techniques in many Chinese two-handed saber forms, including those in the Si Lu Miaodao form-Rod wrote:... the double handed Dadao used by Chinese military in the 20th century ...
军大刀 Jun Da Dao: Chinese Military Machete - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blVfwN9yXOQ