Imperiled by goats. Yesterday, and earlier, I linked to an article on Damascus swords and this NY times article from 1981 asserted that an answer had been found then.
"It was in the quenching many believed it acquired magical properties. According to Dr. Helmut Nickel, curator of the Arms and Armor Division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, legend had it that the best blades were quenched in ''dragon blood.'' In a recent letter to the museum a Pakistani told of a sword held in his family for many generations, quenched by its Afghan makers in donkey urine. Some medieval smiths recommended the urine of redheaded boys or that from a ''three-year-old goat fed only ferns for three days.'"
Well they go on to suggest quenching the material in the blood of a human as well...and on into the science.
But the goats seem to have become a theme...
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