Explaining forgeries

[josh stout]

I would say that for discussion on a public forum it is a matter of focusing on those telltale signs of fakes that are either very difficult to fix, such as details of pattern welding, or unique to a particular fake, such as a misspelling. In Chinese fakes the sophisticated forgers have figured out the easy telltales, but there are still may forgers who I would not want to improve their techniques. Unfortunately judging from eBay sales, the unsophisticated forgers are still finding inexperienced buyers. Those forgers are more likely to learn techniques form a public forum than the buyers. However, the occasional detail buried deep in a thread is like found gold to those like myself who are trying to educate ourselves in a discipline with very little published information.
Josh