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The miniature weapons reminds me of when I would, as a kid, take nails and pound them out on an anvil into miniature swords for my D&D figurines.
Actually, that brings me to another historical question I have. When we see swords for sale in catalogs and at SCA events, the weapons are always shiny and highly polished. While it's possible that royalty got weapons like that, I seriously doubt the average weapon was like that. In fact, I would hazard a guess and say that most forged weapons would be covered in pits from being pounded out, and likely only the sharpened edge(s) was shiny.
Can anyone confirm or disprove my guess on this?