Lest anyone think that I'm making this stuff up
;from a more credible source
Dr Gaddy: "It's very difficult to count the layers of metal if you cannot distinguish the welds between the individual ropes and the welds at the edge of the ribband. Each rope (
or iron) produces the left side of one whorl (
or scroll) and the right side of another. You cannot count the number of ropes in the ribband, if you cannot see and identify with certainty the boundry of the ribband (
ribband weld lines), which is by definition the number of irons in the pattern."