A couple of things to throw into the debate …. light weight graphite shafts vrs steel shafts, the centre of gravity of metal heads vrs the cg of wooden heads. Fairway metal/wood sole shapes. The ball and how it spins or doesn’t spin.
And a question - if ground conditions had continued to be as varied as they once were, ie not so manicured, more main season semi-hardpan, would wide soled cavity back irons have developed or would more blade like soles still dominate?
Atb
I played persimmon and laminated fairway woods almost exclusively as late as 2007 or 2008 and just played 18 with a Honma four wood today. If the shaft weren't totally out of my current flex range I'd keep it in the bag, in fact I am thinking about reshafting it.
As you your points, steel vs. graphite is a completely other kettle of fish from head material. CG height, OTOH, is remarkably easy to control in a head with a material as light as persimmon carrying a pretty heavy brass sole plate. In fact, I believe there were several clubs in the 80s and later that had lower CGs than almost anything available now.
The original Cobra Baffler, Stan Thompson's Ginty, and the Louisville Golf Niblick series (theoretically still in production) were the main ones.
And, as far as hardpan lies go, wide-soled irons should have a distinct advantage over blades for getting the ball in the air. Of course, the modern trend of jacking up lofts may have negated a lot of that advantage.
FWIW, until I got rid of hundreds of clubs when I moved into a motorhome, I had at least three vintage forged blade 1 irons (2 Macgregor and one Wilson Staff, IIRC). They all had more than 20 degrees of loft. In TM's P790 iron set, that's a FOUR iron.