# Wootz



## Sabaki (Jan 22, 2014)

I pretty much know the story behind this steel, the steel came from a mine in India and was a 1000 years ahead of its time and the mine only lasted for 200 years or so.

some russian i think was able to reproduce it simular no more then a decade or two ago

But how is this steel compared to others? to sharpen, hold an edge and so on?


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## XooMG (Jan 22, 2014)

Sabaki said:


> I pretty much know the story behind this steel, the steel came from a mine in India and was a 1000 years ahead of its time and the mine only lasted for 200 years or so.
> 
> some russian i think was able to reproduce it simular no more then a decade or two ago
> 
> But how is this steel compared to others? to sharpen, hold an edge and so on?


The ore itself was only part of the equation; it's the casting of the ingot that was really interesting.

From back when I was involved a little more, I remember Ric Furrer describing it as "diamonds in mud", referring to very hard carbides in a very soft surrounding matrix.

It can probably make a nice kitchen knife, but its qualities are somewhat contrary to what is conventionally regarded as ideal for a standard chef knife...perhaps better for butchering or other applications.


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## mr drinky (Jan 22, 2014)

I have a couple wootz blades. One is a Pendray hunter and the other is a Furrer/HHH slicer.

k.


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## Sabaki (Jan 23, 2014)

mr drinky said:


> I have a couple wootz blades. One is a Pendray hunter and the other is a Furrer/HHH slicer.
> 
> k.



i've seen the pictures of that amazing slicer of your's, how is that snakeskin sheet coming along?


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## Chef Niloc (Jan 23, 2014)

Sabaki said:


> some russian i think was able to reproduce it simular no more then a decade or two ago
> 
> ?


I could be wrong but I think Pendray is the guy that recreated this stuff? From my understanding the process created a superior steel back in the day when a lot of steel was crap. In other words modern steels are just as good if not superior to wootz, but the stuff sure is pretty.


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## Sabaki (Jan 23, 2014)

XooMG said:


> The ore itself was only part of the equation; it's the casting of the ingot that was really interesting.
> 
> From back when I was involved a little more, I remember Ric Furrer describing it as "diamonds in mud", referring to very hard carbides in a very soft surrounding matrix.
> 
> It can probably make a nice kitchen knife, but its qualities are somewhat contrary to what is conventionally regarded as ideal for a standard chef knife...perhaps better for butchering or other applications.



:thumbsup: 
It's a very interesting steel to read about and it's made in various quality with carboncontent 0,8-2,0% and a very high density

sword made by a mastersmith could cost as much as three elephants


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## Sabaki (Jan 23, 2014)

i found this site describing how to make the stuff: http://www.antracit.se/index.php/sv/resurser/77-dievar.html
click on your flag to get the translation and scroll down


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## orangehero (Feb 23, 2014)

Sabaki said:


> :thumbsup:
> It's a very interesting steel to read about and it's made in various quality with carboncontent 0,8-2,0% and a very high density
> 
> sword made by a mastersmith could cost as much as three elephants



You'd need two elephants, and then it's just matter of time.


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## rick alen (Oct 28, 2014)

As I understand the technique was never lost, there just became no great need of it as steel smelting progressed through the 1800's. The carbides formed by the process are rather large, so as noted it is not ideal for general kitchen use. The iron ore from the mine in India contained chrome, and we all know what that does for steel.


Rick


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## mr drinky (Oct 28, 2014)

rick alen said:


> As I understand the technique was never lost, there just became no great need of it as steel smelting progressed through the 1800's. The carbides formed by the process are rather large, so as noted it is not ideal for general kitchen use. The iron ore from the mine in India contained chrome, and we all know what that does for steel.
> 
> 
> Rick



Just wondering your take on this a bit more. Are you just saying that the crucible steel technique was never lost and that the steel mixture was what was lost -- or nothing was lost at all. Or both just fell into non-usage and were never really lost and both the recipe and technique continued to be practiced.

It was my understanding that Verhoeven and Pendray resurrected a lost technique that had been forgotten (as better methods and materials arose), then approximated the steel recipe as much as possible to create very similar types of blades that had not been made in almost 200 years. I've read only a few articles on it, but this is the one most commonly linked. 

http://projects.olin.edu/revere/Cool%20links/damascus%20sci%20amer%20jan%202001.pdf

Anyhow, technology is often lost and then (at least approximately rediscovered). The Roman art of building expansive domes was lost/forgotten for hundreds of years until Brunelleschi's duomo in Florence. The trebuchet catapult was also lost as other forms of warfare took over, but was also rediscovered in the 1980s. I am sure there are thousands of examples throughout the world, but I still think the replication of wootz damascus more or less is an event in rediscovery. Before Pendray and Verhoeven, one couldn't go out and buy wootz steel that could replicate the ladder patterns of the damascus of old. That knowledge and those technologies were no longer coexistent and production was not possible. But maybe I am mistaken. However, nowadays you can buy such knives again, and I own two such knives. 

k.


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## rick alen (Oct 29, 2014)

Well we all know what tall tales get told in the blade world. Again the technique was never lost, and implements were being made from it in Asia into the 19th century. Being very labor intensive to make with hand-pumped bellows and clay ovens the cost was rather prohibitive for most things, and the industrial age was built of iron machines, for the rest ordinary steel worked just fine. And with guns there wasn't a whole lot of use for fine swords of wootz.

It's not exactly crucible grade steel (the cable of the Brookline bridge is of crucible steel, a relatively new product back in the 1870's) but probably more like 1095 (also known as "clean steel"). I mean it doesn't compare to 52100 anyway, which is probably close to the composition of steel made from that mine in India.

But that some ancients figured out a way to make steel that good is just extremely impressive enough.


Rick


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## Stumblinman (Oct 29, 2014)

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/9809/verhoeven-9809.html

shows the composition so I guess you could do a comparison with other steels. 

http://ceroart.revues.org/2557

Some info on crucible mentioning Pendray which seems to call Wootz a crucible steel.


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## rick alen (Oct 30, 2014)

Sorry, wootz is apparently a type of crucible steel, and apparently by the 20th century there were so few and sketchy records of its particular method of production surviving that perhaps it could have been rightly referred to as "lost." Knowitall here thought "crucible steel" only referred to the arc-furnace method, which actually came a bit after the Brooklyn Bridge.

Interesting reading to be found on crucible steel in general. Like many innovations around the 18th/early19th century the development of this process was driven by clock-makers, around then clocks were about as high-tech as anything got.


Rick


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## mr drinky (Oct 30, 2014)

With that said, I would almost bet the technique persisted until much later in some backwater like Sa'dah Yemen that had a metal smithing industry and the country largely avoided industrialization. Though when the raw material stopped coming, the blades composition would have changed somewhat. 

k.


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## rick alen (Oct 30, 2014)

Yes, and knowing how things get reported in the peer review literature as I do, I don't doubt Verhoeven et. al. found such a backwater, or adequate written record, and got their info there as opposed to figuring it by experimentation. 


Rick


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