Well Rivkin, you may not be a specialist - but neither am I - you do however know far more about this than I do
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Hi Jeff,
You write: ‘Carbon makes steel brittle in general, not just at cold temperatures. Over 1 % C, the amount of carbide increases and the carbides form at grain boundaries, reducing the strength of the grain boundary. Wootz blades are heat treated in such a way as to minimize the bad effects of having a lot of excess carbide, to take advantage of their excellent edge enhancing properties.’
Now it is easy to test, but how did they test it in the early days, the carbon, and all the other things being in the ore? Besides the quality must have differed from where the iron was mined – or from where the iron ore was imported from.