Identifying Modern Wootz

ariel · 20th September 2019, 11:51 AM

Modern knives made out of crucible steel do not even approach the old wootz-y pattern and nobody except for Nonikashvili succeeded in forging a modern long wootz blade.
The metallurgical secret of wootz is no secret anymore. Modern metallurgists cracked it open.
The real secret is a process of smithing: how to force the dendrites to get organized in a beautiful pattern? Here scientific methods are powerless: we are talking about minute tricks , such as temperature, force and directions of hammer blows etc. We have irretrievably lost this information formerly transmitted orally and practically in a father-to-son manner.
I might not worry about forgeries. One glance at the blade is likely to be sufficient to identify modern manufacture. Machine-generated music is good for the elevators: it cannot compose Bach’s Prelude in E-moll.
Anosov got all the technical details from his “industrial spies” , but still, his blades were just poor imitations of true Persian or Indian wootz.

20th September 2019, 11:51 AM	#3
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	Modern knives made out of crucible steel do not even approach the old wootz-y pattern and nobody except for Nonikashvili succeeded in forging a modern long wootz blade. The metallurgical secret of wootz is no secret anymore. Modern metallurgists cracked it open. The real secret is a process of smithing: how to force the dendrites to get organized in a beautiful pattern? Here scientific methods are powerless: we are talking about minute tricks , such as temperature, force and directions of hammer blows etc. We have irretrievably lost this information formerly transmitted orally and practically in a father-to-son manner. I might not worry about forgeries. One glance at the blade is likely to be sufficient to identify modern manufacture. Machine-generated music is good for the elevators: it cannot compose Bach’s Prelude in E-moll. Anosov got all the technical details from his “industrial spies” , but still, his blades were just poor imitations of true Persian or Indian wootz.