19th October 2006, 06:41 PM | #11 |
Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 116
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i believe its more a matter of economy.... .... for myself.. i can't really tell much of a difference between my modern type wootz steel and 1084, W1, or 1095 steel.... but.... I can buy a 3/4 round of W1 for 7 bucks but my wootz cost me at least 70 bucks to make the 3lbs ingot.... and even with forge experience, the success rate to produce a sword length is low... (lots of things can go wrong) ..... but that is just a modern scenario....
in the past... i believe economy and quantity would be reason.. even bloom steel like the vikings made or the bloom steel the Japanese made would be a slow process... look at this post Jesus made on replication of tatara http://forums.dfoggknives.com/index....topic=6220&hl= viking blades would be similar but patterns would be formed with different bloom steels here a tutorial jake did http://www.powning.com/jake/commish/progress1.shtml also here's a video Dan just did on his patternwelding.. http://www.ferrum.cc/en/online/videos.html Long process forsure...... but it's important to note that the processes still survive today and are still sought after.... wootz, tamahagane, among a sea of very affordable mass produced blades. Greg ps.. warnings... i do have a bias towards wootz |
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