Wootz ingots, where do they all come from?

[Jens Nordlunde]

I have, for some time now, wondered from where all the wootz ingots for sale come from?

Some years ago it was seldom to see an ingot for sale, but within the last 3-4 years there seem to be quite a few for sale. I have not heard that they have started to make them again – so where do they all come from, does anyone know?

[Jens Nordlunde]

On SFI the same question seems to be up for discussion – have a look here

http://forums.swordforum.com/showthr...586#post662586

[ariel]

Strange as it may sound, I was asking virtually the same question in my posting about Luristani swords.
I think that when the demand is there, some enterpreneurial guy will provide a constant stream of supply, if you get my drift......

[Ann Feuerbach]

Hi Jens,
Having looked at many genuine wootz and pulad ingots, all the so called wootz ingots that I have seen for sale, are not genuine. The shape only slighly resembles genuine ingots. They are probably Mill Balls. Mill balls were made of cast iron or cast steel (therefore they can have a dendritic structure is polished and etched, like crucible steel). They were used to crush ore in the 18th century. This can produce a sort of pock marked surface, similar to the crucible steel slag. Beware of these well preseved ingots.
On another note, whether or not they are crucible steel or Mill balls, they are not from an excavation and are therefore looted from industrial archaeological sites. Buying them supports looting, looting causes loss of valuable and irreplaceable information.
I am working on comparing genuine ingots to mill balls.

[Jens Nordlunde]

Hi Ann,

Thank you for your answer, which I find very interesting as I for one, never thought that the ingots offered for sale were mill balls. My knowledge of ingots is not very big, so I am glad you told this, as others also can benefit from this information too.

The interests between collectors and scientists can/does differ sometimes, and that can be a problem not easily solved, but the fact that dealers sell these mill balls as wootz ingots is appalling, as there are enough fakes on the market as it is.

You write that the mill balls were used in the 18th century, what did they use before that time?

I would also like to know something more about the ore. When they found an ore, did they cut it out in blocks or in smaller pieces?

I guess that they also sometimes found earth with enough iron to make a production, how did they part the iron ore from the earth?

I know that some ores were inferior and others not. Did they make test melting’s? In some books it is hinted that they did start a production for export at once – but did they?

[Ann Feuerbach]

Hi Jens,
At this point in time I am finding out more about Mill balls. Most preindustrial mining used water or just plain labor to crush ores. Assaying of ore was done since the earliest of times. I do not remember many details now...it has been a few years since my archaeometallurgy M.A.

[Rick]

Hi Ann , some of these Mill Balls are referenced as coming from the Mojave Desert in the SFI thread ; these then must have been artifacts from Spanish Colonial days , no ?

When did the use of Mill Balls cease in iron production ?

I wonder how much Iron production went on in the Mojave back then ?

[Jeff Pringle]

Hi, I'm jumping in from the SFI thread -

I found those balls at a mine which was in operation ~mid 20th century, and it was not an iron mine. They are just an example of a type of crushing technology which is used for many different mining and processing applications, not limited to ore type or a particular century.
I'm not sure how far back the use of ball mills for ore processing goes in the Mojave, probably to the mid 19th (when it all started there), but it continues to this day, and I think they are more commonly post-industrial tech.
Most of the early mining activity in the American SW was probably wiped out by later, more industrial efforts, there are some pretty huge iron mines from the early - mid 20th C. out there.
Edit - I checked Biringuccio's Pirotechnia to see what miners were using in the 16th C, and he's pretty vague, lots of mentions of milling things, but I didn't see much description of the mills - he mentions stamp mills & flour-type mills.
I recall some reference to the Spanish mines in California crushing ore or mixing with mercury using a stone wheel that rolls around in a circle, but can't find the specific book.

Jeff

[Jens Nordlunde]

Hi Jeff,

Welcome to the forum.
True, mining in the Mojave Desert has been going on for more than a thousand years, if one can trust the written word. Mining gems and a lot of other things.

Could your mill balls go for Indian wootz ingots, or should I ask, how much expert do you have to be, to see that they are not Indian ingots, remembering that most of us have only seen ingots on pictures?

Jens

[Rick]

Thanks very much for the further information Jeff .
I'd love to see a picture of the blade that you forged from one of these babys .
Can you get a picture of the pattern or is it too fine to show up ?

[Jeff Pringle]

Could your mill balls go for Indian wootz ingots

Well, they look sorta like wootz ingots, but not really - The shape is too variable (each one slightly different but not in a consistant way); and there is no definite liquid side/crucible side, which is very obvious on small batch crucible steel ingots. And about half the ones I got are regular steel, nothing wootzy about them.
If I had not seen a pile of them next to a giant barrel at a mine, though, I'd be hard pressed to come up with an explanation for the shape.

Can you get a picture of the pattern or is it too fine to show up?

I'll try to get a photo, my camera's got some macro capability. I'm prob'ly not going to ever forge one of these Mojave mill balls into a blade, though - I got my own crucible steel for that
Jeff

[Jens Nordlunde]

Jeff, you write: ‘I got my own crucible steel for that’. Meaning that you are quite sure, the ingot you have is wootz – am I right?

If this is so, why are so many fooled? Is it be course they trust the dealer, or is it be course they don’t look properly, or maybe they don’t know what to look for – so they trust the dealer after all?

Jens

[Jeff Pringle]

Meaning that you are quite sure, the ingot you have is wootz – am I right?

Meaning I make crucible steel (some of which is wootz) from iron ore, so I don’t need to use ‘found’ dendritic steel shot.

Some of the steel I’ve made has had professional lab work done, so I can be definite on the wootz, but I also get metal that is more ‘high carbon steel,’ and metal that is more ‘cast iron.’
There’s a slight problem that perhaps very few people care about, which is that until very recently, ‘wootz’ meant ‘that steel they used to make them swords out of’; but now, it’s changing as we begin to gain a practical understanding of the material and a better understanding of it’s history.
My definition of ‘wootz’ is: a simple carbon steel with over ~1.3% carbon, forged in such a way as to have banded carbide structures. (Others have slightly different definitions). This takes into account that we understand how to make wootz now, so the old definition is no longer sufficient. The classic ‘wootz’ pattern (how those old swords look) can be made from almost any dendritic steel, and perhaps in some cases from regular hi-carbon barstock, but with those materials the bands are not always saturated with iron carbides.
It is an artificial definition, though – they just made steel into swords back then, so even some period pieces don’t match that – everyone just uses the word wootz when referring to blades that look like this:

regardless of alloy content, and now also to items that have the precursor structure, dendrites. A contemporary definition of wootz for those of us who make it is just now starting to be possible, so there’s going to be a bunch of ‘yes it’s wootz’, ‘no it’s not’ going on, and random lumps of cast mystery steel may or may not be included when it all shakes out.
If I were to acquire (ethically, Ann!) a genuine old wootz cake, the last thing I would do is forge it, that’d be a terrible thing to do to such a wonderful artifact of pre-industrial technology!
And, of course, any misrepresentation of items as either old or new wootz, ingot or blade, confuses the situation and is BAD

If this is so, why are so many fooled?

Are so many fooled? I don’t know that that is the case, there can’t be all that many people interested in wootz ingots, can there?
But there are only a couple reference works with pictures of the original ingots out there, so unless you are melting steel in your back yard and becoming that familiar with the external morphology & metallography of steel ingots, all you really have to go on is the seller’s promise.
BTW: Nice cross section photo of an old Indian wootz ingot in “The History of Metallography” C.S. Smith, ISBN 0-262-69120-5, as well as a discussion of wootz’s importance to our understanding of the structure of metals.
The first contemporary ‘what is wootz’ article, from a technical perspective:
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM...even-9809.html
(note how one of the blades discussed is too low in carbon to count (to the authors) as wootz, but another has just 1% and is included – I’d think that one was just hi carbon crucible steel - but they all have some pattern I’d call wootzy)

[Jens Nordlunde]

Thank you Jeff for your interesting explanation. From a friend I did know that you are a skilled blade maker, but I did not know you also made your own ingots.
Nice blade you show.

Jens

[Mare Rosu]

First I appreciate Jeff for entering into this discussion,
His information is very informative to me anyway. Thank you and Welcome.

I have a wootz knife (Bowie) made by Al Pendray , made from his wootz, also I had him make a Bowie out of a old original wootz ingot, both has a very "wootzy" pattern. This Alwar Armory wootz ingot was written up by Dr. Verhoeven, Pendray and Dauksch in a paper
" The Continuing Study of Damascus Steel: Bars from the Alwar Armory" in the September 2004 issue of the JOM.The Wootz Ingot/bar I gave them, for testing, is labeled #3 in Table 1 page 18.
I readily admit that just making a blade out of an old wootz ingot is not a good practice. However a lot of technical information was derived, in this case by doing so.
The reaming half of the ingot/bar with the Alwar inscription is still intact.
see: http://www.vikingsword.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002326.html

Do you perchance make wootz knives for sale, also?

I am posting this to let all to know that Jens has saved someone a lot of money ($1000) by asking this ( not to hard a question this time ) question and posting it.
In April of 2003 I purchased a wootz ingot ( not the one mention above)
in order to have a knife made out of it by Pendray, it was tested and found to be cast iron, not wootz. I returned the ingot and received full credit form the seller.
The exact, same ingot went back up for sale, recently. I was in a quandary as to what to do about the information that I had about the "wootz' ingot.
When I checked the seller web site, Monday of this week, the ingot is no longer listed. Not listed as being sold, just not there.

That to me indicates that this posting by Jens was read and that the correct and Honorable action was taken by the pending seller of this ingot.
By pulling this item, also relieved me of just what to do about it as I was, other than the sell, probably the only one that was aware of it being non wootz.
Using this forum, learning from it and the helping out of one another is the reason I enjoy it .
Gene

[Jeff Pringle]

I’m glad you found my comments to be helpful, I’ve been studying wootz for a while now (not as long as Pendray and Verhoeven, of course), and I think I might be forming some opinions on it
I make knives from crucible steel, occasionally for sale. Since everyone might have different definitions of ‘wootz’, and since phulad might be a more appropriate term, I’m starting to think crucible steel is the best term for now – but on this forum, wootz is the lingua franca, so to speak.
If you are in touch with Pendray, you should thank him for me for all the groundbreaking work he did with Verhoeven solving the mysteries of this metal. And I’d be curious to know if now, 12 years later, he thinks he patented the wrong process…
Jeff

[Jeff Pringle]

Here is a photo of a cast steel mill ball, forged out and with a ladder pattern put into the steel:

For scale, the ladders are spaced ~ 14mm (½”)

A little more technical background: the beautiful patterns on wootz blades come from slight variations in alloy that happen as the metal cools from liquid to solid, and the way those variations are altered during forging and heat treating.
Since this was a small ball that had cooled rapidly, it had both a smallish initial structure and not a lot of stretching to get to knife-sized bar – so the pattern is small scale, looks wootzy through a loupe but to the naked eye appears granular. With more forging/stretching/heat cycling, it could be made to look like small-scale wootz to the naked eye.

If you have a slowly cooled structure & not a lot of stretching, you get a pattern like this:

(my steel, ~1% Carbon)

And with more stretching, it gets more towards what we think of as ‘wootz’:

(my steel, 0.79% Carbon, lines are 2.54 mm 1”)

So if you had some 20th century industrial trash, you could pass it off as 18th century wootz, and even work it into wootzy looking blades if it was roughly the right alloy, cooled slowly enough and worked extensively enough.
The fake wootz that I saw in person appeared to be a different alloy than the mill balls I picked up in the desert, but getting the right alloy seems not to matter much in terms of naked-eye patterning.
Jeff

[Mare Rosu]

Jeff GREAT looking blades
Are tell us that the blades shown are from the same type of cast steel mill ball?
Or are the last two your style of wootz? As you say the patterns of the last two blades are very wootzie, to me anyway
Regardless you do good work!
Jeff may I make a suggestion?
Place one, or more, of your knifes, like the last one shown in your last posting, on the Swap section of the Form. I as well as others I am sure, would be interested in acquiring one of your knives.
Keep in mind we are all friends on this forum and need to be treated nicely

I have not contacted Mr. Pendray but will do so and ask him about his wootz processes.
Gene

[Jens Nordlunde]

Jeff, what you write, and show, is most interesting, and I am sure it is new to most, if not all, the readers of this thread. The word wootz has, to collectors of Oriental arms, had an almost magical spell to it, you have however made the magic spell evaporate, and leave us with ‘Wootz is not wootz, unless it is wootz – of course’.

We, the collectors, should have been able to figure out, that ‘industrial trash steel’ in some case would produce a ‘kind’ of wootz if treated the right way, although I think few of us have thought along this lane.

Your explanation, about the way the pattern show, is very good and easy to follow, even for a layman, who has never worked with iron/wootz/steel. The pictures you show illustrates very well what you write in the text, and the two blades are very nice.

Please show us pictures of the whole knives.

Jens

[Mare Rosu]

Jens/Jeff
This is a link to an eBay item (Andrew it is closed )The blade looks somewhat like wootz. I think the picture has way to much contrast to really show the pattern naturally. I don't think you could or should cut a bolt with it.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=7178995092

Gene
Update:
Scan down to the bottom of the listing and read some of the questions asked and the answers, also click on the "MORE" links. I do not read Russian, but the pictures look interesting.

[Jens Nordlunde]

Gene, I agree, this looks very strange, there is however a small chance that it could be the photo. On the other hand one would think the seller would get the best photos - but it has been seen before.

Jens

[Rick]

Those sure look like hacksaw cuts in that bolt to me .
I also followed the link to the other pictures ; I don't know what's being attempted with the nail in the vise photo but I can assure you that trying to hold a nail by its head in a vise and expect it to not move around under any kind of pressure is futile .

Just my personal opinion , YMMV .

[Jeff Pringle]

Gene –the blades are of my own crucible steel, and thanks for the compliment!
I just forged out one mill ball into a bar, because it is surprising and interesting to me that there are these modern items that are similar to wootz, and that someone would start selling them as wootz.
I think the collector community will need to be on the lookout for more convincing fakes as the awareness of how wootz was made spreads.

The word wootz has, to collectors of Oriental arms, had an almost magical spell to it, you have however made the magic spell evaporate, and leave us with ‘Wootz is not wootz, unless it is wootz – of course’

Jens, I hope the magic hasn’t really evaporated! Those beautiful antique blades are still magic to me, even as I try to understand how they were made. The magic might get a little obscured if you start trying to nail down every molecule and assign everything into boxes, but those blades are still amazingly sharp, flexible and mysterious, and it is still very difficult to make modern steel that matches them.
These are the photos of complete knives I have on line now:
Persian style:
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~jlp3/...Persian15a.jpg

Modern style:
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~jlp3/...wootzQT07s.jpg


Regarding the russian knife, yes, it looks like the contemporary russian bulat in grain structure from the picture.
The pictured tests are supposed to show how macho the metal is - hammer it thru a bolt w/o damage - this would have been impressive, but I recently saw a photo of the same thing done with a hardened railroad spike, which are not extra-special steel, or even high carbon.
Shave a nail - This is also not a big deal, any knife that is correctly heat treated will pull a curl of metal off a nail w/o damage. I do this test with all my knives.
Scratch glass - that's a good one, ultra-high-carbon wootz should be able to scratch glass and still be as flexible as a regular knife.
Now if he was doing the paper cuts after all that, without re-sharpening, that'd be a damn fine knife, but I don't know the order of the tests.
My three cents
Jeff

[Jens Nordlunde]

Jeff, don’t worry there is still quite a lot of magic left, and I think the old blades are fantastic. With the warning you have given us, I think it must be getting difficult selling on a place like eBay. See also what Ric. Furrer writes on SFI http://forums.swordforum.com/showthr...threadid=59076

[Jens Nordlunde]

Here is a bit of magic.

[Ann Feuerbach]

Hi all,
Great blades Jeff, and Lew's new one is beautiful too. Just to let you all know...research on the Mill balls is still taken place but no conclusions yet. Particularly if they can be forged (in many senses of the word) by those in the know. Also, I am in touch with Ivan (via a translater), the maker of the wootz blade from Russia. If all goes as planned I may be meeting with him next month so any questions are welcome. Of course, I will ask him about his process.

[Jens Nordlunde]

Interesting that this appears again http://forums.swordforum.com/showthr...threadid=59076

[Radharc 59]

Hello and greetings to all. I found this forum and thread today, coming over from Primal Fires. I'm a custom knifemaker that works with a variety of materials, including some Damascus barstock, occasionally forging my own. I signed up several years back as a distributor for an Indian company that makes repro pieces, although have since quit bothering with their stuff, due to quality issues and such. Plus, I found it was only serving to distract me from my core business: making my own knives and selling them. ANY-ways, the short of it is that they started offering 'Wootz' a year or two ago, and sent me a lump of it to evaluate. I did polish up a section and etch it, to check out the grain, but they wanted too much $, so I didn't keep it. However, I have an abiding interest in ancient metallurgy and Wootz in particular. I wanted to thank you for all of the information, it's been quite pleasant to read. Also, I would comment that the steel you make, and the subsequent blades, Jeff, is quite impressive. Thanks for sharing that info.

I've been mad about seaxes lately, and stuck (LOL!) on them. Here's the latest creation, for whomever may be interested. I forged the 8" blade out of 01 and left the exxagerated hammered texture on it, to simulate an 'ancient' look. Curly Bubinga handle with Damascus fittings.

Sincerely,
Michael
www.radharcknives.com

[Jens Nordlunde]

Hi Radharch 59,

Welcome to the forum. Nice blade you show.

Maybe you will find other interesting threads, if you look for magnetic or meteoric iron on the forum – happy search.

[Radharc 59]

Hello Jens,

Thanks for the welcome, and the compliment on my work. I am Irish and Scottish, although American by birth, and am most interested in Celtic pieces. I tend to specialize in the Sgian Dubh most often, but have wanted to make a Seax for awhile, and am working on my third one right now. Here's a pic of the first one, blade a bit shorter, out of 52100, hammered brass fittings, with Bloodwood for the handle.

Michael
www.radharcknives.com

P.S. I shall search out the other forums you suggested. Thank you!