Kurdistan dagger

ALEX · 8th May 2008, 10:26 PM

Teodor,
What I've learned is that good quality wootz requires minimum effort to be brought up nicely. Wootz blades which were not polished, grinded and buffed too much during their lifetime have tendency for better contrast when etched. Just like the examples shown above - these blades were in excellent condition, not just well preserved, but not "touched" much. They required almost no mechanical work. All I did was polished them gently with the polishing paste until the surface became mirror-like/shiny, then cleaned it with alcohol and etched with FerroChloride (FeCl) solution. I've worked with good wootz blades with heavy pitting, and when test-etched they were showing good pattern, but when grinded and polished to get rid of pitting - the pattern often lost its contrast and became distorted. I'd strongly recomment NOT to overgrind and overpolish wootz. The goal is to make an entire surface mirror-like without taking too much metal off and without overheating the blade - the less mechanical intrusion - the better! You can use very fine sandpaper with water, then sandpaper with oil, followed by dry sandpaper and buffing, and once the surface looks mirror-like -- stop!
Now, when wootz is low-contrast (especially Turkish or Syrian sham type) - this is how it meant to be by design, and there is not much one can do to increase the contrast, except of trying different etching methods - FeCl, acid, etc. and if it happens to be sham (low contrast wootz) - it'd stay this way:-) Finally, a wootz blade can have areas of pattern loss - different reasons - overheating, overpolishing, underheating:-) Good wootz will always show it's best with almost any etchant, and this is the secret:-) Hope it helps.

ALEX · 8th May 2008, 10:38 PM

I think this is Turkish dagger, however it has some strong Kurdish influence - but the blade has no central ridge. I post it to demonstrate the pattern, which also required no work - just very light cleaning and slight FeCl etch - took 10 minutes.

TVV · 8th May 2008, 11:21 PM

Alex,
Thank you very much. There is plenty of good advice in your post. Here is the blade in question - I guess it is obvious it will never have a particularly strong contrast, but for some reason I think there is some room for improvement. You can barely see the pattern, but it is there. I did degrease the blade with alcohol and then I soaked it into diluted vinegar for about 12 hours (I tried a few hours only and had no result, so I left it in longer).
What is your opinion, should I try another etch, or this is as good as it will get? I have not polished the blade with anything, I only removed rust months ago with brass brush manually (no power tools).
Thank you,
Teodor

JeffS · 9th May 2008, 12:13 AM

Stunning! Congratulations Alex. It has been really fun to see this go from the Ebay auction to the pictures of this beautiful piece with the wootz revealed. I think I'm hooked on collecting for life now.

Gonzalo G · 9th May 2008, 01:01 AM

!Congratulations Alex! You have a great piece over there, thank you for sharing it. Do you have references of wootz production in the kurd region? Or they imported wootz to forge it?
My best regards

RSWORD · 9th May 2008, 02:17 AM

Alex made many excellent points in regards to how different wootz reacts to a polish and etch. A superb pattern would have been preserved by most generations and this is why they are easy to etch because they would have received few polishes in their lifetime when well preserved. In regards to your two pieces just a couple of suggestions. On your dagger which is exhibiting sham pattern I recommend you bump up your etchant from vinegar to the Ferric Chloride. Make sure your blade is well cleaned before applying etchant. You want to remove as much rust as possible. Wipe blade clean with alcohol and then with gloves apply liberally the etchant solution, most dilute 3:1 or 4:1 with water, and continue for several minutes watching closely the blade for any improvement in the appearance of the pattern. Most importantly, you need to neutralize after each etch. A baking soda paste applied liberally to the blade will do fine. Dry the blade well and immediately oil blade. The etchant may leave some discoloration if not washed off and neutralized but this can be easily removed with some metal polish and a soft cloth. You can repeat the process several times to see if you get improved results.

With your twist core yat, one possible way to bring out pattern better, and this requires a lot of patience, is to polish the blade, follow process as mentioned above, rinse and neutralize and then polish blade again and repeat process. You may need to do the cycle 4 or 5 times to really start bringing the pattern out. Remember though, each time you polish(with stones, sandpaper, etc.) you remove tiny bits of metal from the surface. Over long periods of time the original contours of a blade can be compromised from over cleaning. However, this takes decades if not centuries of continued use so a cycle of 4 or 5 times should not be an issue.

Importanlty, as Alex comments, not all patterns are of high contrast. Take sham wootz for example. I have seen a tremendous range of contrast, pattern quality and consistency, ie no dead spots, within this one branch of pattern. So, if the original blade was of low contrast with minimal pattern and maybe forged at a slightly too high temperature resulting in some dead spots, then guess what. The blade is going to be that way today. However, with a blade out of polish, we often do not know until it has been etched. This is why some people will polish a window in a blade because you can focus on one spot, see how it turns out, before investing many hours to bring a full blade back into good polish.

Best of luck with your pieces!

TVV · 9th May 2008, 02:41 AM

Thank you so much, this is the kind of advice I was looking for.

mohd · 14th May 2008, 12:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ALEX

.. I post it to demonstrate the pattern ..

Rsword, Alex .. judging from the pattern .. do you think this blade is made from wootz?

ALEX · 14th May 2008, 03:52 PM

Mohd, this is very nice and interesting pattern. The top picture does not look like "classical" Indo-Persian "wootz of legend". It resembles mechanical damascus, i.e. pattern weld - You can see/trace the formed layers of different steels, whereas in wootz the pattern would form in a more random/scattered manner. The other side (bottom picture) actually does look like wootz. Let's see what other members think...

RSWORD · 14th May 2008, 06:42 PM

I agree with you Alex. This is a pattern welded blade with nice layering.

Battara · 14th May 2008, 09:40 PM

Although some pattern welding is so tight that it looks like wootz (which has been discussed before)

8th May 2008, 10:38 PM	#2
ALEX Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 936	I think this is Turkish dagger, however it has some strong Kurdish influence - but the blade has no central ridge. I post it to demonstrate the pattern, which also required no work - just very light cleaning and slight FeCl etch - took 10 minutes. Attached Images

8th May 2008, 11:21 PM	#3
TVV Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Bay Area Posts: 1,660	Alex, Thank you very much. There is plenty of good advice in your post. Here is the blade in question - I guess it is obvious it will never have a particularly strong contrast, but for some reason I think there is some room for improvement. You can barely see the pattern, but it is there. I did degrease the blade with alcohol and then I soaked it into diluted vinegar for about 12 hours (I tried a few hours only and had no result, so I left it in longer). What is your opinion, should I try another etch, or this is as good as it will get? I have not polished the blade with anything, I only removed rust months ago with brass brush manually (no power tools). Thank you, Teodor Attached Images

8th May 2008, 10:26 PM	#1
ALEX Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 936	Teodor, What I've learned is that good quality wootz requires minimum effort to be brought up nicely. Wootz blades which were not polished, grinded and buffed too much during their lifetime have tendency for better contrast when etched. Just like the examples shown above - these blades were in excellent condition, not just well preserved, but not "touched" much. They required almost no mechanical work. All I did was polished them gently with the polishing paste until the surface became mirror-like/shiny, then cleaned it with alcohol and etched with FerroChloride (FeCl) solution. I've worked with good wootz blades with heavy pitting, and when test-etched they were showing good pattern, but when grinded and polished to get rid of pitting - the pattern often lost its contrast and became distorted. I'd strongly recomment NOT to overgrind and overpolish wootz. The goal is to make an entire surface mirror-like without taking too much metal off and without overheating the blade - the less mechanical intrusion - the better! You can use very fine sandpaper with water, then sandpaper with oil, followed by dry sandpaper and buffing, and once the surface looks mirror-like -- stop! Now, when wootz is low-contrast (especially Turkish or Syrian sham type) - this is how it meant to be by design, and there is not much one can do to increase the contrast, except of trying different etching methods - FeCl, acid, etc. and if it happens to be sham (low contrast wootz) - it'd stay this way:-) Finally, a wootz blade can have areas of pattern loss - different reasons - overheating, overpolishing, underheating:-) Good wootz will always show it's best with almost any etchant, and this is the secret:-) Hope it helps.

9th May 2008, 12:13 AM	#4
JeffS Member Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Singapore Posts: 423	Stunning! Congratulations Alex. It has been really fun to see this go from the Ebay auction to the pictures of this beautiful piece with the wootz revealed. I think I'm hooked on collecting for life now.

9th May 2008, 01:01 AM	#5
Gonzalo G Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Nothern Mexico Posts: 458	!Congratulations Alex! You have a great piece over there, thank you for sharing it. Do you have references of wootz production in the kurd region? Or they imported wootz to forge it? My best regards

9th May 2008, 02:17 AM	#6
RSWORD Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Greensboro, NC Posts: 1,086	Alex made many excellent points in regards to how different wootz reacts to a polish and etch. A superb pattern would have been preserved by most generations and this is why they are easy to etch because they would have received few polishes in their lifetime when well preserved. In regards to your two pieces just a couple of suggestions. On your dagger which is exhibiting sham pattern I recommend you bump up your etchant from vinegar to the Ferric Chloride. Make sure your blade is well cleaned before applying etchant. You want to remove as much rust as possible. Wipe blade clean with alcohol and then with gloves apply liberally the etchant solution, most dilute 3:1 or 4:1 with water, and continue for several minutes watching closely the blade for any improvement in the appearance of the pattern. Most importantly, you need to neutralize after each etch. A baking soda paste applied liberally to the blade will do fine. Dry the blade well and immediately oil blade. The etchant may leave some discoloration if not washed off and neutralized but this can be easily removed with some metal polish and a soft cloth. You can repeat the process several times to see if you get improved results. With your twist core yat, one possible way to bring out pattern better, and this requires a lot of patience, is to polish the blade, follow process as mentioned above, rinse and neutralize and then polish blade again and repeat process. You may need to do the cycle 4 or 5 times to really start bringing the pattern out. Remember though, each time you polish(with stones, sandpaper, etc.) you remove tiny bits of metal from the surface. Over long periods of time the original contours of a blade can be compromised from over cleaning. However, this takes decades if not centuries of continued use so a cycle of 4 or 5 times should not be an issue. Importanlty, as Alex comments, not all patterns are of high contrast. Take sham wootz for example. I have seen a tremendous range of contrast, pattern quality and consistency, ie no dead spots, within this one branch of pattern. So, if the original blade was of low contrast with minimal pattern and maybe forged at a slightly too high temperature resulting in some dead spots, then guess what. The blade is going to be that way today. However, with a blade out of polish, we often do not know until it has been etched. This is why some people will polish a window in a blade because you can focus on one spot, see how it turns out, before investing many hours to bring a full blade back into good polish. Best of luck with your pieces!

9th May 2008, 02:41 AM	#7
TVV Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Bay Area Posts: 1,660	Thank you so much, this is the kind of advice I was looking for.

14th May 2008, 03:52 PM	#9
ALEX Member Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 936	Mohd, this is very nice and interesting pattern. The top picture does not look like "classical" Indo-Persian "wootz of legend". It resembles mechanical damascus, i.e. pattern weld - You can see/trace the formed layers of different steels, whereas in wootz the pattern would form in a more random/scattered manner. The other side (bottom picture) actually does look like wootz. Let's see what other members think...

14th May 2008, 06:42 PM	#10
RSWORD Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Greensboro, NC Posts: 1,086	I agree with you Alex. This is a pattern welded blade with nice layering.

14th May 2008, 09:40 PM	#11
Battara EAAF Staff Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Louisville, KY Posts: 7,272	Although some pattern welding is so tight that it looks like wootz (which has been discussed before)