Even wootz blades can break

[Jeff D]

Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde

Hi Greg,

but maybe they did not temper the blades enough
Jens

Hi Jens,

I personally think this is the answer. If the blade is heated too much the wootz pattern is lost. I suspect a large number of these blades were under tempered for this reason. Remember they were heating it to a certain colour (prethermometer era) Verhoeven et al has shown that this has a large margin of error.

Jeff