I agree with Jeff

pattern welding or forge folding or mechanical damascus... still produces a design that can be revealed..... if you are using dis-similar materials, it is easy to see the pattern........ but if you use the same material welded on it's self, it is the weld boundaries that reveal pattern.... ( why.. ? possibly weld boundaries have abit decarb or even carburization, or flux included, or oxide, ???)
-- i've noticed brighter weld boundaries if you use borax rather than silica flux
-- anyhow...it is harder to see the weld boundaries but they are there... .. for example.... if you have a bar of Cable damascus... it may take a day in vinegar etch before the pattern comes out.. but it is there

the japanese bloom steel was folded to squeeze out some slag... and evenly distribute the rest of the silicious slag in the steel... with a high polish...it is easy to see the weld boundaries..... and like Jeff mentioned.... this forms the "hada" pattern...
-- definitely pattern welded

remember....all these folds have a record of how the blade was forged in the observable pattern


on wootz...... i believe the top notched blades were perfect in all aspects..... such as being heat treated well/combat worthy.... high finish.... excellent etch ...
-- remember back then....if you boasted that your blades were the best... i bet someone would eventually put you and your blade to the test.. ..... not a test i'd like to fail .....
-- also... i believe that the anient steel makers had a good idea of how much carbon to add to their charge... i'm sure they weighed all the ingredients...... otherwise there'd be piles of useless ingots .... trust me !!
-- it's easy to go over the 2% carb level...... and produce a beautiful ingot with impressive dendrites..... that can never be forged out

Greg

i'm not sure i understand.. .. from my point of view, sham can be made with both high and low carbon wootz.... just the high carbon wootz has additional carbon to form carbides (large)
-it maybe the carbides help with cutting.... but one thing is forsure....they help alot with having a nice etch
- cutting properties are so very hard to quantify

in my opinion.... wootz is a very clean steel... there are no silicious slags.. . (the slags do not add to blade strength)
personally, I believe a fully melted steel has much better properties

obviously both ways make a fine blade


Greg

Sorry Greg, I was not very clear. What I meant was that wootz has a lot of other metals in it, does the amount of these make any influence?

Here it another one – it is in 3-D – as you can feel the pattern.

The carbon level determines whether you will get carbides or not, and how many you get, so that's the element that gets all the attention. Some additional elements are needed to get the carbides to segregate and build up into bands, but I believe their influence is not changed very much in the amount of variation you see in the historic blades. And they are usually a tiny percentage of the total alloy.
So far, it seems (to me!) the determining factors in pattern are: speed of solidification; pre-forging heat treatment; the manner in which the metal is forged; alloy content - in that order, more or less...and I could be very wrong about that order - the history of wootz is littered with bad theories, so I'm in good company!
Since there are some (relatively) non-destructive ways of getting spectrographic analysis done these days, it would help to get a couple blades tested, to see if there really is a carbon or other difference between the sham and not-sham wootz. But visually, the sham looks more like alloy banding and not carbide clusters to me (that is not really different, carbide clustering is just alloy banding with a lot of extra carbon in the alloy)

Thank you for your explanation Jeff, I think it makes it easier for a lot to get an idea of what it is all about, and yes you are in good company – here:).
The problem to many is, that when they see analyses, showing a lot of different metals plus carbon, many does not know what to look for and what not, so they get confused and stop watching for anything – thinking they don’t understand it anyway. I think you have given a fine explanation, without tying yourself into something you can’t get out of. But you have given an understandable explanation – thank you very much.

I've been following the thread with interest, btw. Other than creating the wootz pattern indicating a high degree of refined skill of a smiths forging ability, if all things were equal in the shape and form of two swords, one with wootz, one without and the skill of the swordsmen weilding them were equal, would a sword with wootz have an advantage over one without, martial or combat wise? I could imagine a psychological advantage or disadvantage of the swordsmen, but leaving that aside, are there qualities in the wootz sword that make it better than a non-wootz sword? tougher yet flexible, better balance, etc? Excuse me if this has already been answered and I missed it in all the commentary.

That is the 50 dollar question ? :)

is wootz a better sword steel that regular high carbon steel...

this is very hard to tell.... since if both steels are heat treated right.....they will work wonderfully

- i would think that wootz would hold its edge abit longer.....since carbides are wear resistant

- i've also found that wootz will take a keen edge...

if were are comparing this to our modern high carbon steels....it would be hard to tell..........but if we are comparing it to the high carbon bloom steels that were used by the ancient smiths.... ... the silicious slags in these steels do not add to strength, nor edge retention, or toughness
- then i'd alway vote for wootz...

like i said before..... it is very hard to quantify this property in steel

i'm interested in what others think, aswell


Greg

i believe the 19thC (european) opinion was debated as well. from memory, the historian was fascinated by it, to the point of attempting to replicated it in england (and failing), whilst the military opinion was that it was vastly inferior to british steel.
this cannot be taken seriously of course, given the military attitude at the time (raj and empire vs anything unbritish).

I see, so to quantify the advantages, it would make more sense to make the comparison using technology of the era and the ancients would've had the answers by having their smiths and warriors do several hundreds or thousands of test cuts to check which sword held up better. Any ancient or early text or references as to how the wootz performed in battle and test cuts vs. non wootz swords?

Greg, I think you won the $ 50 note, both for your answer, and for mentioning that the steel of to day is not the same as the steel they used hundreds of years ago.
I agree with you that a sword with a wootz blade most likely would be preferable. One thing is the pattern on the blade, but I think when fighting most would tend to forget about the pattern, and be happy to have a sword, which keeps the edge better than the opponents, armed with a sword with a high carbon blade.

It should also be mentioned, that you now and again see blades, where one side is made of wootz, and the other side of high carbon steel. These blades are rare; I have never seen one myself – only read about them.

Mabagani, I don’t think you would need many thousand test cuts – a battle or two would be enough, and no, I have not seen anything about the test cutting you refer to, in any of the old texts I have seen. The only thing I have seen about test cutting, was that the young Rajput nobles practised their cutting power on wet clay, so they would be able to serve the head of an ox in one blow – anything else would be a disgrace to the family.

One cut slamming edges of a wootz vs. non-wootz blade could've also given an immediate but costly answer, too, ouch...
Wet clay, interestingly for testing could give feedback and practice for- line, angle, aim, quality, etc on a stationary target without damaging the edge. I'll have to try it some time.
So were wootz blades more difficult for smiths to master and an expensive commodity reserved for the elite warriors and/or wealthy?

Mabagani, I think you will need a very big lump of moist clay, as the test they did was on force. I don’t know how much force it takes to serve a bulls head in one blow, but I would think it take quit a lot of strength – besides a very sharp sword.

In some of the older texts that I have prices of blades are mentioned, and it seems as if a perfectly made watered blade would sell for a kings ransom - almost, a good watered blade would sell for the ransom of a minor prince - almost, and a normal blade(?) would sell for far less. It is difficult to say how much the blades would be in to day’s currency, but from the old writing it is clear, that very good blades must have cost a fortune. On the other hand, for the owner it was safety first, as there were a lot of wars going on in India in those days, as well as a lot of robbers were touring the country – and it also gave prestige.

Not just historians, cutlers like Stodart and scientists like Faraday (the famous one) investigated wootz in the early 1800's because it was viewed as superior to the crucible steels in production then. Attempts to duplicate it were also made in France, Switzerland and Russia. According to C.S. Smith in "A History of Metallography", interest waned when local methods improved and the Bessemer process came along and introduced a method of making homogenous steel more adaptable to large-scale production.
An analogy might be drawn between the manufacture of wootz blades and violin bows - The starting material is graded, and the lesser quality stuff is used by production line workers with little care to exploiting the material or fit and finish. The higher quality stuff is worked by th more skilled artisans, and as they work it they grade it further. The bows that are fully realizing the potential of the high-grade wood get more hours lavished on them in fit and finish, as well as gold fittings, the finest horse hair, a signature. The ones that are not working out optimally are still much better than the lower quality wood could aspire to, so they get some attention to detail and silver fittings, and perhaps a signature.
Violin bows are still largely made in a manner that survives from the pre-industrial era, so I think it could be a window into how the ancient steel was worked. The best material getting the most attention and expensive fit-out could also explain the tenfold increase in prices for the best watered blades.

pearson wrote a fabulous article in the late 18thC, after a claim from bombay about the fabulous properties of wootz. he dove into the subject with the academic passion of a victorian institution, and hammered, weighed, smelt and tasted it (no joke!), as well has forging and dipping it in various acids. i cant remember his conclusions, but remember him thoroughly enjoying his experiments :-)

Hi All and welcome Alex,

I was away and didn't see this thread until today. The term Wootz is the anglicized version of ukku wich just means steel. Wootz has come to mean a high carbon crucible steel with a "watered steel pattern". I have on a couple occasions noted that Zschokke blade 8 was eliminated from Verhoeven's study because of the hypoeutectoid carbon level. Before we condemn Verhoeven for "redefining" wootz we should consider a few things.

Verhoeven makes it clear that Fe3C (cementite) is crucial to forming the watering pattern. He also makes it clear that they can only form in the hypereutectoid state. Zschokke's blade 8 was rightfully dropped from his study because it could not contribute anything to the understanding of the formation of these particles. To my knowledge he doesn't call it sham.

When we look at the pattern on blade 8, it does have a sham appearace, my copy of the paper does not show the pattern clear enough to be conclusive. As Dr. Anne has stated it depends on your definition of sham. This is one blade that has been tested. Statistically this is meaningless. Other studies have been done, on wootz with carbon levels in the 1-2% range. Since sham has been considered to be wootz I assume they are part of this test, and therefore assume that not all sham blades are hypoeutectoid. It is certainly possible that the cementite particles are distributed in the pearlite matrix and still having the ferrite sham pattern ? This of course begs the question do we know the carbon levels of other sham blades.

I would love to hear more on this topic as there definately is a wealth of knowledge hear to clear this up.

Thank
Jeff

HI, all friends
 

one guy showed off this for the Spring Festival's traditional blessing, but people don't actually know what this is but an antique with koftgari and some veins.

this thing may you look at right here:

http://www.hl365.net/viewthread.php?...extra=page%3D1


would you kindly tell something, thanks! :)

While it is true that excess cementite only shows up in hypereutectoid steels, I think Verhoeven might be mistaken in saying the cementite is crucial to the pattern.
This blade is 0.79%, measured at a lab -
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~jlp3/.../WTZDET~1a.jpg

This blade is somewhat less in carbon, but has not been lab analysed -

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~jlp3/images/sch065a.jpg

The patterns are not due to extra cementite; since they are below the eutectoid point the carbon is all wrapped up in pearlite.
Do the patterns look like sham wootz, or regular, or somewhere in between?

I think the ultimate answer is to get more blades checked at the lab, but we may find the old pattern-based distinctions are as much related to working methods as alloy.

love those blades... very nice
i like the top one alot... ... were they etched in sulphuric

the bottom one..... the pattern near the spine looks abit sham like... with the straight long lines..

what do others think?




i think we are really are closing in on the true wootz steel... by looking at the traditions, the alloys, patterns and treatments.... i believe its really the big picture that counts.....
-- when i look at Jeff's blades ...by the nouveau wootz definition... i would say they are wootz..


Shangrila: I believe that is a " Kard " and its made of wootz... ... very nice...
I love the close up on the blade.... look at the purple-ish hue of the etch..
-- this is interesting.... has anyone replicated this etch oxide color ???
-- i'm thinking "alum" may have been used in the etch??

Those are beautiful Jeff!

I am not sure how to classify either blade, neither looks like "classic" sham. They do appear similar to 19th century patterns from Persia and India. Can I ask is this from modern steel? Do you know the S content? You certainly have me scratching my head!

Jeff

Thanks, they are modern steel, photo # 1 is about five years old, photo #2 is just a couple months. Sulfur is 0.02%, I think, I am away from my records right now, I'll double check when I get home.
I'm scratching my head, too - another decade or two of experiments, and I *might* have an idea of how modern and classic wootz blades compare, and what it all means.
First blade was etched in Ferric chloride, second in ferrous sulfate.

Thank you, Gt Obach
 

what a great forum and discussion! Amazing! :)

How could I come to be a fast learner?

I think I need some basic materials,books and samples. :D

who can help me out??? :D

I love this place.

The search function at the upper right hand corner of the page is your key to riches . ;) :D

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