Photo's of various types of watered steels
 

I think Dr. Ann did a great job in her article on crucible damascus steel or wootz as I like to call it. I decided to provide a visual aid illustrating various types of steels which exhibit surface patterns. I do not have examples of all types of course but thought this would make for a good visual presentation. I apologize in advance for the number of pictures but I was having fun taking pictures of all the different patterns. The first grouping:

1) This is from a Turkish Yataghan blade. It is forged of 8 rows of twist-core pattern welded steel. The spine and edge are an iron/steel laminate that have been forge welded to the twist cores.

2) This is from an Indian Saber and represents one of the nicest pure pattern welded blades I have seen.

3) This is from a blade on a tribal shaska. It is wootz and probably originates from Persia/Turkey/Azerbaijan.

4) This is from a Chinese Saber blade and is referred to as Qianqang. It is a type of pattern welded steel where a high carbon edge is sandwhiched between "cheeks" of softer steel. It exhibits a nice pattern along the edge.

5) This is from a Chinese Jian blade and is referred to as San Mei. Again, a high carbon steel is sandwhiched to a softer body so that both edges are of the high carbon steel and the body is the softer steel. The pattern on this one is a lamellar one with nice crystallization along the edges from the heat treatment.

6) This is from a Moro Kris blade. It is a mechanical damascus core that has been sandwhiched between "cheeks" of lamellar steel and then a high carbon steel has been forge welded to the edges and is almost worn away in many spots. Mechanical damascus is where the steel is manipulated prior to grounding and this manipulation effects the pattern of the blade.

I don't believe I have taken up enough bandwith so let me provide some more close up shots. The second grouping:

1) This is a bold active pattern from an early Persian wootz blade.

2) This is an interesting wootz pattern due to the vertical striping that shows up in the pattern. I do not know what that is from. Probably Turkish, possibly Persian

3) This is a bold active pattern from a slightly later Persian wootz blade than #1

4) This is from an Indian Shamshir and is common for Indian wootz. It exhibits a very tight pattern of low contrast.

5) This is from a Caucasian Shaska and is actually forged by Russian smiths. I will call it Zlatoust wootz.

6) This is from a Turkish Kilij and is wootz and of the pattern typically referred to as Sham.

thanks rsword. what a great presentation!

A very need presentation, I admire your macros of the blades. It is seldom I am as lucky as you are when I try it.

Anyone else with good macros?



Jens

Thanks, Great photos! So much variation. :)

Good show !

you have some very nice examples....
thank you for the pic's

i hope other chime in with their pic's ;)

Greg

Rick, once again, I bow in your presence. :D

Here are a few others.

Excellent
those are some very nice blades
thank you for the peek

Greg :)

As with a piece Rick recently wondered about, it is hard to tell with some of these whether they are wootz/bulat or very fine-grained folded steel; they present a possibly wootzy dicontinuity in some areas, but also seem to have a woodlike layeriness. Do some methods of working crucible steel yield such a layeriness?

I find that Rsword's picture #5 and Jen's second row right hand picture if ,they were deeply etched , might resemble in appearance the Khyber blade pattern I submitted for discussion .