How to heat treat wootz?

kisak · 7th February 2010, 02:26 PM

From what I can recall, wootz needs a heat cycling treatment for the pattern to fully develop. Forging could put it through this as a side effect, but for stock removal I would then guess your friend might have to do a dedicated heat cycling process. I'm not sure quite what temperature you'd aim for, but since the idea is to get carbides to shrink/grow without changing the overall structure, it would seem to me that the target temperature for each cycle would be just below A1.

For austenisation, given the high carbon content we most likely have here, I would guess that it's important not to go any higher above A1 than absolutely necessary, to keep the carbon content of the austenite in the "reasonable" region, and to preserve the pattern.

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7th February 2010, 02:26 PM	#5
kisak Member Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Stockholm Posts: 182	From what I can recall, wootz needs a heat cycling treatment for the pattern to fully develop. Forging could put it through this as a side effect, but for stock removal I would then guess your friend might have to do a dedicated heat cycling process. I'm not sure quite what temperature you'd aim for, but since the idea is to get carbides to shrink/grow without changing the overall structure, it would seem to me that the target temperature for each cycle would be just below A1. For austenisation, given the high carbon content we most likely have here, I would guess that it's important not to go any higher above A1 than absolutely necessary, to keep the carbon content of the austenite in the "reasonable" region, and to preserve the pattern.