Wootz ingots, where do they all come from?

[Jeff Pringle]

Meaning that you are quite sure, the ingot you have is wootz – am I right?

Meaning I make crucible steel (some of which is wootz) from iron ore, so I don’t need to use ‘found’ dendritic steel shot.

Some of the steel I’ve made has had professional lab work done, so I can be definite on the wootz, but I also get metal that is more ‘high carbon steel,’ and metal that is more ‘cast iron.’
There’s a slight problem that perhaps very few people care about, which is that until very recently, ‘wootz’ meant ‘that steel they used to make them swords out of’; but now, it’s changing as we begin to gain a practical understanding of the material and a better understanding of it’s history.
My definition of ‘wootz’ is: a simple carbon steel with over ~1.3% carbon, forged in such a way as to have banded carbide structures. (Others have slightly different definitions). This takes into account that we understand how to make wootz now, so the old definition is no longer sufficient. The classic ‘wootz’ pattern (how those old swords look) can be made from almost any dendritic steel, and perhaps in some cases from regular hi-carbon barstock, but with those materials the bands are not always saturated with iron carbides.
It is an artificial definition, though – they just made steel into swords back then, so even some period pieces don’t match that – everyone just uses the word wootz when referring to blades that look like this:

regardless of alloy content, and now also to items that have the precursor structure, dendrites. A contemporary definition of wootz for those of us who make it is just now starting to be possible, so there’s going to be a bunch of ‘yes it’s wootz’, ‘no it’s not’ going on, and random lumps of cast mystery steel may or may not be included when it all shakes out.
If I were to acquire (ethically, Ann!) a genuine old wootz cake, the last thing I would do is forge it, that’d be a terrible thing to do to such a wonderful artifact of pre-industrial technology!
And, of course, any misrepresentation of items as either old or new wootz, ingot or blade, confuses the situation and is BAD

If this is so, why are so many fooled?

Are so many fooled? I don’t know that that is the case, there can’t be all that many people interested in wootz ingots, can there?
But there are only a couple reference works with pictures of the original ingots out there, so unless you are melting steel in your back yard and becoming that familiar with the external morphology & metallography of steel ingots, all you really have to go on is the seller’s promise.
BTW: Nice cross section photo of an old Indian wootz ingot in “The History of Metallography” C.S. Smith, ISBN 0-262-69120-5, as well as a discussion of wootz’s importance to our understanding of the structure of metals.
The first contemporary ‘what is wootz’ article, from a technical perspective:
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM...even-9809.html
(note how one of the blades discussed is too low in carbon to count (to the authors) as wootz, but another has just 1% and is included – I’d think that one was just hi carbon crucible steel - but they all have some pattern I’d call wootzy)

[Jens Nordlunde]

Thank you Jeff for your interesting explanation. From a friend I did know that you are a skilled blade maker, but I did not know you also made your own ingots.
Nice blade you show.

Jens

[Mare Rosu]

First I appreciate Jeff for entering into this discussion,
His information is very informative to me anyway. Thank you and Welcome.

I have a wootz knife (Bowie) made by Al Pendray , made from his wootz, also I had him make a Bowie out of a old original wootz ingot, both has a very "wootzy" pattern. This Alwar Armory wootz ingot was written up by Dr. Verhoeven, Pendray and Dauksch in a paper
" The Continuing Study of Damascus Steel: Bars from the Alwar Armory" in the September 2004 issue of the JOM.The Wootz Ingot/bar I gave them, for testing, is labeled #3 in Table 1 page 18.
I readily admit that just making a blade out of an old wootz ingot is not a good practice. However a lot of technical information was derived, in this case by doing so.
The reaming half of the ingot/bar with the Alwar inscription is still intact.
see: http://www.vikingsword.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002326.html

Do you perchance make wootz knives for sale, also?

I am posting this to let all to know that Jens has saved someone a lot of money ($1000) by asking this ( not to hard a question this time ) question and posting it.
In April of 2003 I purchased a wootz ingot ( not the one mention above)
in order to have a knife made out of it by Pendray, it was tested and found to be cast iron, not wootz. I returned the ingot and received full credit form the seller.
The exact, same ingot went back up for sale, recently. I was in a quandary as to what to do about the information that I had about the "wootz' ingot.
When I checked the seller web site, Monday of this week, the ingot is no longer listed. Not listed as being sold, just not there.

That to me indicates that this posting by Jens was read and that the correct and Honorable action was taken by the pending seller of this ingot.
By pulling this item, also relieved me of just what to do about it as I was, other than the sell, probably the only one that was aware of it being non wootz.
Using this forum, learning from it and the helping out of one another is the reason I enjoy it .
Gene

[Jeff Pringle]

I’m glad you found my comments to be helpful, I’ve been studying wootz for a while now (not as long as Pendray and Verhoeven, of course), and I think I might be forming some opinions on it
I make knives from crucible steel, occasionally for sale. Since everyone might have different definitions of ‘wootz’, and since phulad might be a more appropriate term, I’m starting to think crucible steel is the best term for now – but on this forum, wootz is the lingua franca, so to speak.
If you are in touch with Pendray, you should thank him for me for all the groundbreaking work he did with Verhoeven solving the mysteries of this metal. And I’d be curious to know if now, 12 years later, he thinks he patented the wrong process…
Jeff

[Jeff Pringle]

Here is a photo of a cast steel mill ball, forged out and with a ladder pattern put into the steel:

For scale, the ladders are spaced ~ 14mm (½”)

A little more technical background: the beautiful patterns on wootz blades come from slight variations in alloy that happen as the metal cools from liquid to solid, and the way those variations are altered during forging and heat treating.
Since this was a small ball that had cooled rapidly, it had both a smallish initial structure and not a lot of stretching to get to knife-sized bar – so the pattern is small scale, looks wootzy through a loupe but to the naked eye appears granular. With more forging/stretching/heat cycling, it could be made to look like small-scale wootz to the naked eye.

If you have a slowly cooled structure & not a lot of stretching, you get a pattern like this:

(my steel, ~1% Carbon)

And with more stretching, it gets more towards what we think of as ‘wootz’:

(my steel, 0.79% Carbon, lines are 2.54 mm 1”)

So if you had some 20th century industrial trash, you could pass it off as 18th century wootz, and even work it into wootzy looking blades if it was roughly the right alloy, cooled slowly enough and worked extensively enough.
The fake wootz that I saw in person appeared to be a different alloy than the mill balls I picked up in the desert, but getting the right alloy seems not to matter much in terms of naked-eye patterning.
Jeff

[Mare Rosu]

Jeff GREAT looking blades
Are tell us that the blades shown are from the same type of cast steel mill ball?
Or are the last two your style of wootz? As you say the patterns of the last two blades are very wootzie, to me anyway
Regardless you do good work!
Jeff may I make a suggestion?
Place one, or more, of your knifes, like the last one shown in your last posting, on the Swap section of the Form. I as well as others I am sure, would be interested in acquiring one of your knives.
Keep in mind we are all friends on this forum and need to be treated nicely

I have not contacted Mr. Pendray but will do so and ask him about his wootz processes.
Gene

[Jens Nordlunde]

Jeff, what you write, and show, is most interesting, and I am sure it is new to most, if not all, the readers of this thread. The word wootz has, to collectors of Oriental arms, had an almost magical spell to it, you have however made the magic spell evaporate, and leave us with ‘Wootz is not wootz, unless it is wootz – of course’.

We, the collectors, should have been able to figure out, that ‘industrial trash steel’ in some case would produce a ‘kind’ of wootz if treated the right way, although I think few of us have thought along this lane.

Your explanation, about the way the pattern show, is very good and easy to follow, even for a layman, who has never worked with iron/wootz/steel. The pictures you show illustrates very well what you write in the text, and the two blades are very nice.

Please show us pictures of the whole knives.

Jens