When in India "died" wootz?

[estcrh]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

Thank you Estcrh! That makes perfect sense.......heck of a learning curve here for me but its great to finally get the picture together.

Jim, part of the difficulty in discussing this subject is the terminology, crucible steel is the process used in the middle east, this is what Europeans were after, how to make the high strength crucible steel in mass quantities, while some Europeans did want to learn how to made watered steel the real quest was for the basic crucible steel.

While the Indians made mass quantities of crucible steel it was a very labor intensive process, it also consumed mass quantities of wood. It does not appear that the other crucible steel centers (Buckhara, Persia etc) made crucible steel in the same mass quantities as the Indians. Once the steel was manufactured there was a completely different / complicated process used in the forging method to create watered / wootz / bulat / damascus steel. From mining the ore to having a watered steel blade was a very long and complex affair, yet the Indians and some others were able to carry this out for an extended period of time.

Once the Europeans upset this delicate balance the old system seemed to have collapsed, this appears to have happened very quickly in some areas and a bit slower in others but eventually except in a few isolated areas (from what I have read) the complete process of making crucible steel was lost, with no crucible steel there could be no watered steel as well. There were probably some left over stock and a few small manufactures left but eventually this faded away.