Damascus Steel

[tsubame1]

Originally Posted by ariel

Is it possible that there was no well-developed wootz-making industry in Persia, ie, the great majority of ingots ( or, in the extreme case, all of them) being made in India and exported to Iran for the final stage of blade forming? Is it possible that there was tight import control on the ingots consumed by Iran and not reaching the Ottomans? The withering of Iranian wootz swords ( mid-19th century) co-incides with the British ban on the manufacture of wootz ingots in India (allegedly to prevent deforestation). After that, all Iranian swords were of plain steel or mechanical damascus construction. That should not have happened had there been an established, independent wootz production in Iran. Russian Captain Massalski personally observed making wootz ingots in Bukhara in the first half of the 19th century. Are there any eyewitness accounts of wootz manufacture in Iran? This is a direct extension of Brian's earlier inquiry http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=4047
Back to my original question: perhaps, Persians never "forgot" how to make wootz; they just never knew. Perhaps, the reason why the Europeans could not find the secret of Persian steel was that they looked in the wrong place: they should have asked the Indians and the Uzbeks

One thing that every ruler/nation/empire tried to avoid as pneumonia pestis
is to totally depend from foreign supply for very important army related stuffs and supplies. Even today some nations that have a strong need of safety and can't absolutely rely on outer supplies/technologies makes their own weaponry.
Comes to mind the jewish with the Merkava.
Why should the perians have relied on external sources of supply that would
have been easly cut for such an important supply as wootz ?
I know that wootz isn't really considered a good steel for combat in this
board, so maybe this matter has been skipped as "wootz is Kool and useless"
but still I wonder why Bukhara yes and Persia not. Can you explain
this ?

[ariel]

An interesting post on SFI:
This time around it is a Spanish book , mid-19th century, describing what they knew about wootz.
http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?t=80073
Again, they mention Bombay and Golkonda, but no Persia.

[Gt Obach]

yes but it doesn't say they didn't make it in Persia...

if you look at the structure of the crucible steels ... specially the waterings... they tell you there are some big differences in the process... .. Large waterings take much slower cooling times from liquid to solid... and need a long roast afterwards... .. small waterings require a much much shorter cool time and roast...

in my experience..... you can't take a short cool ingot and turn it into a large watering slow cool ingot...

i'd like to take my saturn and turn it into a Mercedes benz ... but it doesn't work that way...

Greg

[Richard Furrer]

Originally Posted by tsubame1

I know that wootz isn't really considered a good steel for combat in this
board, so maybe this matter has been skipped as "wootz is Kool and useless"
but still I wonder why Bukhara yes and Persia not. Can you explain
this ?

Hello All,
I can not say with certainty all the places where wootz was made and where it was not, but we should be careful in stating that just because a steel was made in a crucible it is wootz....all wootz is crucible steel, but not all crucible steel is wootz.

As to wootz functionality:
My opinion on this has changed several times over the years. Most recently I had the opportunity to travel through some museums in Rajisthan, India with some talented museum folk and related persons with an interest in arms and armor. One of the most interesting and useful tools we had along were a few folk from the Wallace Collection (Drs Alan Williams, David Edge and Toby Capwell) with a Vickers micro hardness tester. During a conference hardness tests were conducted on many blades and the results, though not to "laboratory" standards given the situation, were educational. Certain generalities can be drawn from the data.
Robert Elgood will be publishing the results of the conference so I am not sure what I should reveal as far as vickers numbers, but allow me to say that given the sample body of swords we tested I would not feel at all opposed to using a wootz blade in the time periods where that form of material was in production against other blades made by other methods of the same time period.

Should anyone have any hard data one way or another I would be interested in seeing it. To my knowledge I have been the only one looking at flexibility, hardness and comparable study data with other blade technologies of the time. Does anyone else have hardness data they care to share or anything other than anecdotal information on the effectiveness of wootz in use?

Ric