Damascus Steel

[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