Thread: Wootz razor in progress

Bruno , am I hearing you correct about the steel has a serrated "like" edge from the carbide sticking out of the edge?(I know this is at a microscopic level, but would this make for a good razor edge? Unlike a knife which works very well with a toothy edge. I,m fascinated by the history and maybe In the rarity of having such a quasi rare steel and yes it would have to be adorned with something like what you have seen on my razors or even inlaid so and gold , but the shave is still something I am questioning according to what I heard in your explanation. Not questioning your expertise it just came to me and I want to be set straight. Thanks my friend, and if I,ve insulted you I'll let you take a poke at me next month. Lol. Tc

Interesting stuff!
Can't wait to see the finished product...

Fascinating and thanks for the metallurgy lesson Bruno.

Looking forward to seeing the end result.

The carbides only stick out when the hardened steel abrades away. So for example like with a kitchen knife that is used a lot. It will keep cutting extremely well even as it gets duller.

Since there is not a lot of mechanical wear on a razor edge?, it should not be noticeable. Although if they are only microscopic and you use a scything motion, it migjt shave better than a normal razir

Wootz is crucible steel. It just so happens that the folks in places like Sri Lanka had iron ore with some really nice alloying elements like vanadium already built in, for lack of a better way to put it, and they ran with that. Being able to maintain and manipulate the surface patterns are the result of very skilled and time consuming forging methods at low temperature by our standards. When forging the "puck" into a usable shape, a number of smiths put it back into the forge and decarb the outside so that they have a "soft" shell around the core steel. The apparently helps hold it together while reducing the billet. If you look at the real Ulfbehrt swords, they are made of the same type of material, probably acquired by way of the Volga trade routes, but don't necessarily have the surface appearance of the blades made in the Middle East, India, etc. That may be because the smiths making those Frankish/Viking swords had to bring them up to forge welding temps in order to inlay the runes/lettering, etc. I have an early Al Pendray integral stag handled wootz knife and the pattern on the blade is less intricate than his later work and stuff you see form other smiths today. The pattern can be manipulated in forging like you see on some the old high end Arab swords.
As for its mystical qualities and claims of carbon nano-tubes, i don't know. That I do know is when the labs tested the Ulfberht balde, they said is was very nice steel, akin to good modern plain carbon steel in many ways.

Thank you for that! That steel sounds very interesting. The history of that is just amazing!


Mike

The history is quite interesting. i talked with Al Pendray a number of years ago and he said that as a raw material, it was "technologically" more advanced that what others were using. But, he also said that as a material for a weapon, it didn't really show the superiority as some might believe to stuff like well made tamahagane or some of the forge welded stuff coming out of parts of Europe. I may have this wrong, but I think that i have heard that it could cut at lower hardness levels because of the carbide structure, but who knows? It is not easy stuff to work with by all accounts in part, because of its relatively high carbon content when you start off. .

Originally Posted by mglindo

Thank you for that! That steel sounds very interesting. The history of that is just amazing!


Mike

fascinating stuff, can't wait to see the finished product!

Here's an ancient link with more information: http://straightrazorpalace.com/show-...traight-2.html

Any northern European derived steels, as in the Ulfbert blades, especially legendary high strength blades, are more likely to be of Frankish origin than Indo-Persian. Even the Persians sought the Frankish steels in preference to wootz. There are a lot of spaces in between what we know and what we think we know historically.

I also love to experiment, I want to see the final result. Thanks to Bruno for a detailed review.