Thread: could this be a real damacus straight?

Originally Posted by Mike Blue

To be more specific, and cite this same article, John Verhoeven and Alfred Pendray have reproduced the long forgotten...wootz/bulat whatever you wish to name it. I agree that it is nothing like modern pattern welded steels both in chemistry and manufacture. But, it is not lost, not by any means.

There are classes being offered for making wootz/crucible/Damascus steel blanks... I have thought about taking the class by Richard Furrer for a while now. wootz class

Originally Posted by Hopper

There are classes being offered for making wootz/crucible/Damascus steel blanks... I have thought about taking the class by Richard Furrer for a while now. wootz class

Ric's a best friend of mine and good teacher. You'd have a good time at one of his classes. His shop is a mineshaft, dark, full of dangerous things and no room to swing a three foot bar sideways without hitting something very large and heavy. LOL.

I will offer anyone a damascus or pattern welded testing service. Send me your blades and I will dip them in nitric acid for a very short interval...then we'll be able to see a pattern right quick. That should put to rest any questions about the steel.

There is another possibility when a very faint, almost illusory pattern seems to be present. Some steels, depending on their heat history, may develop grain, or alloy banding. This is a segregation of the elements present in the bar of steel and is not either wootz or pattern welded material. I think it is kinda cool to see as a feature for the keen of eye looking for subtlety in the steel's appearance, but there are some arguments against it as a flaw in the processing. An acid etch will bring that out as well.

The more relatively crude quick and dirty acid testing could be supplanted by a very fine polishing regimen, or some warmed vinegar. The polish will require a keen eye. The vinegar will leave a slightly dulled gray surface but expose the pattern if it's there. It should be easy to polish back to clean again, but it has it's risks.

I have a Heljestrand frameback where there is noticable pattern to the steel. Problem is that the pattern is coming through the etching, making it harder to read. I'll post a pic when I get home.

Have you tested the hardness of the new Wootz against old Wootz steel?

I have personally done so, and I know Dr. Verhoeven and Pendray have, as has Ric and several others who have had access to old samples and new made wootz.

Wootz will achieve very good hardness, upward of Rc 65 on sampling that I did. That's not very much fun to sharpen at that hardness and it is also a typical steel in that it will be brittle at that hardness as well. It is such a very simple steel with mostly iron and carbon and minimal additional alloying elements. The crucible method and the slow cooling during processing are what make it the steel it is due to the carbide crystalline structures that form. There is no inherent advantage to the hardness alone.

From the CATRAL testing done several years ago in the UK, wootz outperformed several modern tool steels (52100) as a cutting material in a soft pearlitic state with as-forged carbides in that pearlite matrix. In the hardened state, it was about as good as the modern tool steels. Since then, there are several new alloys that will outperform even good old 52100 regularly.

Frankly it's much easier to make large amounts of modern tool steels and the economy of scale to produce a steel that's as good as wootz will generally win. There are a few of us who will take the time and waste money to produce archaic forms of material for the interest alone. I wish it was commercially viable. The only company I know that took the time was Roselli in Europe and they probably made a lifetime supply for their knifeworks in one batch.

Oh clearly this is not a good material for razors, softer is better for that. Woots was always at its best when used in swords and large daggers. And since we're pretty much past that stage in the arms race, we're not going to have any use for a large scale Woots production. But wouldn't I LOVE a replica sword just the same