Posts: 59 Location: Elliot lake
Tue 05 Jun, 2007 9:35 am
Hi
i think theres alot of directions you can go with in terms of wootz steel... it was manufactured in many areas, not just India.
- there are soft and hard varieties... i believe due to low and high carbon... ofcourse the best is up around 1.5 to 1.7 % ... but they hardly had the ability to plug it into a mass spectrometer, so their definition of crucible steel was just that...
-- also the size of the pattern varies... by how long/slow the cool time is.... and how long the roast time is.... ... as the slow cool times will produce a larger pattern.... and you can't produce a large pattern from a small pattern ingot...... it doesn't work that way to my knowledge...
as for a sword cutting another sword in half.........well... i suppose weapons fail all the time for all sorts of reasons... even a well made sword can have a bad day... ;)
Greg
Jean Henri Chandler wrote: |
John Cooksey wrote: |
I don't think historical swordsmiths were measuring carbon contents in percentages. . |
No but modern analysis of what we are calling "wootz" steel is based on this carbon content. They had no idea what that was in say, 300 AD.
Yes I'm arguing that it's the high carbon content which makes "wootz" "wootz" and yes I'm arguing that its the trace elements such as Vanadium, the latter apparently allowed the former.
We appear to be arguing semantics at this point. I understand the term "Wootz" to mean one thing, you seem to believe it means another (any crucible steel). The carbon content criteria and the terms "ultra-high carbon steel' are not something I've invented.
This paper for example from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangladore,
http://materials.iisc.ernet.in/~wootz/heritage/WOOTZ.htm
...states that wootz steel is between 1.5%-2% in carbon content.
So does this paper from 9th International Metallurgical and Materials Congress in Istanbul, Turkey in 1997
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:nB-qitUH...&gl=us
Just to quickly cite two examples of many, basically everything I have ever read on the subject.
This is the critical factor of wootz. Most steel used in swords is closer to 1% carbon. Anything below 0.15% is wrought Iron, far too soft to ever hold an edge, anything above 2% is cast iron, way too brittle to withstand the punishment a sword must endure. The unique thing about wootz if I understand correctly is that it was such high carbon content while retaining a high degree of plasticity or flexibility.
Now there are many types of crucible steel, that doesn't mean it had these qualities which made "Damascus Steel" weapons so famous. If you have evidence that they were making swords with these properties in Iran or anywhere else past 1700 AD it would be very interesting to a lot of people on this forum I'd wager.
Jean |