Dendric damascus?

nozh2002

nozh2002

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Did somebody try to applay damascus hammering technic to make ladder or drops or some other pattern not from diffetent steel layers, but from dendric pattern natural for high carbon steel like D2?

I mean use same twisted hammering or whatever it is but twisting not multyliers but carbon impurities to achive similar pattern in result.

Thanks, Vassili.
 
I don't know about that, but there are people who have been recreating wootz crucible steel, which is a monosteel with carbides that form patterns more similer to dendritic steels then pattern welded. They do the patterning techniques to that.
 
Yes I am aware a bit. It is Ivan Kirpichev who doing a lot of experiments with selfmelted hight carbon steel. He post some thoughts on my website about this and he sad he think that forming wootz pattern by using damascus tricks with dendric structures is not actually real wootz, even it looks similar. I just wondering does anybody in US doing this - this is popular technic in Russia.

Also he questining, at least on thought level that it is carbids what make wootz so special. May be it was something else like austenit which now after hundreds years jst decomposed. Idea is that modern metallurgy making stee as homogenius as possible, but what actually happening during momentary cristallization inside small ignot nobody really know and by influensing it it is possible to achive outstanding results having composite inside steel like concrete etc, which were reported by ancient authors.

This all is very interesting but I am not knowlegible enough to make my own opinion.

Thanks, Vassili.
 
David Boye has been marketing Dendritic steel for years. The blade is cast out of some high alloy steel and slow cooled. The process is generally avoided by industry as it makes the steel directional in strength. The dendritic structure forms in relationship to the surface cooling. I sure this material will hold a pattern. but it will have some strength issues. Daivd started with 440 C cast blades and is now using a cobalt steel for his dendritic blades....Take care..Ed
 
Maybe Ivan knows this already, but if not then pass along to him that vanadium seemed to be the key in making wootz as opposed to some other kind of crucible steel. Colombium (aka niobium) can be substatuted for similer effects. Swordforum and Donn Foggs forum have people posting there who are doing alot of work with recreating the wootz.

On thinking about it, I think the regular dendritic steel like David Boye uses wouldn't be suitable for forging patterns in, I think the heat would disolve the dendrites making it look like normal steel again, I could be wrong though.
 
AwP said:
Maybe Ivan knows this already, but if not then pass along to him that vanadium seemed to be the key in making wootz as opposed to some other kind of crucible steel. Colombium (aka niobium) can be substatuted for similer effects. Swordforum and Donn Foggs forum have people posting there who are doing alot of work with recreating the wootz.

On thinking about it, I think the regular dendritic steel like David Boye uses wouldn't be suitable for forging patterns in, I think the heat would disolve the dendrites making it look like normal steel again, I could be wrong though.
Click to expand...

Yes, vanadium traces needed to save dendric pattern during diffusion heating - this is current idea how to make wootz by Verkhoeven and Achim Wirtz descrbed it:

http://playground.sun.com/~vasya/Bulat-Achim.html#English

so dendric structures will not dissappear during normal hammering, but steel with it very brittle and there is some tricks to make it bit softer by preheating it over night etc..

Ivan aware of this and tried it. However he is questining it.

1. 1000 ago there was no diffusin heating, and it was impossible technologically.
2. Making blades with 100 heat cicles too complicated, but bulat was widely used ower ancient World by many bladesmithes.

He saing that momentary cristallization in ignot alon creates complicated structures inside steel with regular component austnit, ferrit etc. and playing with it possible to do same but not as difficult and complicated as with diffusion heating etc. Modern metallurgy stack with homogenius steel consept, but probably loosing some value because of this.

This is Ivan's latest picture, as I understand now he try to awoid any dendric developments:

news-51.jpg


His idea is that making wootz may be bit simplier then we think - and this is worse to try.

Thanks, Vassili.
 
Sorry, but the diffusion heating WAS one of the main things they had to do 1000 years ago to make the wootz ingot forgeable at all. The only thing was that they didn't know that they were doing a diffusion heat. They packed the ingots into a recipient filled with crushed iron ore and heated it a long time at relatively high heat to produce a soft shell, without which the ingots cracked during forging. Even the dealers between india and persia knew that during those times and tested the ingots with chisels and refused to buy ingots that didn't have a soft shell. Please read some sources where translations of Al Kindi and other old time muslim writers are translated (i only have german translations as i am german).

Achim
 
I forgot to say that this blade (and the process described) from Ivan looks a lot like the ones made by Käthe Harnecker. She was the metallurgist of Henckels (Zwillingswerk) in Solingen during the 1920s and also tried to rediscover the wootz process without success. She successful developped the cryo treatment used so much today, though. To see a picture of one of her knives, take a look into Manfred Sachse's book on damascus steel.

Achim
 
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