how to forge wootz?

[Hephaestos]

Hello everybody,
I recently bought two wootz "potatoes" (ingots of around 300g) and tried to forge one of them. It started off quite well, although it needed a lot of force to form. I managed to make the potatoe into a thick bar, but then cracks developped at the edges and at some point pieces of steel crumbled off... I once had similar experiences when I overheated an old file. So is it just a matter of temperature or am I doing something wrong in general? Ill attach two pictures for illustration, unfortunately I do not have pictures of the crumbling edges.
Does anyone have an idea how to work this stuff? And yet another question: The guy has a wootz ingot of 1600g. Would it be possible to cut it into bars and just forge them a little to shape? Starting off with bars seems easier than forging such a huge ball, since I forge by hammer only.
Hannes

 

[mete]

A master of wootz is Achim Wirtz. www.7knifedwarfs.com/aw/ You could contact him.
I assume a press would be better than a hammer. IIRC the typical ingot hs a layer of decarburization which is needed for forging without cracking . Temperature , in any case would be important.

 

[deker]

You might also go ask in the Bloomers and Buttons section at Don Fogg's site. There are a bunch of sucessful wootz makers there who can give you advice.

-d

 

[jdm61]

Everything that I have read says forge slowly at low temperature. It should take you until some time next year to forge that big piece by hand.

 

[burke531]

OK. This is all hearsay on my part so take it for what it is worth. If wootz is to be forged it has to first have a layer of decarburized metel built up around it. this is done by letting it soak in a slightly oxidizing atmosphere for a sufficient amount of time to remove the carbon without scaling. also the temp can't be too high or the dendrites will be reabsorbed and you will just have a piece of high carbon steel. If you do a google search for wootz there are a couple of papers on forging it