my poorly made wootz blades

[hammerfall]

first, i must say that i did not use the traditional way to smelt the wootz. the ore was made by vacuum arc resmelting methode. well, i have access to lab equiptment, its easier for me to use lab gear than build up a gas burnner to smelt the ore. after forging and hot roll the ore into sheets, i stock removal the sheet into blade shape. i also did some cycling, although i don't think heat cycling helps much in my case, since most carbide are already desperate from ferrite. finally i grinded it to 600 grit, etching. well, since no futhure forging to give the carbid fiber enough deformation, the pattern looked more like simple straight line showed here.

anyway, i guess this method worked to bring up a wootz pattern even though it looked too simple.

 

[hammerfall]

and i believe this kinds of banding structure are not only existed in high carbon steel like most of the traditional wootz. it also appears in low or midium carbon steel. when forging low or midium carbon steel while it in its double phase form, you can also get similar banding structure. you just need a different type of etching to make the banding show up.