Myths About Damascus - Edge Retention, Sharpness, and History

Wikipedia states this about him, I don't normally quote wikipedia but his original papers and information about what he did is hard to find. This will give a basic idea.

"Anosov received international attention for his writings on the manufacture of iron and his re-discovery of the secret of Damascene steel, previously thought lost in the Middle Ages. He explained the effect of the chemical composition, structure and treatment of steel on its properties. His findings formed the basis for the science of quality steels. Anosov summed up his studies in his now classic treatise, Damascene steels (1841), which was immediately translated into German and French.

Anosov was the first to use the microscope in studies into the structure of steel (1831), laying the foundation for the microscopic analysis of metals."

If you have a desire to read more about him you will have to do some deep digging. I have his English translated version of his papers but those are so edited that to find out anything really significant on his work you have to go to the Russian edition.
 
Tim Mitchell said:
Wikipedia states this about him, I don't normally quote wikipedia but his original papers and information about what he did is hard to find. This will give a basic idea.

"Anosov received international attention for his writings on the manufacture of iron and his re-discovery of the secret of Damascene steel, previously thought lost in the Middle Ages. He explained the effect of the chemical composition, structure and treatment of steel on its properties. His findings formed the basis for the science of quality steels. Anosov summed up his studies in his now classic treatise, Damascene steels (1841), which was immediately translated into German and French.

Anosov was the first to use the microscope in studies into the structure of steel (1831), laying the foundation for the microscopic analysis of metals."

If you have a desire to read more about him you will have to do some deep digging. I have his English translated version of his papers but those are so edited that to find out anything really significant on his work you have to go to the Russian edition.
Click to expand...
Where is the knife? Any testing?
 
He ran the steel works in Zlatoust for many years and they made many weapons from the steel there. He did make a few weapons that ended up in the hands of people in the west. This is one that came up for auction many years ago... would have loved to get my hands on that. https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/15843/lot/64/

As far as testing of the knives and swords that he made, he did testing and reported his results in the work mentioned in the Wiki link. I know of no comparative testing that has been done on his steel though. Most of the remaining pieces would be in museums or private collections I would think, and unavailable for testing.
 
One other thing that we must be aware of is that those in the western English speaking nations are only familiar with the somewhat limited knowledge and records concerning crucible steel, and that mainly being the Indian variety. Crucible steel was made from Egypt all the way to Mongolia according to historical accounts. This steel contained the rare earth elements and /or undesired impurities which were in the location of the smelting process. Some blade and arrow head samples show very high levels of different elements such as Vanadium, Chromium, Molybdenum and Tungsten. The writers of the Eastern Asia region talked about blades that would last 1000 years and not rust or break. They actually had stainless steel. Some of the metals that they had were equal to the best steels today with several percent chrome etc. Al Pendray tested relatively pure crucible steel without the naturally occurring elements which were found in the steel ingots from the Fergana valley and further east, hence my previous comments about them not being representative of all crucible steel, only that from India. If you add a few percent of Chrome or Tungsten like some of these blades show then you begin to have a totally different set of characteristics in your crucible steel. Remember when talking about crucible steel we need to include Pulad from Persia, Bulat from Georgia and Russia, Ginte-Bulat from Mongolia and Binti from China...
 
Thanks Larrin, no not forgotten, just busy moving house.. I have seen no evidence of Egyptian stainless steel, the Egyptians were reported to have made a specific kind of crucible steel sword, not in ancient times of course. But it was the Russians who have occasionally found evidence of stainless steel weapons, and also the mongols have some very interesting crucible steel analysis. This video shows a fragment of one from Russia, there was also a similar style weapon edge found at the Kremlin during excavations.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=865994030224202

The crucible steel process at Chahak in Iran had Chromium added to the charge as one of the ingredients and the steel prills in the slag had between 0.6 and 12% chromium content. The paper which talks about this is "Persian Pulad production: Chahak Tradition" by Thilo Rehren. The research though was done by Manouchehr Khorassani.

There has been almost no research done on the steel used by the Mongols and the quote about their steel was this "After 1000 years, the steel of the Gunnu sword will not collapse and will not rust". I have yet to find the reference for the writer of this quote, but will add it when I can decipher it... the paper it was in was in Russian. This was clearly talking about a kind of stainless steel, whether intentional or accidental. I will add any further artifact references as I come across them.
 
Another site where crucible steel was made for a several hundred years, 9th to 11th C AD, was Aksiket in the Fergana Valley of Uzbekistan. The slag in the crucibles which were found there contained significant levels of Manganese or Vanadium showing that it was added to the charge not simply in the ore that was being reduced in the crucible. Vitrified remains of a failed crucible charge were melted and the vanadium content in the resulting metal was found to be 1.7%. This is another example of deliberate alloying of crucible steel which would have improved the toughness and edge wearing characteristics of the steel blades it was made into. So at this point we have evidence for the deliberate addition of the oxides of Manganese (old recipes include this as well), Chromium and Vanadium in significant amounts into crucible steel. The process that was used in Aksiket would cause any rare earth elements contained in the ore source to be introduced unknowingly into the steel ingot. This would account for some of the unusual elements such as tungsten that has been found in some artifacts.
 
Unfortunately we have a very large number of weapons in museums but the number that are submitted to testing and elemental analysis are very very small. However in the case of production sites such as I have mentioned, there is no doubt that the oxides were added deliberately. The Manganese oxide was the most common and is mentioned in many ancient recipes of crucible steel. The Chrome oxide remnants left in the slag of the crucibles from Chahak make it clear that the addition was also intentional as is the addition of Vanadium oxides at Aksiket. That much we know was deliberate. As for the rest we know that selection of a specific ore body that made sharper and more rust resistant blades would have been certain but the addition of tungsten oxide and molybdenum oxide into an ore reduction crucible process is mere guess work and I have found no proof as of yet for that. We know enough to see that the variability of the quality of ancient crucible steel from the 10th c AD onwards was great with some steel being poor and others being equal to the very best steels today, even employing modern armour piercing techniques of very hard outers welded to a very soft core. It is truely fascinating and gives me great respect for the armorours of old in Central Asia.
 
I forgot to mention Merv which was a large crucible steel production center in Turkmenistan around the 12th century AD. They deliberately added amounts of copper to the charge of the crucible. Even small amounts of copper in a high carbon steel will act as a hardening agent making much tougher blades with a harder edge. If you add too much the steel is impossible to forge and brittle but in small quantities it benefits the performance of the blades. Also Massalski in his travels recorded the process of making crucible steel with 7% silver alloyed with the steel. This acts in a similar way to the copper with hardness and toughness. Deliberate alloying of crucible steel with metals and oxides was very common in central Asia over the last 1000 years, it wasn't done in India which has taken our focus in the west, but all through the old USSR territory and the old Persian empire this was common practice, and we are just scratching the surface of the evidence. We have deliberate alloying with Copper, Silver, Manganese, Chromium and Vanadium at production centers in the effort to remove harmful impurities and to improve steel performance.

Let us also not forget that carbon is also an alloying element with iron to make steel. If they knew to add shell and dolomite to reduce phosphorous and or manganese to a crucible to remove the brittleness of sulphur then are we to wonder greatly that other minerals were added in the knowledge that they made the steel better. Knowing the ingredients which were added to crucibles from the research at production sites as well as the many Persian and Arabic recipes we have, it is clear that they added things deliberately to improve the steel. Even if it was with the viking kind of ham-fisted mindset of adding strength to their steel through bones etc., which I doubt, it was done with the knowledge that it helped. Which is no different than our modern attempts at adding things to see if they make our metals better.
 
We also need to remember that while technology was rather primitive in western europe, the writings that we have from Persia indicate that there was a much greater understanding of mathematics, chemistry (the Egyptian knowledge in this area was vast), astronomy and metallurgy in that region through the same time period. It is a common practice to view the people from that time period as ignorant, but I believe the evidence shows them to be far from that in many areas. It makes me wonder what other ancient gems lie out there waiting to be discovered...:)
 
Hi Larrin, I was able to find the paper which included the analysis of the very interesting Mongolian artifacts... this was some amazing crucible steel. The paper is written in Russian but you can translate the document using a word doc translator online. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=2ahUKEwjt4fOYwtbiAhVKU30KHRehAhoQFjABegQIABAC&url=http://elib.tyuiu.ru/wp-content/uploads/umk2/150649/150649.doc&usg=AOvVaw2Wp2JZ7fLVxfCMreuFh-hh

Just a note: only two of the artifacts are crucible steel, the rest are made through another process. The crucible steel artifacts are shown in Table 2 on the two right hand columns.
 
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Thanks Dirc... would be nice to go but it is a long way from Australia...

One thing I would add about the paper that I gave the link to, the author says in there that the Aksiket process didn't remove Phosphorous, but this is incorrect. They added dolomite which is Calcium - Magnesium Carbonate to the reduction melt/smelt and this created Calcium Sulphate, Calcium Phosphate and Magnesium Sulphate most probably, as well as carbon monoxide. It would be a pretty effective flux to remove phosphrous and sulphur from the melt.
 
Hey Larrin, I have had reason to go over Verhoeven's edge retention testing which you base your conclusions on here and I found that there are a few extra issues that exist with the original research, which I have not mentioned. It was good research in the majority, but where we have taken it has been a bit of a mistake in my opinion. I would love to have a good and comprehensive comparison of the best modern and ancient Wootz Damascus steel from different regions and with different carbon patterns, and let the chips fall where they may, but the paper we have been discussing is not that comparison in my opinion.

As I have mentioned previously there was no single Damascus steel, in the way we refer to 52100 or 1086 etc. That didn't exist, it was a general description for Steel in general made in a crucible with different Carbon contents, different levels of Copper, Manganese, Vanadium, Chromium, Molybdenum and Tungsten etc. The steel was made from different ore deposits like today, in different methods and the alloys of different composition were forged by different methods and heat treated by differing levels of quality. According to Major Abbott in the 1800s who was an ardent collector and friend of Anossoff, only a few historical blades were exceptional in his day, with the majority being of average or poor quality. No different than the knife making field of 20 years ago.

It definitely would be worth testing Damascus blades of lower carbon content which have smaller carbide size as both high carbon content and large carbide size will compromise the edge quality at high hardness as we see in their study. The edge wear characteristics are best with small carbide size and proper normalization technique.

One weakness of this kind of study is that high carbon Wootz is not as stable in edge quality at high hardness unless the carbide diameter is lower, and the carbide diameter was much much larger in these Damascus test specimens than in the 52100 and 1086. Some Persian Damascus steel blades especially with the highly sought after patterning contained lower carbon than the steel tested in this test. A blade of 1.3-1.4%C would have performed better and the carbide size would have been smaller in some historical swords and larger in other swords.

The question is either “How did Damascus steel compare to modern steels in ancient times?”, or it is “How does modern Damascus steel compare against modern steels today?” Regardless of the question we still have to address the issue of differing carbide sizes among different blades from both old times and modern times. There was even a Damascus steel which showed no pattern mentioned in the Persian histories, this would have had evenly distributed carbides of small and probably totally spherodized nature, a much more optimum steel than what was tested in the paper.

The process used by Pendray to obtain his Damascus sample was only one of several methods of producing Damascus steel, methods which can produce different sized carbides. His process was optimised to cause a concentration of the carbides in cluster sheets but also to make the carbides somewhat larger using the process of Ostwald Ripening. Some Wootz smiths have noted that the steel performs much better if the carbide size is significantly smaller. I have seen this to be true, and that the edge performs much much better with specific heat treating, which also provides for a historical Damascus patterning.

It was also stated in the paper that the grain size was not measured for the Damascus steel and so we have no way of comparing if this is an apples to apples comparison. One would hope that the size was similar, but we have no way of being sure because it was assumed to be similar, but not measured.

It is my opinion that the testing in the paper definitely needed to be done and it was done to the best that they could at the time. However the results are not representative of the best performing modern Damascus or ancient Damascus steel and there are conditions that were seen in olden times and modern Damascus which would have provided steel very close to the performance of 52100 and better than the 1086.

This test was a good comparison of where Al Pendray’s steel was performing at the time in comparison with other steels, and it is valuable. The mistake which we should not make is to say that this test is representative of all modern or ancient Damascus steel. Some modern Damascus will perform much worse, of this I know for certain, but there is also modern and ancient steel which would have performed better than this sample of Damascus by Al Pendray.

It would be good to have this type of testing performed in the future with samples of Wootz / Damascus steel from different smiths with differing carbon contents, smaller carbide sizes and having the grain size determined accurately so that a proper comparison can be made.

We must also be aware that this is a test which generally gives a rough indication of wear of knife steel over its life through cutting against something really hard and is actually major abuse. The wear characteristics of these steels may perform differently cutting meat or other products and it has been noted by some smiths that Damascus Steel performs better than anything else when cutting meat. This of course has yet to be scientifically proven though.

More research needs to be done for sure…
 
I really can’t see a lot of research going into this material. There’s not a lot of good examples out there to collect and there are only a few smiths today making quality wootz damascus. The process is difficult and the failure rate is high.

Wootz doesn’t seem to excel over other steels in any category, there are steels that are more wear resistant, more stain resistant, tougher, more beautiful, etc. It is very interesting because of it’s mysterious origins but trying to do a bunch of testing on this material would be cost prohibitive.

I find pattern welded steel to be more interesting with the possibility of a wider range of characteristics possible, a much larger customer base interested in it, easier to make, easier to collect, etc.

Other old types of steel and iron production are a lot more plentiful to find, collect, and use. Wrought iron, blister steel, shear steel, Japanese laminated steel and pattern welded steel are not hard to find.

Wootz is interesting for the small amount of people making and collecting it. Hats off to John Verhoeven and Al Pendray for figuring out the process and to those who continue to do more research on this ancient steel.

Hoss
 
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Thanks for sharing your perspective Hoss, it is good to see how others perceive Wootz. I have been making and studying it for over 17 years now and I agree that most wootz is rather poor quality, either because of the fact that the ingot quality is poor, or that they just don't know how to forge the steel to get the most out of it. It is capable of superplasticity under specific circumstances but very few attain that treatment standard. I have beaten my head up against the wall for years telling many smiths how to improve their Wootz, but they would rather ignore what I say and follow their perception of how it should be done based on misunderstanding of historical accounts and myths which have come to modern times.

I was mentored by Al Pendray, one of the few who were, and he didn't reveal his process to the community, ever. The Mike Loades docco didn't show his process, he fudged it to keep some elements of it secret. So when I or the literal handful of smiths who know this stuff try to share it, most simply ignore it. There are a growing number though who do listen and who are producing a better product than what was made when I started out.

Wootz will outperform many traditional steels if it is made right, and the high chromium, or high Tungsten versions from Akhaset and Mongolia, will perform as well as many modern day steels. There was that much variation to it, but most are unaware of this fact and focus on the majority of very low alloy, ultra high carbon steel versions which they forge in a less than optimal fashion. But you are totally correct that there is no money available for study or analysis of the different variations and getting access to historical blades for even non-destructive testing is nigh on impossible.

It is rarer, and more expensive than other steel types and that is part of it's allure, but I do believe that it has its place among modern steels at least in the general purpose knife and high end kitchen knife markets. With a high quality blade made using Al Pendray's process, a kitchen knife still performs excellently, and can hold it's own against most other high carbon steels of today if not excel them. Few people would care if they had to steele it a little more frequently compared to 52100, when they buy a wootz knife it is for the subtle beauty of the patterning, the fully hand made nature of it and the historical value of the steel. But I believe that a traditional alloy version, well made, will match pretty close to the performance of steels like 52100 when tested properly. Unfortunately though I feel that Wootz Damascus is living well below it's full potential today, hopefully that will change in the future though. Accurate and totally honest discussions about it can only help that as we go into the future.
 
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