Off the wall Wootz question

[elementfe]

The ABANA discussion group had this link on it:

http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/my-afternoon-with-the-ace-of-swords

Pretty interesting account of an afternoon with a swordsmith/collector, centered around the question, "What is Damascus and how is it different from Wootz?"
He's got an interesting take on it, in that he says it was cut from the ingot, not forged, and then welded into a stack of other metals as a core because the heat of forging would ruin the pattern. Now, I've always heard that it was forged at fairly low temps for the same reason, but tell me- if it's that sensitive to heat, how would you weld it into a billet for a core, or for that matter, soak it at critical to heat treat it?
Just curious, I may never get a chance to work with Wootz...
Thanks for any info!
Andy G.

 

[me2]

If the heat of forging would ruin it, the heat of welding would as well. Wootz is finicky, but it was certainly forged.

 

[stevomiller]

From what I have gathered from various sources, welding will cause loss of the pattern in wootz. Some historic swords I've seen have a separate tang/ricasso welded to the wootz blade, and the pattern is washed out or missing in the heat affected zone.

 

[me2]

If you havent read them, Dr. Verhoeven has some good articles on wootz. The pattern develops from small undisolved carbides and high temperatures will disolve them and erase the pattern. Verhoevens experiments and Al Pendray, one of the smiths he works with, use pearlitic wootz, with a hardness in the mid to upper 40's HRc.

 

[Bo T]

I am not sure I understood the article. Is wootz made by heating a thin high carbon steel plate between two thin wrought iron plates in a crucible? At temperature the high carbon portion melts and diffuses unevenly into the iron plates creating the pattern?

 

[me2]

Basically. The high carbon material in the article is cast iron, which melts at lower temp than wrought iron or steel. Its a well kept secret that melting point goes down as carbon % goes up, and cast iron has between 2% and 4%. My understanding of the wootz used by verhoeven is it starts as sorrel iron (iron from a particular mine w/ certain critical impurities), organic material, glass (fluxing purposes) and some other things.

While Pendray/Verhoevens methods arent the only ones, their wootz is certainly forged, even for dagger size pieces. I would actually question the usability of a battle intended dagger made by essentially stock removalfrom a cast ingot. Also, Verhoeven did quite in depth research on a sectioned medieval era sword made of wootz, and made no mention of it being pattern welded. In fact, I think he specifically examined it to be sure it wasnt, but I'd have to read the article again to be sure.