Were can you buy wootz steel? I have never used it but see alot of makers using it for their blades. What is the difference between wootz and shear steel? I have read a few things and can't really find a difference and based on what I have read, it is pretty much the same thing. What is the advantage of using wootz over 01, 1095, W1, 5160, etc.? Thanks in advance for any advice or comments.
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wootz steel
- Thread starter kvolle
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Don't think the lawsuit is really going anywhere, but I haven't kept up with it for a while. It was over a specific technique for creating a wootz-like effect called "techno-wootz" or some crap like that. All a bunch of BS, if you ask me (the lawsuit anyway)
Wootz, from what I understand, is simply a way to get a banding effect out of the carbon or alloying elements in a steel. Don't know if it is really all that special, but I guess it looks pretty. It originated in India as far as anyone knows, and smiths have been creating it for a looong time.
There are some metallurgists here (amature and professional) who can help you out a lot more about if it is worth pursuing.
--nathan
Wootz, from what I understand, is simply a way to get a banding effect out of the carbon or alloying elements in a steel. Don't know if it is really all that special, but I guess it looks pretty. It originated in India as far as anyone knows, and smiths have been creating it for a looong time.
There are some metallurgists here (amature and professional) who can help you out a lot more about if it is worth pursuing.
--nathan
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Wootz (or Bulat) is an ancient crucible steel with large carbides in a soft iron matrix, which makes real interesting damascene patterns without the folding/layering that produces patterns in the "damascus" many of us make. there are a couple of people making wootz, I think Pendray and Verhoeven patented a process for making it, there were the Wootz wars a while back, I think the lawyers won those
TechnoWootz is a marketing concept and basis for suing people
Shear steel is blister steel cut into small pieces and melted in a crucible to produce a homogenous ingot
Blister steel is an ancient process of making steel by packing wrought iron in a container with charcoal and heating it long enough for carbon to diffuse through it (which I plan to experiment with soon)
I wouldn't advise trying to start with wootz even if you can get your hands on it
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TechnoWootz is a marketing concept and basis for suing people
Shear steel is blister steel cut into small pieces and melted in a crucible to produce a homogenous ingot
Blister steel is an ancient process of making steel by packing wrought iron in a container with charcoal and heating it long enough for carbon to diffuse through it (which I plan to experiment with soon)
I wouldn't advise trying to start with wootz even if you can get your hands on it
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I am by no means an expert on wootz (an entirely modern term used to describe varying types of ancient crucible steels) but I have spent my time goofing around with people who are experts. Ric Furrer makes his own style of actual crucible steel and I have made some with him as well as doing quite a bit of analysis and metallography on it.
In the ancient world the ability to make homogenous melts of steel were darned near impossible. By far the most common material was bloomery iron and steel, which was a smelting process but not a melting process where true liquid metal was produced; instead it more resembled some of the modern sintering processes. Old world fires typically didn’t burn hot enough to reduce the ore and take the pure iron to liquid for proper alloying, so a super heated chemical process was used to reduce ore to spongy blooms which were then consolidated through forging (yes at one time forging did produce the best blades on earth!). Bloomery iron was pretty inconsistent and carbon levels were rather unpredictable and touchy.
In the midst of all of this the peoples of the east, India and areas to the north came up with a very ingenious process to get around much of these issues. Normal forge fires have a hard time achieving long term fires capable of the heat in excess of 2,800F with proper atmospheres to produce liquid iron. But as you add carbon to iron the melting temperature lowers quite a bit. In this process the refined iron was packed into a crucible with various fluxes and plenty of carbon bearing materials and then sealed air tight. The crucible was heated as hot as they could get it and inside the absence of oxygen allowed the iron to absorb the carbon without losing it. As the iron soaked up carbon the melting temperature lowered thus allowing even more carbon absorption, resulting in a useful vicious little circle. The result was a steel made from true liquid iron, much more homogeneous than anything else at the time, but it was also ultra high in carbon content.
The extreme proeuctectoid carbon tended to segregate out into interesting sheets within the matrix that resulted in a pattern visible to the naked eye.
Very impressive for the 4th century, not so much today despite what all the hype indicates. While the blades could cut due to carbide action alone overall strength was quite limited due to embrittlement problems. Heat treating the stuff like other steels would result in something more like cast iron than tempered steel. In fact something that we rarely hear about despite the overwhelming evidence is that the vast majority of ancient wootz blades were rarely over 38 HRC in hardness. Remember a recent thread on scratch hardness vs. penetrative hardness? This is an excellent example of it. The stuff will cut soft targets like crazy on carbide action alone but isn’t so great on heavy impact applications.
Many folks today use alloy banding to simulate wootz but if they didn’t put the hard work into working the crucible process they are not being entirely honest. If you want some wootz to play with Ric Furrer is a guy who is very generous with sharing both knowledge and products.
On a side note- shear steel is blister steel that was refined by shearing staking and then welding. When the need for accurate chronometers was overwhelming, an English fellow by the name of Huntsman put shear steel into crucibles and heated the heck out of it to produce a steel homogenous enough to make very fine clock springs. Does this process sound familiar? It also happens to occur around the time that England seized India in its imperial grip, hmmm?
In the ancient world the ability to make homogenous melts of steel were darned near impossible. By far the most common material was bloomery iron and steel, which was a smelting process but not a melting process where true liquid metal was produced; instead it more resembled some of the modern sintering processes. Old world fires typically didn’t burn hot enough to reduce the ore and take the pure iron to liquid for proper alloying, so a super heated chemical process was used to reduce ore to spongy blooms which were then consolidated through forging (yes at one time forging did produce the best blades on earth!). Bloomery iron was pretty inconsistent and carbon levels were rather unpredictable and touchy.
In the midst of all of this the peoples of the east, India and areas to the north came up with a very ingenious process to get around much of these issues. Normal forge fires have a hard time achieving long term fires capable of the heat in excess of 2,800F with proper atmospheres to produce liquid iron. But as you add carbon to iron the melting temperature lowers quite a bit. In this process the refined iron was packed into a crucible with various fluxes and plenty of carbon bearing materials and then sealed air tight. The crucible was heated as hot as they could get it and inside the absence of oxygen allowed the iron to absorb the carbon without losing it. As the iron soaked up carbon the melting temperature lowered thus allowing even more carbon absorption, resulting in a useful vicious little circle. The result was a steel made from true liquid iron, much more homogeneous than anything else at the time, but it was also ultra high in carbon content.
The extreme proeuctectoid carbon tended to segregate out into interesting sheets within the matrix that resulted in a pattern visible to the naked eye.
Very impressive for the 4th century, not so much today despite what all the hype indicates. While the blades could cut due to carbide action alone overall strength was quite limited due to embrittlement problems. Heat treating the stuff like other steels would result in something more like cast iron than tempered steel. In fact something that we rarely hear about despite the overwhelming evidence is that the vast majority of ancient wootz blades were rarely over 38 HRC in hardness. Remember a recent thread on scratch hardness vs. penetrative hardness? This is an excellent example of it. The stuff will cut soft targets like crazy on carbide action alone but isn’t so great on heavy impact applications.
Many folks today use alloy banding to simulate wootz but if they didn’t put the hard work into working the crucible process they are not being entirely honest. If you want some wootz to play with Ric Furrer is a guy who is very generous with sharing both knowledge and products.
On a side note- shear steel is blister steel that was refined by shearing staking and then welding. When the need for accurate chronometers was overwhelming, an English fellow by the name of Huntsman put shear steel into crucibles and heated the heck out of it to produce a steel homogenous enough to make very fine clock springs. Does this process sound familiar? It also happens to occur around the time that England seized India in its imperial grip, hmmm?
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Hey Kevin, I have read Tool Steels Simplified and The Fundamentals Of Metallurgy as you recommended them. Anymore good material I should read that will help me with my HT and casting small parts. Thanks Jim
Why would you not try it. If it is iron and carbon then it should be in the same catogory of 1095 or any other carbon steel right? I am not talking about making my own. I want to experiment with a already made ingot. What would be the down side here? Just wondering.
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It's very touchy from what I understand, forging at the wrong temps will leave you with a very expensive pile of metal.
If I understood Kevin's post, no it's not like 1095, it's like wrought iron with some carbides in the structure.
If I understood Kevin's post, no it's not like 1095, it's like wrought iron with some carbides in the structure.
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my understanding from what Ric said at Ashokan is that you can't work it too hot or the carbides melt and run out, leaving you with a crumbly sponge of iron, and since you can't workit too hot, you are basically forging cold iron, not much movement, not much fun
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Electric melt 1095 in much different than crucible fired "wootze". It takes a bit of work and some experience to do right. It is also expensive if you can find it ready made. Kind of like tamahagane (sp). Only a few people make it and they don't want to let it go. I would hate to spend a couple hundred bucks on steel and watching it crumble under the hammer (oh ya I did do that). It really sucks...
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Wow AC That Had To REALLY SUCK! spendin a few hundred bux on a "piece" of specialized, wonder, trendy, fad of the moment, steel, only to have it and your knife you were dreaming of litterally crumble under your hammer... cant even imagine! how'd ya recover from that?
then again I've always wanted to make a knife out of a iron meteor...
then again I've always wanted to make a knife out of a iron meteor...
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GEE I dunno. Chalked it up to experience and moved on. Bought some 1095 and 5160 in stead.
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Making the stuff is a challenge as far as getting the process right but forging it into something useful can make the crucible firing look like childs play. It is some of the most frustrating stuff I have ever forged. I would not liken it to wrought iron at all under the hammer, I thing it very much resembles cast iron under the hammer. It has to be gently squeezed at lower temperatures until is consolidates a bit before you can get to any useful shaping. If some guy can make you an ingot and sell it to you as is, he may be a little on the sadisistic side knowing what you are going to go through forging it down. It would be worth the extra money if the guy had preforged billets. But then anything you do with it afterwards will be temperture sensitive, get it too hot for too long and you can erase the pattern
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Here are some images I did from a 1.5% Carbon Wootz at 400X:
"Principles of Heat Treatment" by Bain and Grossman is a classic.
"Principles of Heat Treatment" by Bain and Grossman is a classic.
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I find the "waterings" or patterns in the wootz very interesting. I am not much of a collector but consider myself lucky to have this one.
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As far as I know, you can get wootz from:
Al Pendray (USA)
Achim Wirtz (Germany)
Fabian Damanet (Belgium)
All these makers make their own crucibles and forge them into Wootz.
I got a wootz bar from Finland too but don't know who makes them over there. Some guys in Russia make Wootz too.
The only wootz knife I have now is a hunter by Fabian Damanet.
Al Pendray (USA)
Achim Wirtz (Germany)
Fabian Damanet (Belgium)
All these makers make their own crucibles and forge them into Wootz.
I got a wootz bar from Finland too but don't know who makes them over there. Some guys in Russia make Wootz too.
The only wootz knife I have now is a hunter by Fabian Damanet.
OK! You've convinced me to stick with what I am good at. I sure don't want to drop a couple hundred and screw up. That would not be one of my best days. I would still like to forge one but maybe I should find someone that has some scrap that I can play with first. I do like the look but I have also read that it performs well. I make a lot of combat knives and thought this would be a good steel to use.
New question; does anyone have some scraps I can buy? And since temp. is so important does anyone know what temp to take it to forge?
New question; does anyone have some scraps I can buy? And since temp. is so important does anyone know what temp to take it to forge?
I have corresponded at length with a Ukrainian wootz maker who uses a different method than most American wootz makers.
American makers mostly use the Pendray/Verhooven method where the ingot is made and then repeatedly worked hot-short. Their contention is that the damascene pattern is lost if the steel is overheated at any point.
The Ukrainian/Russian method is to take the dendritic ingot and perform a high temperature anneal, 1850+^F.
After the high temp anneal, the pattern is not visible until it has cycled to critical temperature many times - about 50 times.
This method is reported to have a very high success ratio compared to the Pendray method, which is reported to have a significant rate of failure in producing the pattern on the finished product.