Samarai Stu… (Samurai didn’t crucible steal, they smelted it, but Wootz crucible steel is however interesting)…
A few Wootz recipes for you… Standard of measurement follows.
Female iron is a very common "Eastern" concept. Male iron is hard while female iron is soft. Furnaces also have a sex, hot or cool.
- 1 ratl = 12 uqiya ounces= 144 dirhams =.75lbs =.3kg 1 mann= 2 ratl.
Al-Tarussi ~
Take one rotl of iron ( Narmahan ) and half a rotl of male-iron ( Shabarqan ). Collect the mixture in a pot and put on it five dirhems of magnesia and a handful of acidic pomegranate bark. Let the fire blow on it until the alloy melts, then make an egg of it. Take it out and make a sword.
If it comes from the heads of old nails... 17 dirhems of myrobalan from kabul and the same quantity of belleric, should be cast upon it. The iron should be placed in a pot, which should be cleaned well with water and salt. The above mentioned preparation should be mixed with it, and the whole placed in a crucible , which should be dusted with a dirhem and a half of crushed magnesia (maganese dioxide) . The foundry fire should then be blown upon this until it melts and is collected as a cake or egg. This is over several days . Then alllow this to cool and make a sword from it.
1 part male magnesia (manganese dioxide ) , 1 of sunbad ( coral ) of borax. Break up the whole then set it aside. Take a mann of soft iron filings in the pure state, place them in a crucible , and pour over them two uqiya of the aforesaid mixture. Blow on the fire to cause it to melt and make it soft enough to take up a round shape in the crucible. Then take 1 part of syrian rue ( peganum hamala), 1 of gall nuts, 1 of acorns, 1 of aloes, together with a quantity of cantharides equal to all these. Make the whole into a powder, and of this mixture cast 2 uqiya on to the mann ( 1 maund = 2 ratl ) of iron, blow on the fire until what appears to be a rainbow rises out of the crucible. When it has reached this state, allow it to cool, then forge a sword.
Cultivated myrobalan, 20 dirhem: magnesia, 7 dirhem: scammony, 5 dirhem. Reduce all to a powder. Cast this preparation onto 3 ratl of shaburqan, and blow the fire to make it melt in a crucible with a lid pierced with a hole so that one can see into it, and examine the iron until it is seen and felt with an iron rod to melt. Then remove it from the furnace, allow the crucible to cool with it, and make of it what you will. And strike a 20 ratl iron bar: with Allah's help it will cut it..
Now Iron manufacturing is oldest in the Middle East, older than Asia or Japan, so you’re going to have to look up terminologies yourself to convert mann to ounce perhaps… But even the first metallurgical works of Japanese katana were Wootz based… Hot enough to let metals move and bond, cool enough so not to alloy them as one.
According to Al-Tarussi, the process was fired for days until sufficient marbling of material was made, then drawn & shaped. In his treatises there is no mention of a low temperature post heat treatment, so we must assume that the within the method of ingot creation this is 60% complete. During the draw from egg shaped ingot to fully shaped sword, the temperatures are only enough to work harden the steel….
Now for the Samurai in you, Wootz is made in pot Tamahagne is made in an oven (carbon added to the core metal over days). The two methods are separated by 600-1000 years… Once a tamahagne process is completed the oven in demolished and what remains is like a meteorite of high carbon steel, at its core softer metals. It is broken apart and the two soft/hard are sorted by color.
The harder steel is then folded anywhere from 6-12 times, the softer 3-6… Why, because the softer steel will become the swords center, to absorb and flex, the harder steel is flattened out, folded into a V and the softer metal placed inside ->
The two are then forge welded together (this is where Sultans and Shoguns differ), the heat of forge welding tamahagne’s together is pretty hot, just below melting point, Wootz is already bonded so is work hardened to shape… This is why Samurai Swords get quenched, then clay treated in heat differential (less clay on the cutting edge, more clay over mid/spine)…
Very different processes, delivering basically the same result…
Now if you what, what I think you want (best of both worlds, a Sultans crucible steel, forged in Samurai process, (Something akin to Adamantium). This is how you make it…
Let’s make our core… Carbon 40% - Manganese 50% - Phosphorus 4% - Sulfur 5%.. add within this 1% powdered alabaster.
The core should be 1” wide by 3/8” thick, tapering to 1/8”, 26” long and folded 9 times.
Now let’s make our cutting edge… Carbon 13% Chromium 13% Vanadium 15% Tungsten 21% Molybdenum 15% Cobalt 20% Sulfur 2%. Special .8% powdered bark of a pomegranate tree and .2% diamond dust, folded 13 times… Proceeding each fold a handful “bouquet” of pomegranate, buchcovet, miscanthud, bellflower, arrowroot, maiden flower, wild carnations and boneset was dashed against the hot work head to toe.
The heat process of each before folding should be fired by several High/Low temperatures allowing metals to pour out their impurities and allow lower heated metals to move forming slight separations/veining or Carbon nanotubes with separation of cementite and pearlite. This is the lost method of Wootz.
Our cutting edge should then be drawn out 1/8” to 1/16” and 2 5/8” wide, 28” long and folded 13 times. Then drawn to 5.5”s wide, folded to about 1.5” opening at 40 degrees or so, and the core placed inside. Orange hot not Red hot, no swirls or bubbles
too hot and the high carbon folds disappear. Hammer or Numo-Press the two together.
Blade geometry, basically an oblong pentagon, think .50 BMG… Taper base to tip (horizontaly) as well tang to tip. During quench thicknesses translate to curvature and in use a thinner tip thicker base translates to cutting prowess… In ancient Japan blades were rated by how many bodies they could cut through. Tameshigiri was the practice (dead bodies were staked on brick and board and the maker took an overhead downward swing through the mid sections). 5 bodies is the record BTW. Get it as close as possible to finished geometry with a grinder (using flap wheels 80-120).
Quenching is done blade face down in a room temp pool of water enriched with calcium and magnesium until milky white… The low carbon base/core metal will cool first leading the once forged welded high carbon claded bar to tighten against its length, it’s spine shrinking while higher carbon steels cool last… If done right, the spine nearest the tang turns sharply, fading to tip.
Now we clay temper… Coat the blade in traditional red clay or my favorite mixture of 1 part red clay, 2 parts refractory (aluminum silicate)… Coat the entire blade in about 3mm. Then use a popsicle stick to remove excess from the cutting edge (don’t press down to hard, this going to be your hamon - heat treat line), the most important thing is to leave 1mm of clay on the blade.
2nd most important thing, try to leave a small raised dune (between the two 4-5mm line). This is Masamune’s lost “Field of Stars” method. It will make a shadow line where the pearlite will pop out on final polish… let the clay dry overnight.
3… Fire up your furnace to 400f. Run the blade through for 20 minutes turning, cool to 300, run the blade through another 15 turning…
Next we clean our blade of clay, define our cutting edge and polish, reveling our Metallurgical work…
There’s a couple ways to go here…
Traditionally your base stone is level +5 Nakayama +5 meaning over 5k grit), Slurry stones Botan, Korma, Mejiro, Tenjou (up to 3k)… Then finger stones, or Uchimogori… 3k-5000 grit (super delicate stone flakes, backed with rice paper to hand burnish). This can take up to 3 months.
Mordern method: Felt wheel, white rouge, red rouge, switch to Muslin wheel and use green jewelers rouge. Final Finish blue, you’re done in hours… (My knives and razors I polish in this method, my 1st Kana, I polished traditionally).
