Roland, Then why were so many swords made from that material? Pretty only?

Ric

Richard,

Perhaps, crucible technology was the only one available to them in the pre-industrial age. Any small time village smith could construct an oven in his backyard and put there a dozen or two of crucibles.

Thank you Richard for entering in on this, and it is I think a key thing to have an actual blacksmith's view on the matters we have been discussing here. Your entries are absolutely fascinating, and the observations that begun the thread with Mahratt's original question and the quite dynamic discussions have brought this entire topic to what I think is a pretty exciting and comprehensive look into this mysterious steel.

It has been clear that experienced collectors and researchers such as Mahratt and Ariel would have often different perspectives, and these as well as those who have also joined the discussions have really brought much of the 'mystery' into a most viably understandable topic.

As I have noted, I began here with virtually zero comprehension of wootz itself beyond the obvious classifications and terms in descriptions. Others, such as Ibrahiim, who have had varying degrees of knowledge have also continued researching material and literature for ideas and answers.

This includes of course Roland who has just come in and of course with sound observations, and Alex, Gav, and others whose input has been great in facilitating the discussion.
As always, Estcrh adds vibrant visual aid with the amazing illustrations he provides and accompanied by excellent insights.

I did not mean this to sound like movie credits:) but just wanted to note what a magnificent learning opportunity has been created here by the expertise and teamwork of all of you, and to thank you.

Please keep going!!! It is fascinating and fun to learn more.


Very best regards
Jim

Jim,
I have been smithing for 26? years and making crucible steel for some 15-17 now and it may be that I have closed my mind to ideas and techniques outside what I currently use....I am not the gate keeper of this information so one can only take my word for so much.
That said I am forging some 22 pounds of crucible steel this week into swords. Just killed a $200 carbide saw blade cutting one ingot apart to see its inside structure.

I have read most of what has been written and translated in English and some which has not, but my major push for research ended some years ago and I now have settled on a technique which works for me. What I see from travelers accounts of old may be taken with a grain of salt...some read poorly and some read fancifully and some read like VCR instructions. We all chose to believe the ones with which we agree.
I know quote a bit about Japanese sword making and yet when I get the odd chance to sit down with a Japanese tosho I always come away with more picky questions than answers and such the nature of the minutia. I wish I could have a window into an old fort smithy in Jodhpur or Isfahan when they were in business, but such is not to be. I can say this with some argument :They knew their material better than we ever will. What I do is guess and experiment and guess some more. Having not grown up in an unbroken tradition means that some things will simply never be known.

I think swords were a specialty and not a common blacksmith item to produce. Surely there were production centers and blade makers got the steel from steelmakers. Blade making is not a common blacksmith trade...if you made general smithed goods such as kitchen utensils/horse shoes then you did not also make swords...swords are a speciality.

Ariel....I would think it VERY rare for one man to do it all.
Though I may make a few ingots from time to time and also make bloomery steel with a mud stack and charcoal I think more likely that the blade maker would purchase the steel and not make it themselves. Production centers may have it all in line...what we call "horizontal manufacturing" today where raw material comes in one end and finished goods out the other. I would think some areas had this, but a lone smith was far too isolated to do such and think a sword maker alone would be rather out of luck to do it all himself. Weapons are something a government controls and weapon makers would be under some laws.......certainly if a village smith were making the odd sword the villagers would be asking for whom he is making it and why that person needs a sword. No I rather think swords were done by groups who specialized in it......till war comes and then EVERYONE is conscripted into some form of weapon production or civil service (wagon parts, general metal items of need).
Ariel you are only one state away.....yet you never visit. Then again I do not get many visitor at all...location location location.

Mahratt,
I have no answer for you. Have not seen any document that would give an end date to crucible steel production nor a reason why such occurred. I would think it like many other trades...it waxes and wains with utility and cost and fashion. I think the lack of a raw material (ore source running out) for such a large production area and time period just plane wrong. I think it far more likely that there is a political and economic reason rather than the elimination of a single ore source.

Ric

Richard,
Thanks for the detailed response.
I did not imply that every ( or any) village blacksmith was making blades from crucible ingots he himself produced in his backyard.

Your question was why so many blades were made of wootz, and that is exactly what I tried to address.

While European steel makers were constantly switching from one technology to another, obtaining more and more of better and cheaper steel faster and faster with progressively decreasing human effort, India and other Eastern societies never reached industrial scale of steel manufacture till the second half of 19 century when the Brits introduced modern technologies there. The "natives" relied on the tried and true cheap and universally-available crucible technology that did not require huge investments in equipment. That could have been done in workshops attached to Royal courts or even in smaller establishments.

Thus, the major portion of steel they produced was crucible steel, and a good portion of it was real wootz.

In a way ( just IMHO) mass production of wootz blades was a pure serendipity: crucible steel was abundant and at the same time beautiful, so making blades out of it was like killing two birds with one stone. In a way, that was similar to the story with bloomery steel: the process was indescribably primitive, resulting in inhomogeneous lump of steel with different carbon content in different areas . But sorting out these small lumps, forging them together and manipulating them produced pattern welded blades in Europe and Nihon-to in Japan.

And people say it is impossible to make a silk purse out of pig's ear :-)))

And you have honestly and beautifully elucidated the importance of uninterrupted tradition: you have been making wootz for "only" 15-17 years and learned the process from scratch. The "natives" were doing it for hundreds of years and transmitting the combined knowledge to their apprentices. A loss of only one generation would throw the whole level of expertise back to the beginning. And that, together with other external factors you have mentioned, killed the whole tradition.

Roland, actually crucible steel was known and made in England much earlier than the mid 19th century. So if England had crucible steel since the 1700s why were they still looking for the secret of Indian crucible steel? Perhaps because they thought of Indian crucible steel as being a superior steel, why else?

A History of Small Business in America, Mansel G. Blackford, 2003

Not every steel obtained by crucible technology is equivalent to wootz.
For example, steel from Sheffild "pots" was poured off immediately after melting; slow cooling was not practiced. Forging of Sheffield steel was done at high temperature.
I was told that old Sheffield blades may show very faint, simple and patchy damaskus pattern if etched severely , but nobody ever managed to elicit real wootz-y pattern.

One simple question. Where "lost" this generation?

Moreover, the tradition is usually stored for a long time.

english crucible steel was good,but it wasn't quite carling. (local uk joke)

i suspect the best true indian wootz may have had a crucial alloying element like vanadium that the UK didn't discover was usefull till much later.

i also suspect that, as i mentioned earlier, the secrets were NOT past down and were lost because a generation went to the city and got easier and better paid jobs in industry, offices, factories etc. where they could hide their low caste and rise above it. we do not realise in the west how limiting the indian caste system was (and is in places) and how attractive breaking out of it into a western meritocracy system that did not force them to pound iron for pennies all their lives would be. in the uneducated and illiterate environment, there was no way to 'store' the knowledge if your son did not want to learn it and ran off.

True enough.

A very good point Kronckew!

after reading though this discussion, i will just share my general observation at least based on knife making and knife and its economics.


it is no mystery as to why bulat/wootz disappeared with so little fanfare.

the steels made in europe already in the 18th century were superior to other made in the world.

science being applied in their production and treatment..

if you have worked with "smith made" steel you will know why the world became hooked on european steels..

sith made steel is a different surprise every time..
with working tools its always a surprise .. many times a nasty surprise.. which transfers on to the maker of the tools. failures in blades tools ect.. hurt your reputation.

making the superior steel that you were sure of its quality for a thin edge only was the normal practice most tools outside of europe at this time..
wedging it in iron.

time consuming.. a full blade like a sword in a good steel was a very costly item to make..


suddenly you could buy a superior steel in a formed bar or rod for a fraction of the price and it was a reliable material..
you could forge full blade form it for a fraction of the price.


sout east asian blades are a good example ...lamination of tools and smelting of ones own steel stopped almost instantly when european steel arrived.



bulat/wootz became old hat - uninteresting and the new steel pushed it aside.

a bulat blade can not survive the same harsh treatment as the blade of a regular cavalry blade made in 1800 form some reputable european maker.

in a period when swords were still used this becomes completely apparent.

handguns as well replacing edged weapons as status symbols and for personal weapons.

in places where there was a strong cultural or religious tradition for an exotic blade material like japan or indonesia.. or due to isolation like tibet.. laminated or pattern welded blades still remained common...

in india wootz was popular because it was a superior steel.. its pattern was the secondary reason it was popular.. in central asia.. iran... afghanistan it was all the same as well.

wars and chaos. afghanistan. nations in what is now india... iran.. economic disruption ect..
many things changed in this time..

you can also look at glass production.. european production totally surpassed local production at this same time as well.. previously a expensive product became cheap better quality and available to all.

if you collect playing cards . its the same time that european playing cards replaced middle eastern cards as well. mass production... better quality, cheaper price.

this was a period of economic change in the world.

just look at how all these specialized skills died out in europe after ww1 and ww2
just gone over such a short perior.. many of their markets disappeared form one day to the next..

british raj were not buying fine bespoke products any more.. the worlds aristocracy disappeared, there was no wealthy gentry going in safari.. no exotically dressed bodyguards..
ect ect ect..


this can happen in 1 year.. the craftsmen disperse so do their techniques the client network gone... the item will vanish.. and then 100 years later we will discuss it nostalgically.
but its process is lost to us, and we will view it as some mystery. as many of these things take many many small specialized steps.. if things are not performed constantly they are lost in a decade or less.

Exactly my thoughts.

I see no one reads closely to each other ... I did not write that after the mid-19th century, preserved the mass production of wootz steel. I fully agrees that economic reasons have led to the disappearance of the mass production of wootz weapons.
But can not talk about the disappearance production of weapons of wootz steelin the middle of the 19th century, as there is evidence proving that the Central Asian weapons of wootz steel produced before the end of the 19th century.

How does "middle of the 19th century" differ from " before the end of the 19th century"?

And what is the relevance of Central Asia to the original question of Indian wootz?

As we speak, dozens of bladesmiths around the world ( India included) produce wootz of variable quality. Is it an argument in favor of " wootz manufacture never died" proposition?

Is it possible to be more precise in posing questions and choosing arguments?


Just curious.

To make it clearer. The middle of the 19th century - the year 1850. End of 19th century - 1899. The difference in half a century - is essential.
Communication between Central Asia and India is simple. If the Central Asian weapons of wootz steel made before the end of the 19th century (although it was not mass-produced), then in India is the production of locally could be preserved.

I fully agree: wootz production in India "died" sometimes between 1850-1899 .
That was said multiple times before. Shall we go in the middle , agree on June 30, 1874 and leave it like that?

Unless, of course, notarized letters of eye witnesses of actual forging can be presented:-) Could, would and should have no evidentiary value.

Taking into account that most of Central Asian wootz blades were of obvious Persian manufacture, that several informers mention Persian origin of wootz CA blades, and that, AFAIK, there is no well-documented evidence of wootz production there, aside of Ann Feuerbach's finding of ancient crucibles, the continuation of wootz production in the Khanates and in Afghanistan at the above-mentioned period is not proven.

Continuing this discussion is akin to a sandbox argument who would win in a wrestling match : a whale or an elephant?

Count me out:-)))))

The fact that someone has not yet proved the fact of wootz steel production in the late 19th century in Central Asia and Afghanistan, does not mean that it was not. There is growing evidence to prove that at the end of the 19th century in this region produced of wootz weapons .

But, of course, can believe the old dogmas :) Of course it is easier than most to analyze and carry out research)))))

So I think really, to continue the discussion does not make sense.

Yup, I am into old dogmas of factual evidence.
Please continue your "research" and enlighten us with your "discoveries" when they are ripe enough for informed discussion.
BTW, how is your theory on dating Afghani weapons by the presence or absence of brass elements? Still working on it? I am still intrigued by it.

Do not worry. Once an article is finally ready, I will introduce it in English.

And you continue to hold on to the old "information", although as it turns out that often "It’s still all up in the air"

This thread is so 'SHAVER KOOL' !!!!! :)
Yawn!

The above posts were deleted because they were beneath the level of discourse expected and accepted here.
Just stop. :mad:

After so many years, just an offer of a pleasant read.

https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.ne...OHF5GGSLRBV4ZA

If anybody knows all that had ever been written about wootz and is capable of understanding the intricacies of the topic,- it is unquestionably Ann Feuerbach.
A very short, understandable article about history of wootz research, the search for its composition ( alloy of iron and carbon) that was known at least 20 years before Anosov who is customarily credited for it, and other piquant and not well-known details, areas of uncertainty etc, - in short: read it!
I enjoyed it enormously, and so will you.

Sorry Ariel. Just reports a string of "Access denied." That link is a total dud for me.

I checked it after posting it here and it worked. Now it is “ access denied”:-(((
Internet is playing nasty games.

Try go directly to
Ann Feuerbach “Crucible Damascus Steel: a fascination for almost 2,000 years”

Thank you Ariel!

With a little effort I managed to download this article and a couple more. Very interesting reading indeed and very easy to read.
:)

Great!
Can you download it here for everybody to enjoy?

I am not sure I am allowed to. :confused:

Better let everybody who is really interested download it directly from Ann Feuerbach website on Accademia.

Ann Feuerbach wrote so many more very interesting articles. I also recommend "Indo-Persian Blades in the Collection of E. Gene Beall" (I am reading now one about damascening and koftgari). ;)

https://ncc.academia.edu/AnnFeuerbach

Thanks mariusgmioc. I have downloaded several of Ann's publications so that, if any links get broken, we can share those articles here directly. Ann's original PhD thesis is also available via marius' link. An excellent thesis BTW, which is richly illustrated.

Ann is a member of this Forum and has written here several times, although not recently.

I normally hang out on FB and the Bladesmithsforum but I recently came across this thread which I somehow missed. It has been a pretty good discussion of the topic which is vague at best in historical and academic circles.

For those of you who don’t know me, I have been making wootz for about 18 years now, and I was originally mentored by Al Pendray in making wootz. I have also been researching and mentoring smiths for most of that time.

I think it wonderful that browsing this thread I found references which I hadn’t seen before and information which I hadn’t considered. These sort of discussions help everyone to learn more and I have enjoyed the discussion greatly, even the light verbal sparring.

I would like to share from my knowledge and experience on the topic, with the realisation that there were many things which affected the decline of wootz and even the assumption that it totally died out is likely false. It never totally dies out until the last person who saw an ancestor making ingots and forging out blades, who is making them themselves… dies.

That being said, we have lost specific information about how specific patterns were extracted from ingots, there is no dispute there.

The last mention in print which I am aware of concerning the making of wootz ingots is from C. Ritter Von Schwarz in 1901. He was in charge of iron production in Bengal during the end of the 19th century. He said the industry was mostly dead but that it was still being made in Lalitpur, Narsinghpur, Mahabaleshwar, Shivamogga, Kardur, Chitradura, and other districts of India. If anyone would have known the state of the industry at that time it would have been him. This was from Stahl und Eisen #21 1901.

I have not found any mention after this point. If it was still being produced at these locations in India in 1901 then it would have slowly tapered off for several decades afterwards. Sharada Shrinivasan interviewed a smith in Telangana who worked wootz steel as a youth. His precise age is not known as far as I have heard, but if we assume he is in his 80s, say 85, and he was 15 or older when he was forging wootz.. reasonable assumptions… then he was likely forging wootz as part of his community around 1950. There are also other smiths according to her who remember the time when wootz was worked.

The reasons for the decline of production is far from simple. I can tell you for a certainty that it was not the “ore deposit running out” which was only ever a very casual theory and should have been remembered as such. There is no evidence at all for such a conclusion.

These were the main reasons for the decline:

1) westernisation of warfare required fewer edged weapons
2) systematic efforts of the British to force dependance in technology and industry and goods upon the Indian people. It was total subjugation with bans on exports of goods in the 1800s including wootz export. They did everything to crush traditional industry and knowledge networks.
3) Famines and food scarcities caused by the high taxation of the British and monopolisation of the food as well as pushing farmers to make cash crops not food crops. This happened between 1770 and 1850s. People were trying to survive and the artisans struggled heavily at this time.
4) deforestation by poor management by the British caused an ecological disaster which then required a poorly executed Forest Act in 1865 and bans on free access to wood for making charcoal. This drove the price of charcoal high and affected the bloomery iron industry and the wootz industry.
5) corruption mentioned by Voysey of the land owners causing crucible steel price hikes.
6) the British flooding the market with cheap steel and iron from England caused less of a demand for wootz steel and as export of the steel was banned in the mid 1800s only small amounts could be made and sold in the local Indian market.
7) the westernisation of India promoted a taste for English steel utensils and a lowering of demand for traditional wootz products. Not sure how much this would have affected things but it would have been a factor.
8) Labour being taken for building railroads and being used for portage would have interrupted the ability of the iron working artisans to ply their trade.

There are other reasons which I haven’t mentioned but these are the main ones.

Concerning Mongolian wootz, it is actually true that crucible steel blades were made in Mongolia. It was called Ginte-Bulat and a Russian language paper was written on the subject by Puravzhal Bayasgolan in 2002. She showed sufficient evidence for it’s existence and it was high in Molybdenum and Tungsten from the ores which were used in the local area.


The pattern of wootz steel blades today is every bit as good as the blades in past centuries. Not all surface patterns have been fully replicated but many have.

The dendritic pattern of the ingot is formed during slow solidification of the ingot and then it is the smith who controls what that pattern will become. Forging temperatures are the key to getting the pattern to either stay crystalline, or become watered. If you don’t forge high enough then the pattern will stay crystalline. So I can tell by looking at old blades at what approximate temperature they forged the ingot at initially.

Forging it high enough converts the dendritic pattern to a watered pattern. This was Al’s secret and it is very subtly in the last few papers if you know where to look. The other characteristics of the surface patterns are determined by carbon content in the ingot, specific trace elements such as Phosphorus, Nobium, Vanadium, Manganese, molybdenum, Chromium etc. Different elements create different surface pattern characteristics. Then depending on how you forge and heat treat the steel you will get varied pattern types or looks. This is separate to surface deformation, how close you forge to your final blade shape, whether you grind more on the edge and even possibly the shape of the ingot or if you mainly forge on one side of the ingot.

All these things, and if you roast the ingot or not, affect the final pattern. Wootz ingots were made in India, Persia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Northern India, Turkey and several other places.. The different trace elements in those ingots affected how good the blade could be if forged by a good smith and heat treated properly. The patterns are intimately linked to the quality of the blade and how they will perform, and the only reason that we haven’t duplicated some patterns of old exactly is that we don’t have analysis of the blades and we haven’t replicated ingots with that chemistry. When we take Mn loaded steel and expect to get patterns like some of the old blades we just are dreaming. The Persian steel had more Mn in it because of the sulphur in the ore, the old Persian recipes included pyrolusite (MnO), so we can tell often if a blade was of Persian or Indian steel. There is a pattern difference.

I was re-reading this topic and re-thinking the info.

The issue under discussion is in fact truly analogous to the pharmacokinetic model of half-life. During a period peculiar to each and every drug, its concentration decreases by half: 100% at zero time, 50% at one half life, 25% at two half-lives etc. Thus, after 6 half-lives no matter what, it declines to ~1.5% of its initial concentration, i.e. below any biological effect.

After~1850, when the numbers of bladesmiths progressively declined, the technology gradually also died out. One or two remaining bladesmiths might have produced negligible number of daggers, but could not recruit sufficient numbers of students, who witnessed wootz-making as a career dead end. Thus, after several more years wootz-making truly and permanently went Dodo.

However, it can artificially be restored: renewed interest in wootz resulted in re-appearance of masters, trying to resurrect wootz technology. Sometimes it may even result in the creation of decent wootz daggers, but as we can see virtually nothing of the "Assadulla" caliber appeared on the market. Old masters needed a century or two of experience of several uninterrupted generations of predecessors to figure out crucial tricks, but contemporary masters do not have such luxury. Regretfully, their overall numbers are small and so are the numbers of their students. We shall have to wait another 100-200 years to see if the technology of wootz bladesmithing gets truly revived. But will anyone care?

Anosov had it easy: the composition of steel ( iron+carbon) was figured out by Faraday 20 years before, and Capt. Masalsky went to Persia in 1837 for a short-term specific assignment to record every step of making wootz ingots ( early example of industrial espionage). Interestingly, both Masalsky and Anosov published their papers in the same issue of " Mining Journal" in 1841: Masalsky about making wootz ingots and Anosov about " his" method of obtaining wootz ( re-phrazed Masalsky's report) and forging them into blades. He sent a gift to Faraday (a yataghan with the ugliest handle I have ever seen and a blade with barely sham-like snippets of wootz in some places, likely due to incorrect temperature control) together with the accompanying letter. Anosov desperately tried to ingratiate himself to Faraday, to the point of thanking him for “flattering remarks” in one of Faraday’s lectures, whereas Faraday (AFAIK) never mentioned "his" allegedly “wootz” method. The accompanying message he sent to Faraday through Murchison is also quite the same: “...he begs to send to you as a proof of his admiration of your discoveries & of the value of your researches.”

Faraday apparently never responded to Anosov, at the very least there is no copy of such a letter in the detailed and voluminous archives of Faraday's correspondence.

Thank you very much, Tim Mitchell

Unfortunately, I missed your excellent answer and only saw it now. So I bring you my thanks very belatedly.
It's nice to read such a detailed and sensible comment, in which all the information is as useful as possible and there are no unnecessary arguments that are not related to my question.
I have already placed an order for a German magazine with the article you wrote about, so I look forward to being able to study the contents of the article.

Now i am curios. Is there a picture of the yatagan Anosov sent to Faraday?

Yes.
I have a detailed series of those pics, but I signed a nondisclosure agreement with the source that is valid till I have a written permission to reproduce them in my slowly written paper:-(

However, there are pics of a dagger gifted by Anosov to a British geologist Roderick Murchison sold by Bonhams in 2008 for $56,017 ( premium included, $73,234 inflation corrected). By far the best example of Anosov's wootz structure.

Time to close this one down ...
 

We have strayed from the original topic of this thread and it seems appropriate to call a halt here. If someone wants to present new data on the topic, then starting a new thread would be appropriate. Discussion in this thread is now closed.