Restauration of antique oriental Damascus / Wootz blades

[Roland_M]

Originally Posted by mariusgmioc

Hello Roland,

Also using Nital I got results absolutely identical to (by no means discernable from) originally etched blades.

I got a magnificent black Kara Taban wootz kard that had a lighter area near the hilt so I had it polished (basically just cleaned the old etching with Pre-lim) and re-etched and got exactly the same I had before: a magnificent black Kara Taban pattern and much lighter area near the hilt where the etchant didn't appear to have the same effect (I assume because of different heat treatments to the blade, that led to different micro-cristalline structure of the steel).

Besides, Nital is very easy and reasonably safe to work with.


Maybe once I get home I will post some photos of my older results (but I know you also got excellent results with Zag)

PS: In the next future I will have to etch a few of my new aquisitions and I may make the effort to document the process with Photos.

Hi Marius,

I'm very interested to see your black Kara Taban wootz kard and other blades here.

Oh and since two weeks or so I'm using Fe2(SO4)3 (Iron(III) sulfate=Zag) instead of Na2S2O8 (Sodium persulfate).


Roland