Wootz - The True Damascus Steel?
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- Опубликовано: 14 май 2024
- Wootz Damascus steel is literally legendary for its performance - it can cut a silk scarf out of the air. How does it compare to modern steels and pattern-welded Damascus steel?
Written version of this video's information: knifesteelnerds.com/2024/04/2...
00:00 Introduction to Wootz
02:56 Composition and Hardenability
08:14 Microstructure
10:04 Toughness
12:15 Edge Retention
14:53 Wootz Questions
22:18 Conclusions
It's only Wootz if it's grown in the Woot region of France, otherwise it's just called sparkling Damascus.
Sigh, europeans
Beat me to it 😅
The original woot iron was mined in a specific area in India. It was then processed in Damascus Syria and made its was to Europe.
The first comment was funnier.@@kb9oak749
@@kb9oak749Exactly ! Somebody doesn't know their history... LoL
"Grown" ! LMAO🤣
This is a great study, thanks! Great work by all, particularly Spencer on making and providing this Wootz!
Thanks Denis!!
@@HeavyForge you're the one bringing back the real Damascus? Good job, sometimes i wonder if the first Bowie maker used something similar
If "Wootz" is referencing the ancient material - then I think making it with modern methods in bulk would affect the term used - like lab grown gems vs natural. Your tangents were not a distraction and appreciated in fact as it's hard to balance the myth of steel with the practicality of modern science.
we can obviously make it the original way that just makes no sense to do soz
It's only WOOTS IF YOU GROW IT 150 FT BELOW THE SURFACE OF AN ICE GLACIER IN WOOTS ALASKA
Just curious, what do you mean the difference between lab grown gems and natural? They’re the same thing…
Thank you so much for doing this. This will be a great place to send people who constantly rattle on about wootz being some type of indestructible super steel.
Very good video. One nice inclusion is the acknowledgement that there is a vast variety of wootz compositions as well as heat treatments, each with vastly different material properties
Well, we all know that you can't get the *legendary* hardness without quenching it in the blood of your enemies, so there's your problem. Seriously though -- great video, great scientific approach, and I'd love to see more with other combinations for a "better, modern wootz."
The nice thing about this fact is that anyone whose blood you quench steel in without prior permission will very likely become your enemy, immediately…
I like what FZ Knives does with his crucible “Wootz” He uses modern steels from drill bits/tool steel types mixed with powdered steels, carbon and other alloying agents.
Beautiful patterns that have got to be much tougher than historical wootz.
I love FZ's videos and knives too, but the secret sauce is the modern steel powder alloy he adds to the scrap metal. Just the powder alone will make a great blade.
There's a couple of research groups recreating real wootz Damascus, then analyzing the effects of different material and process variables on the output steel. Not just "uSe ToUgH bItS GeT tOuGh MeTaL".
I always enjoy your content. Your website has helped me a lot in understanding metallurgy in general. Ive learned more about metallurgy from your videos/website than I have from any of my university material science courses and really appreciate how you put to rest a lot of the debates about what is best wether it be damascus, super-steels, etc. I look forward to seeing what you do next👍
wootz and damascus steel both seem like they were made from scraps of traditionally folded iron just chucked into a crucible, "Can't do anything with this nugget, lets try and put it in a clay jar with some dry leaves, sand, and an animal tooth to give it some power." and created early steel
Thank you very much Larrin for this great study and video!
Thank you! This filled in a lot of gaps for me with regards to heat treating.
I think that Mr. Pendry created the closest approximation of wootz as he used ore from the mine in Syria where they were sourcing the metals for the blades historically. Moreover, they may have had special forging techniques that were specialized for that wootz steel just like there are different forging techniques for modern steels.
Interesting discussion.. thanks for sharing
Woot
Voots stahl, ferry ferry charp - roman
"We can make better steel today". I can hear them coming out of the wood work 🐜 🪰🪳🪳🦟
We can make better everything today bud.
@@nicodabastard He’s not saying we can’t bud.
But what if we make something better?
Great video, very insightful.
Fascinating, as usual!
This is the video i was looking for all these years
Good video!! Awesome stuff!!! Really nice to see someone not always cranking out high carbide or super steel videos.
If you haven't yet, a good book to look into is Medieval Islamic Swords and Swordmaking: Kindi's Treatise 'On swords and their kind' by Robert G. Hoyland and Brian Gilmour. I read through it last year, and while the wording isn't the clearest in English, it seemed to me that the wootz swordsmiths had a pretty good understanding of optimizing hardness and toughness for the particular blade through changes in heat treatment.
Yes, I think we should start from what we know. And one thing is for sure. Wootz steel was regarded as a very good steel. So if we don’t recreate wootz steel with good edge retention and resistance to bending, then there is something wrong in the way we are doing it. I am not trying to be mean or disrespectful to the hard work done for this video
I think if we look at it compared to other ancient blades we would see it’s age’s better. Nothing can compare to modern steel unless you want a scalpel that lasts .
@@IsitAKnife Or like many legends and Myths the properties are exaggurated for either nationalistic, religious, or even economic reasons.
Both are just as likely to be true. The problem with these myths and legends about a material's property is the willingness of people to believe them on faith alone. Especially on the internet, the whole katana vs european longsword (and the samurai vs knight) debates are absolutely endemic of this issue.
@@ExarchGaming I totally agree with you. That is why we need a scientific approach. So that is why I was suggesting a different hypothesis to test. If Wootz was superior to its peer steels. I am not sure what the hypothesis tested here was. Second: With the characteristics of the wootz tested here, I can already tell you that it would result a far inferior steel to its peers. And this is when I have some doubts about this work. Wootz was battle tested and used for centuries, it would have been unreasonable if it was that bad to use it on the battle field. The other point is that very few makers can make good wootz and even fewer have years of experience with it. With all the due respect, I would chose one of these makers. Still on this point, why was the blade grinder entirely to the edge? It wouldn’t be the way it was done.
Great information! I'd definitely love to see the 52100 woots!
I remember reading years ago an article about a damascus viking wootz sword found in the sea near scotland. Microscopic image showed a black chrismastree like structure in rows. Unfortunately i don't remember which publication it was in
I was just thinking about this a couple days ago. Weird. Thanks!
you're such a knife steel nerd omg!! i love it
Thank you Larrin!
Yea boyy another KSN vid!
Like always, very interesting video! Thanks! I would like to see 52100-wootz steel. And some kind of modern wootz-pattern springsteel, if its even possble 😀
I would love to see a paper/video on how to improve wootz. Peter Schwartz-Burt is another maker to consider for his wootz
Agreed! Peter is an excellent Wootz smith, one of the best.
Knerd! Awesome work.
Love your Conte t, and bought your first book for a blacksmithing nerd friend of mine. 😁 Per the charts on your site, have you considered having someone code up a way for users to pick an arbitrary number of specific steels to chart? Seems like it would be easy to code, and would make it much simpler to compare steels.
Be cool to see one on the evolution of the Samurai swords from the beginning all the way up to the super iconic Katana
This was really interesting, I always wondered how the legendary Damascus lived up to the hype with all those stories out there about it cutting through other swords and such.
I guess they are just that though, over embellished stories.
With toughness test low it'd certainly suffer from a major edge crack if not a complete blade fracture if you tried to cut another sword.
Looking at some of the charts I'd best very interested in seeing a show down between two san mai blades. One blade would have a core of 1084 with 15n20 jackets and the second blade would be a 15n20 core with 1084 jackets. It'd be interesting to see which one ended up tougher, harder, and had better edge retention or if they'd up pretty close to identical. I think the 15n20 jacket with 1084 would perform between than it's counterpart.
Bastante informativo 🤜🤛
It's a fun and enlightening video. It's one of my favorites on your channel so far. Thanks.
I really like my roselli uhc wootz carpenter's knife. It's supposed to be somewhere around 64-66hrc.
Gosh that Wootz is beautiful! Good info here
Very interesting.thank you
After listening to the precision in explaining how, what and why on a few videos I’d just really enjoy someone trying to argue with you on this topic.
Hahaha
Great stuff.
Examining the ancient steel at such an in depth level was fascinating. Unrelated tangent, but have they ever asked you to be a judge on forged in fire ? Lol and if so would you do it if scheduling issues were not a factor?
Wootsie daisy, I’ve never been and am still not sold on woots. Great content as always!
It’s seems to me it was just a moment in time legend. I would think given the process of ingot blade making. Somebody at some point would have found source of their metals and figured out similar.
I produced a seax in 1080 with some great looking carbide banding on it after repeated etchings to show up the hamon. Never tried to repeat it, maybe I should. Even at the time I thought "hey, this looks like wootz".
Holy shit, this has teaching material quality!
where can i purchase the knife shown in the video ??? it looks fantastic
also this is some great scientific work
love you research work
and all hail magnacut king of steels
Please, make a video explaining about the s5 shock steel
Woot! A discussion on wootz!
On the conversation of what is wootz. Maybe I'm not a purist but to me. 52100 is basically modern production wootz. Because of the banding it can have.
M2 is high speed steel wootz
A2 is air hardening die steel wootz
I haven't messed with ingot stainless that has banding like that but I'm sure there a good stainless wootz candidate out there.
Im interested in improoving that cool wootz stuff, yeah
Good stuff.
You can have a sliding scale of definition for what is wootz, the ancient method and type being exactly wootz but all changes made to that process with whatever justification as a professional can also be considered wootz. People weren't strict with definitions in the past and it was probably just called that because of an area or something in the process. Saying that i'd love to see your rendition of wootz steel with modern techniques and understandings.
Wootz is a specific forging process/ technology/ heat treatment.
Very informative video, thank You very much! Need to watch it at least onece more to understand all that - and implate it into my current view to damascus steel. To me, there is no "this is the real" - those 2 methods of making "damascus Steel" are just two different ways to combine the elements for having the best of them into the final piece of steel that makes the cutting tool.
I've got a first Edition of Manfred Sachse's Book "Damascus Steel". For me that boook is kind of a "holy grail" in books about damascus steel. He goes very much into patterns and how to create them (also letters in torn damascus eg for firearm barrels; some swords have been found, still unknown how they've been forged to get the pattern they have) and there is a relatively short chapter in that book called "Wootz - The REAL Damascus?"
I'm fascinated of the art of makig the alloy in a crucible and then forge from a solid block. Especially when I see the more and more inflative use of borax in so many videos on RUclips. Although some awesome blades are created that way, to me excessive use of Borax is not the "real high art" of making damascus steel. One of my favorite Knife-making channels on RUclips is borax-free; the guy of "FZ-making knives" also uses springs, ball bearings, razor- or scalpel blades,... as source for his knifes, but he makes them of Wootz Steel. Awesome knifes!
Thank you for this analysis. I fear it may provoke more foolish controversy about what should really be called "Damascus" and perhaps open the door for well-meaning advocacy regarding what should properly be called Wootz. In any event, interesting steels, and all useful.
I have a question about your tables on the website. When you give a steel a rating, 1-10, for toughness and edge retention, is that score relative to only those steels in the same category, I.e. stainless? For example 1095 has a toughness rating of 4.5, while 14C28N/AEB-L has a toughness rating of 9.
Are 14C28N/AEB-L really that much tougher than 1095?
The ratings are not relative to others in the category. AEB-L is that much better than 1095.
@@KnifeSteelNerds woohoo.
Thanks.
@@KnifeSteelNerds
Another question…Does the toughness category include impact resistance, say from chopping? Or perhaps even the impacts associated with swords?
@@llamawizard that's exactly what toughness means in this context, yes.
@@llamawizardresistance to breaking under plastic deformation. To me, a steel shouldn’t deform in the first place 😂
Edge stability seems to be what most people refer to when they say toughness.
Idk I’m a peon
Would cryo treatment help with pearlite conversion in woots or does cryo only help with higher chromium steels?
I don't think so with it having such low hardenability. It has to be cooled so rapidly that the cryo wouldn't affect it.
If you put sand in the mix, and bring the ore to boiling point, the impurities will bleed into the glass formed from the sand, and you can just hammer that off and have a much more pure steel.
This is way, way over my head, I was never a materials science nerd, so forgive me if you covered this and I missed it, but in my quick watch I don't think it was covered, and what I'm about to say might be pure internet legend.
I read once that the 'Historic Damascus' had a specific property/impurity/allow to it wherein it would cause the cutting edge of the blade to have 'microscopic serrations' and this was the science behind the legend. Sort of like that Roman volcanic dust concrete that was so amazing. Perhaps it was just legend?
Was this a part of your inquiry?
I'll watch this video later this afternoon but I'm forsure excited being I have a huge wootz collection lol also. Please tell me your thoughts on sld magic
SLD Magic looks fine for a "conventional" (non-PM) steel. I would prefer to spend more on a powder metallurgy steel. But I haven't tested it.
@KnifeSteelNerds iv heard it compared to d2 and 8cr. I'd love to know where you think it would sit on your chart. I'm guessing it'd have a 4/5 in toughness, 5 in edge retention and maybe 4/5 in stainless. Thank you for your time Larrin.
After watching the video. I'm pretty sure what I have would be considered nice
can you make a video on magnacut Damascus
While it is probably not possible to do “real” tests without a time machine. I am curious if you have data or opinions about historic wootz vs mono vs pattern welded steel qualities.
the original Damascus was called such because thats where Europeans believed it was from. I believe the ore( with trace amounts of vanadium) came from an area in Modern day Jordan. Original Damascus is a type of Wootz steel but not all wootz is Damascus. Pattern welded steel was called "Damascus"such because it first tried to imitate the natural pattern ( caused by the vanadium I believe) seen in true Damascus.
👍✌️⚒️
The ancients had no way to beat modern quality control.
With that said, I think Wootz steel swords were better than pattern welded steel swords at the time.
Hey Larin, do you know approximately how much nitrogen it takes to get the same hardening effect as .1% carbon?
knifesteelnerds.com/2022/08/27/why-nitrogen-knife-steels-are-soft/
@KnifeSteelNerds so about .5% nitrogen for every .3% of carbon is what I'm gathering from this.
So for the equivalent of .1% carbon it'd be about .165% nitrogen.
Does that sound correct?
@KnifeSteelNerds just finished watching the video in the article, seems to be a lot of nuance, whether its going into solution or not, whether it's used for forming nitrides or not ect.
Heard you mention the nitrogen in magnacut wasn't for hardness but didn't explain what it was for.
Did you add it to form chromium carbo nitrides or to improve the corrosion resistance?
As the TCC chart gets more crowded I wonder if a CATRA medium that’s less abrasive would be better so you can get larger variations between steels.
I think it does a reasonable job differentiating. It is probably more precise than even our controlled sharpening methods. So a more sensitive test wouldn’t necessarily provide better data.
I think we might just be making steels with very similar wear resistances generally.
Wear through soft abrasion is for me at least, the least common form of dulling so the test is only one aspect.
was from a mine in india?
You would think by the way in which people online talk about the quality of the steel produced in feudal times that the blacksmiths had magic powers.
Wootz is not the older of the two styles of forging. Pattern welding was done for centuries before metallurgists were able to reach the temperatures required to make Wootz. But calling pattern-welding Damascus came about long after Wootz steel became commonplace.
Only if it comes from the pattern-welding region of Angola.
FZ making knives on here does some pretty nice damascus knives
Heavy forge is another channel that is very good at this.
Heavy forge is Spencer Sandison
Finally someone using proper terminology for pattern welded steel and Damascus.
In this case it makes sense to have a distinction. In the previous test on damascus steel, he used that term instead of tripping over 'Pattern welded steel' every ten seconds. Nobody cares about 'well ackshually it's not really damascus' arguments.
@@nickhadfield3192 certain historians might just for accuracy sake. I agree that it's a silly level of nitpicking but some historians are extremely anal about terminology.
"It not WEEEEL Damaaascuss!!!!"
Its interestig you are seeking martensite. I weld on high alloy steels like a514 and hardox, and i have to preheat and keep the weld area hot for a time after welding explicitly to avoid martensite forming, bu letting the weldment cook slowly we know it retains the composition of the original alloy.
Rex-121 & Magnacut Wootz-Damascus
Go! You can do it!!
did you not watch the video? Wootz is a single material. the other "Damascus" is pattern welded, ie 2 materials. If it's 2 materials then it's not wootz.
What does the material have to do with the city damascus?
The steel was connected with the city Damascus due to trade, etc
My understanding of Wootz developed as traditional Damascus when pattern welded steels, and their popularity supplanted traditional Damascus in popular dialect as Damascus. I think I saw Al Pendry trying to recreate the types of steel ingots traded around Damascus in Syria during the Ottoman Empire. That kind of ingot steel became colloquially known as Damascus steel. Wootz seems to be some misinterpretation of an Indian word for ingot steel.
Interesting, I never heard the argument of “if it’s not made in Wootz Region, it’s not wootz.” Before. That seems much to simplistic. I would expect that Wootz is either the metal composition or method of making the steel, or both. Since we can’t analyze ancient examples we can answer half the question. But I always heard the method of manufacture was lost to time.
best modern wootz ive seen is from 'FZ Making Knives'
This kind of takes me back to a local community college prof swearing that tamahagane was superior to modern steels... methinks his references on this subject were largely chambara films.
Do the Ulfberht swords count as wootz, or are they just pattern welded "Damascus"?
They were pattern welded
This is always a grenade-like subject on steels, everyone running around screaming. In terms of a definition I think if its made as a traditional crucible and material content that's producing the properties its known for (visually and composition) then it comes into the bespoke, hand made steels prior to heavy industrialisation.
Which means I kind of lump it into the same sort of category as things like various hand made steels from SE-Asia and Japan or Bulat steel. Not being mean, its just a unique steel in every batch that will have some variations. As say compared to the industrial steels we use today which tend to be a little more rigorous in their composition... mostly!
After a recent dalliance into low-alloy, very low manganese content high carbon steels. They are really their own animal when it comes to heat treatment, my fast-oil was inconsistent and I switched over to Aqua-Quench which can deliver that 'near water' hardness (1.5-8.5 ratio) along with the living on the edge anxiety of having many hours of work crack and die. I've since switched over to using it on my 26C3 knives and probably won't go back to oil on them.
Heavy Forge has always done some really fantastic work so he's worth checking out for his artistry as well.
Spencer Sandison (Heavy Forge) has some nice-looking stuff!
that's what you call being mean? People are "really really smart," knife bros have a disproportionate share of it, and boy they love guzzling down some mythology and drowning in sentimentality. I just watched a 30 minute video with some guy rambling about how extremely "pure" wootz steel, then he said he could taste the difference between food cut with his wootz steel based on what grit the knife was sharpened to. 100,000 grit. You should go get a 100k grit stone for your kitchen knives. For sure. And they say these things with a straight face, take it very seriously. these are adults. But hey, half of adults in the US think the planet we're on isn't as old as Chinese pottery and 2/3 of the country can't read on a 5th grade level, so maybe that explains some of it.
@@user-xf4es7eh9y I mostly didn't want to be dismissive of the work that goes into the steel and I have a great deal of admiration for people taking that chain of responsibility for a product back to the very base-materials and production.
Unfortunately, we'll never really shed the industry of grifters and bullshit artists as they've always sort of been a part of basically any kind of sales since humanity started throwing rocks at each other. Some bloke would have swindled Grug the Primitive out of some berries for the finest throwing rock he'd hand crafted and guaranteed to cover all the dally thumping and bonking requirements about the cave.
There is an awful lot of bullshit in the steel industry though!
This was fantastic!! Thank you!
I think toughness is the main property that gave wootz its mythical status.
A sword that bends and springs back is far more valuable than a razor sharp edge.
I think a modern wootz would make an amazing knife steel not necessarily for its superior performance but for its beauty. Needs to be consistently heat treatable.
Definitely subscribing and can’t wait to see more!
Oh and I think wootz should be defined as a traditionally manufactured or primitive crucible steel. Must include carbide structures but I don’t think we need to be more specific than that.
I think the trouble is that the stories of wootz superiority come from a time where other bladed weapons maybe weren't as good, or were most often up against lower technology steels and so definitely were an improvement, and some of the stories may even be some early propaganda... Careful fighting people from this region because they have wootz which can do all these amazing things...
Also I think that to call a steel wootz, it must be made the same way, using the same materials as it was historically. However i think that the process could be used with modern technique but then should be renamed so as to distinguish it from the historic.
if you make the same exact thing but use more efficient methods, it’s still the same item.
I import wootz from Rajasthan india. Could I send you one to take a look at and test. Looks dendritic
I think wootz as a term is best used understood as a historical and archaeological term rather than a metallurgical one. It was a term used to describe blades from a specific period of time that when subjected to the processes of that time led to a characteristic visual and performance characteristic. Modern Wootz-like steel can be produced but it will never be the Real Deal.
This definition isn't very useful in the context of this video though and also provides space for reddit wootz supremacists to fortify their beliefs. In any other setting though it likely provides the most accuracy and utility.
Even if Wootz isn’t superior to modern steels I can still understand the romanticism of an ancient technique. Same justification as the interest in mechanical watches as opposed to much more accurate quartz watches. For me, I’ll take modern powder steels 😬.
I'm all for making the definition require the material be made in tiny shops.
By non-professional metalurgists.
Have you had the opportunity to see how damasteel is made?
I have 2 knives made from Bulat, Russian version of wootz steel. One of them is not so good, the maker claims 64 HRC which I don't believe. Would you be interested to test it? I will send it, free, it has no use for me... (I am in Boston area). The other one is at least made very well, Russian style hunting knife, sits on the display shelf for years, maybe one day I'd use it.
I loved this vid. Yes, all that stuff is Wootz. It is a banded struture not created through planned, human designed pattern welding. I always remind my students in electrical engineering that a "class D amplifier" and a "VFD" and a solar "inverter" are all the same thing with a maginally different design goal. They are all switched mode, 2/3 level DC/AC converters. One is controlled for linearity, one drives motors and one feeds the grid. The physics.....are the same.
Let’s see how much better this is than bloomery steel .
If Wootz is actually not very tough, why was it so highly prized as a material for warfare sword blades?
Because it was miles above wood, copper, bronze, cast iron, rocks, bone etc. Hence the mythos of it being akin to some superman type legends.
All I know is the steel is so beautiful
Last thing I saw/read was those cake ingots came from India or something. Might be mistaken
Would be interesting to compare wootz and modern steels to traditional folded bloomery steel, like tamahagane or European bloomery steel. My understanding is that they achieved lower carbon contents through the bloomery process plus very specific forging processes… but this may be inaccurate.
It would be interesting to see a comparison of results of testing non-wootz contemporary blades, to see if it was actually better than other steels of the time?
I don't know for sure, but I've heard of relatively recent studies that showed Viking blades to be much more complex than originally thought?
I've gptta ask, can any blade, sacred magical wootz included, slice a scarf in the air? The physics I know won't allow it.
Pendray filmed a TV special back in the 90s where they cut silk scarves in the air. And Schwarzer used a Pendray blade to do so in 1982 at a Kansas City knife show.
I've got a question about 'grain' of the steel, AKA if there's a curve in the steel, that's forged out, rather than grinded or CNC-machined, which one's stronger? How does, or how could this affect knifemaking?
There's a lot of debate about forged steel with that or just cutting a knife out from a steel blank, and I usually forge mine close to the dimensions anyway. And I mean pretty close sometimes.
I think the tip of the blade is important, that you cut it diagonally (backwards) and then forge it into the desired correct angle, which the 'grain' of the steel shifts to that direction. Correct me, if that's wrong though. I'd like to hear your insight about this.
knifesteelnerds.com/2019/07/22/forged-vs-stock-removal-knives/
😂😂 i just throw various scrap ends in a cup and melt it. Glad my ignant ass found this channel.
Is steel making perlite the same as in gardening? The gardening is some kind of volcanic rock pebbles that turn to dust when you push your fingers together.
Also I had no idea steel/blademakers and friends are so deep in the scientific studying of I guess metallurgy? I'm studying mechanical engineering and this is quite fascinating. I should know a lot about steels but let's face it it's barely introductory "there's a lot of steels and they have different properties, use S355 but know that cast iron and steel are different to manufacture".
Fair question... perlite and pearlite are not related.
Wootz Damascus is called so due to its area of origin. Not due to the partern. A Damascus blade was not inherintly paterned. Its like saying made in the USA. They are just now assosiated words