The history of Wootz is almost as old as steel itself so we cannot do an exhaustive history of the material here. Unlike pattern-welded Damascus, Wootz gets its pattern through alloying and thermal cycling. It is not more than one steel forge welded together, but a single material. The history of its “rediscovery” is also very interesting. I previously reviewed Dr. John Verhoeven’s book Damascus Steel Swords: Solving the Mystery of How to Make Them, and the review also has a link to an interesting YouTube video on the same subject. I have also covered studies by Dr. Verhoeven in this article on Damascus myths, and studies on Wootz by Juha Perttula in this article. More about their studies is covered in my book Knife Engineering, and more on the history of Wootz and its rediscovery is in my book The Story of Knife Steel.
My layman’s understanding is that this was the case. Dr. Larrin does a good job explaining why.
Read the while thing at KnifeSteelNerds.com, or watch the video…
Read the full article here