I haven't seen anyone mention the first article in Scientific American, back in the early '80's, about "Damascus" steel.
Developed in India, it was called wootz, and the best guess at the time was that it was made by stacking thin plates of wrought iron in a small crucible and filling it up with molten cast iron, then allowing it to cool. During the cooling process, excess carbon from the cast iron would migrate into the realtively carbon-free wrought iron and stay in solution after cooling to ambient temperature. The end result was a grade of steel with more dissolved carbon than could be obtained any other way.
European metalsmiths that took samples back home to try to duplicate the material were inevitably frustrated when they tried to forge the material at typical iron or steel temperatures, and the stuff just crumbled. It wasn't until the late 19th century, IIRC, that it was discovered that wootz had to be forged no higher than around 800-900 degrees (F, I think. I've slept since then.)
Shortly after publication, I had the privilege of hearing the one of the authors speak in Houston on the subject of Super-plastic, Ultra High Carbon Steels, as I think they were calling it. This was at an AMS meeting and was for metallurgists (and one medievalist geek) in the oil patch. What they had was a solution for which there was currently no problem...
The more recent article in SA suggests a reexamination of the chemistry with more sophisticated equipment. Although vanadium was a common alloying agent in higher alloys back in the 80s, the authors (and no, I don't remember their names for reasons already admitted) may have overlooked it, discounted it as an artifact or assumed the technology of the day precluded the adding of an obscure alloying agent. I doubt there was much five-nines pure Va on the shelves in that part of the world at the time. An accident of geology is another matter entirely.
Note that pattern welding, whether one welds a strip of steel on the end of a plane iron or chisel, or welds and folds, welds and folds until the material is all but homogenous, as in Japan and to a lesser degree in the Scandinavian countries...that's a different animal altogether.
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Easy. When we find out where they live.
I haven't seen anyone mention the first article in Scientific American, back in the early '80's, about "Damascus" steel.
Developed in India, it was called wootz, and the best guess at the time was that it was made by stacking thin plates of wrought iron in a small crucible and filling it up with molten cast iron, then allowing it to cool. During the cooling process, excess carbon from the cast iron would migrate into the realtively carbon-free wrought iron and stay in solution after cooling to ambient temperature. The end result was a grade of steel with more dissolved carbon than could be obtained any other way.
European metalsmiths that took samples back home to try to duplicate the material were inevitably frustrated when they tried to forge the material at typical iron or steel temperatures, and the stuff just crumbled. It wasn't until the late 19th century, IIRC, that it was discovered that wootz had to be forged no higher than around 800-900 degrees (F, I think. I've slept since then.)
Shortly after publication, I had the privilege of hearing the one of the authors speak in Houston on the subject of Super-plastic, Ultra High Carbon Steels, as I think they were calling it. This was at an AMS meeting and was for metallurgists (and one medievalist geek) in the oil patch. What they had was a solution for which there was currently no problem...
The more recent article in SA suggests a reexamination of the chemistry with more sophisticated equipment. Although vanadium was a common alloying agent in higher alloys back in the 80s, the authors (and no, I don't remember their names for reasons already admitted) may have overlooked it, discounted it as an artifact or assumed the technology of the day precluded the adding of an obscure alloying agent. I doubt there was much five-nines pure Va on the shelves in that part of the world at the time. An accident of geology is another matter entirely.
Note that pattern welding, whether one welds a strip of steel on the end of a plane iron or chisel, or welds and folds, welds and folds until the material is all but homogenous, as in Japan and to a lesser degree in the Scandinavian countries...that's a different animal altogether.