I hope our forum smiths do chime in on this. If you polish and etch an old wootz cake/ingot you see the pattern. No forging required. Wootz steel was indeed very high carbon content. I was not aware however that a crystalline structure could be induced through annealing. Grain size yes, but not the dendritic carbide structure.
Ariel I don't see the converting of wootz into a blade being still a mistery. Lots of smiths i Russia and the US and elsewhere do so now with great results
