Wootz up Doc'
Hey Fernando, thank-you for that link: I was able to absorb about 50% of it before my brain imploded. The metallurgy involved in blade-making is simply too vast to take on board without devoting full-time to it.
What is apparent is that not only was Damascus steel often brittle but so was Wootz.
Solingen blades as well as Toledo and Italian were not... but English blades were never acceptable until much, much later.
As late as 1705, a local businessman - Cotesworth - was running the Shotley Bridge works, and he tried to fill a large government order by buying from English smith John Saunthorp who was selling at a shilling a dozen cheaper. Complaints immediately rolled in, with the expression: "they stand like lead!"
Not long after that, there was an exodus of workers from Shotley Bridge to Birmingham and Sheffield; plus, at least two local landowners had apprenticed sons to the Germans; two of their descendants - Ernie and Walter Johnson - were working for Mole in Birmingham who actually loaned them to Wilkinson in 1884.
So by the first quarter of the 1700s the secrets were well and truly spread amongst English smiths in Birmingham and quality accordingly enhanced.
Without accounting for Spain and Italy I can definitely declare that the Germans were possessed of secrets that made them world leaders. Those secrets remained hidden until about 1730.
Does anybody now know what those secrets were?
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