Chris Evans: thank you very, I appreciate your words, however wootz is not my specialty so here I am not a scholar.
Because of this topic I have consulted my library extensively in the past two months, with just a single conclusion - hell knows.
First of all there were collosal number of experiments performed on wootz blades starting with XIXth century (Moser collection, russian cavalry experiment, the most recent experiments by Tavadze and so on), with exactly opposite conclusions. In order to keep it "in bay" I would just address the russian part. all said below is my personal opinion.
Stage I - during russian-caucasian and russian-ottoman conflicts of early XIXthe century general Patto writes that the enemy's yataghans and shashkas are better than russian weapons. Assumption is made by the ministry of finance that this superiority is due to crucible damascus (wanted to say wootz) nature of the swords. Massive expeditions are mounted in all directions (central asia, caucasus, west) to find the secret.
Stage II - the expidition send to Caucasus collects various techniques and comes to a conclusion that neither shashkas nor yataghans are made of crucible damascus (too long, "crud" from now on), but rather - from mechanical one. Report is presented to the minister of Finance, supervising the effort. In the same time in Zlatoust georgian Revaz makes wootz weapons repeating indian patterns, but no one can reproduce his results by using his technique, so he is declared to be a crook.
Stage III Anosov publishes his techniques of "bulatization". Interesting notes:
1. He claims historical attribution of super-powers to bulat based on the literature (prince Igor) which never contained "bulat" in the original, the term was used in later translations.
2. He makes a few blades, repeating the "best" pattern of indian and khorasani swords, with very good cutting properties. The problem - the blades do not nearly match the chemical decomposition of indian blades they are compared with.
3. No one is able to reproduce any of his processes after Anosov's death (Chernov and others).
Stage IV - persian bulat blades completely fail the russian army test on bending. As a results all persian blades are given special standards, 3-4 times "lighter" than for other blades (i.e. 1/13th of a "line" rather than 1/4th of a "line" bending angle to be used in testing).
Stage V. Russian government nearly completely abandons the research.
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