Gene, Jonathan and Jim,
Thank you for your posts. I have only seen ingots/mill balls on pictures, so I am not the right one to answer what exactly they look like, so I think Gene should ask Ann what it is. I have however seen the mill balls described like this. “If it has a spherical, or nearly so, form, have a smooth surface then it is very unlikely that it is an ingot.”
If you go to the link above and read post 37 Jeff Pringle gives some of the answer. Here is a short quote, “All steels solidify with a dendritic structure, not just wootz, so that is irrelevant but often comes up because people first hear of crystalline dendrites in steel via wootz.”
Jim, I don’t know what a test would cost, the only thing I have heard is, that it takes some hours of work, so it may be as expensive as the item in question.
Jens
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