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Meaning that you are quite sure, the ingot you have is wootz – am I right?
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Meaning I make crucible steel (some of which is wootz) from iron ore, so I don’t need to use ‘found’ dendritic steel shot.
Some of the steel I’ve made has had professional lab work done, so I can be definite on the wootz, but I also get metal that is more ‘high carbon steel,’ and metal that is more ‘cast iron.’
There’s a slight problem that perhaps very few people care about, which is that until very recently, ‘wootz’ meant ‘that steel they used to make them swords out of’; but now, it’s changing as we begin to gain a practical understanding of the material and a better understanding of it’s history.
My definition of ‘wootz’ is: a simple carbon steel with over ~1.3% carbon, forged in such a way as to have banded carbide structures. (Others have slightly different definitions). This takes into account that we understand how to make wootz now, so the old definition is no longer sufficient. The classic ‘wootz’ pattern (how those old swords look) can be made from almost any dendritic steel, and perhaps in some cases from regular hi-carbon barstock, but with those materials the bands are not always saturated with iron carbides.
It is an artificial definition, though – they just made steel into swords back then, so even some period pieces don’t match that – everyone just uses the word wootz when referring to blades that look like this:
regardless of alloy content, and now also to items that have the precursor structure, dendrites. A contemporary definition of wootz for those of us who make it is just now starting to be possible, so there’s going to be a bunch of ‘yes it’s wootz’, ‘no it’s not’ going on, and random lumps of cast mystery steel may or may not be included when it all shakes out.
If I were to acquire (ethically, Ann!) a genuine old wootz cake, the last thing I would do is forge it, that’d be a terrible thing to do to such a wonderful artifact of pre-industrial technology!
And, of course, any misrepresentation of items as either old or new wootz, ingot or blade, confuses the situation and is BAD
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If this is so, why are so many fooled?
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Are so many fooled? I don’t know that that is the case, there can’t be all that many people interested in wootz ingots, can there?
But there are only a couple reference works with pictures of the original ingots out there, so unless you are melting steel in your back yard and becoming that familiar with the external morphology & metallography of steel ingots, all you really have to go on is the seller’s promise.
BTW: Nice cross section photo of an old Indian wootz ingot in “The History of Metallography” C.S. Smith, ISBN 0-262-69120-5, as well as a discussion of wootz’s importance to our understanding of the structure of metals.
The first contemporary ‘what is wootz’ article, from a technical perspective:
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM...even-9809.html
(note how one of the blades discussed is too low in carbon to count (to the authors) as wootz, but another has just 1% and is included – I’d think that one was just hi carbon crucible steel - but they all have some pattern I’d call wootzy)