Thread: Ingots
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Old 1st March 2010, 04:44 PM   #15
Oriental-Arms
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Haifa, Israel
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Default Wootz or Mill balls, open questions (cont.).

The Facts:
1)These balls are definitely coming from India. They are supposedly coming from an old armory but I can not substantiate it.
2) In the pile of several tenth balls that I have seen, many were of quite a symmetrical shape, few of non regular shape and all has the depression on one side.

The findings:
1) These balls were cast in a crucible. The depression and the “pipe” seen on the cut ball is very typical to what happens in the cooling process in the crucible.[br]

2) It is hard steel. We did not measured the exact hardness but Giora estimate it to be (after hardening) around 60

3) The pattern is clear and very similar to what we have seen on Old Indian wootz blades.

The open questions:
1) To start with, why to use cast steel ball for milling? It is far more common to use white cast iron for this task. It has a harder shell and it is definitely cheaper. The milling process require hundreds of balls, so all were cast each in a separate crucible ?? It is quite expensive.
2) In the early 20th C. (the age suggested in a previous thread for this balls) perfect shape balls were easily available, from a variety of materials and sizes. So again why to use crucible cast steel balls?
3) After a short while in the drum the mill balls will definitely get a non regular shape (but will never have the depressions we see here). In the pile of balls I have seen most of the balls had a perfect symmetrical shape. Does this mean that they are all un-used? Below is a photo of two mill balls I personally collected from an abandoned lime stone quarry (abandoned in the 50th). They are made of cast white iron and has the typical shape after use

[br]
4) The chemical composition of the balls may be a key to answer many of the questions. I am planning to do it and I will gladly report further findings

p.s: I had a private correspondence with Jeff Pringle regarding this issue. We are not in agreement and I hope he will post here his opinion.
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