Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

ariel · 8th March 2016, 02:52 AM

Richard,
Thanks for the detailed response.
I did not imply that every ( or any) village blacksmith was making blades from crucible ingots he himself produced in his backyard.

Your question was why so many blades were made of wootz, and that is exactly what I tried to address.

While European steel makers were constantly switching from one technology to another, obtaining more and more of better and cheaper steel faster and faster with progressively decreasing human effort, India and other Eastern societies never reached industrial scale of steel manufacture till the second half of 19 century when the Brits introduced modern technologies there. The "natives" relied on the tried and true cheap and universally-available crucible technology that did not require huge investments in equipment. That could have been done in workshops attached to Royal courts or even in smaller establishments.

Thus, the major portion of steel they produced was crucible steel, and a good portion of it was real wootz.

In a way ( just IMHO) mass production of wootz blades was a pure serendipity: crucible steel was abundant and at the same time beautiful, so making blades out of it was like killing two birds with one stone. In a way, that was similar to the story with bloomery steel: the process was indescribably primitive, resulting in inhomogeneous lump of steel with different carbon content in different areas . But sorting out these small lumps, forging them together and manipulating them produced pattern welded blades in Europe and Nihon-to in Japan.

And people say it is impossible to make a silk purse out of pig's ear :-)))

And you have honestly and beautifully elucidated the importance of uninterrupted tradition: you have been making wootz for "only" 15-17 years and learned the process from scratch. The "natives" were doing it for hundreds of years and transmitting the combined knowledge to their apprentices. A loss of only one generation would throw the whole level of expertise back to the beginning. And that, together with other external factors you have mentioned, killed the whole tradition.

8th March 2016, 02:52 AM	#205
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	Richard, Thanks for the detailed response. I did not imply that every ( or any) village blacksmith was making blades from crucible ingots he himself produced in his backyard. Your question was why so many blades were made of wootz, and that is exactly what I tried to address. While European steel makers were constantly switching from one technology to another, obtaining more and more of better and cheaper steel faster and faster with progressively decreasing human effort, India and other Eastern societies never reached industrial scale of steel manufacture till the second half of 19 century when the Brits introduced modern technologies there. The "natives" relied on the tried and true cheap and universally-available crucible technology that did not require huge investments in equipment. That could have been done in workshops attached to Royal courts or even in smaller establishments. Thus, the major portion of steel they produced was crucible steel, and a good portion of it was real wootz. In a way ( just IMHO) mass production of wootz blades was a pure serendipity: crucible steel was abundant and at the same time beautiful, so making blades out of it was like killing two birds with one stone. In a way, that was similar to the story with bloomery steel: the process was indescribably primitive, resulting in inhomogeneous lump of steel with different carbon content in different areas . But sorting out these small lumps, forging them together and manipulating them produced pattern welded blades in Europe and Nihon-to in Japan. And people say it is impossible to make a silk purse out of pig's ear :-))) And you have honestly and beautifully elucidated the importance of uninterrupted tradition: you have been making wootz for "only" 15-17 years and learned the process from scratch. The "natives" were doing it for hundreds of years and transmitting the combined knowledge to their apprentices. A loss of only one generation would throw the whole level of expertise back to the beginning. And that, together with other external factors you have mentioned, killed the whole tradition. Last edited by ariel; 8th March 2016 at 11:52 AM.