Ingots

[Mare Rosu]

Gt
You make a good point; I was trying to say the same thing.

"A most interesting point is that one of the wootz blades,( sword #8 ) long identified as wootz by the museum as well as others is in fact not wootz at all, according to Verhoeven. Indicating "eye ball" testing of the pattern is NOT the the way to tell wootz from non wootz.."

Explaining further;
Just because a blade has a wootz like pattern does not make it wootz, case in point a "mill ball" made into a blade by Jeff Pringle (above) looks good, with a wootz like pattern, but is it wootz? Jeff say it is not and he made it.
Oriental Arms also made a blade, from a round ball ingot, with a woots like pattern and Oriental Arms said it is wootz.

Blade #8 was wootz until Verhoeven tested it to HIS standard and declared it was not wootz. Until then most folks said it was wootz and some even today still do.

This all begs the question; what is wootz? Surely not just the pattern.
their is more to it than what the eye can see. That leaves only testing to make the case is it wootz? or non wootz?
In my opinion that was what Verhoeven, Pendray and others was trying to establish, a base line of testing to use to determine " true wootz" from all the look a likes.

Let's not forget the question, that Jens asked when he started this thread, basically where did all these round ingots, the round balls so called mill ball come from and are they woots or not?

There will always be a difference of opinion on most subjects, so a lively discussion here is a good way to establish at least some sort of base line for wootz, at least to most of the folks here on the forum satisfaction.

If one has a blade that he bought as woots and likes it, who is to say to him it is not wootz. He may be disillusioned about it but it is his and he is happy with it, who cares?

I have PM Dr Ann Feuerbach for her help.
Gene

[Jens Nordlunde]

I find the latest development very interesting, and would like to ask those of you who work with the metal, and who sometimes get it tested a question.

Is the way Verhoeven and Pendray tests the metal the same in every laboratory, or does each laboratory have their own tests?

[Jeff Pringle]

The interesting thing about sword 8 to me is that it looks like sham wootz, the banding seems similar in certain significant respects – my theory is that sham is a (comparatively) low carbon pattern, and if more sham blades were tested they would bear this out. But most of the tested blades are of the Persian or Indian ultra high carbon patterns.
Jens, there are several standard methods of determining alloy content, the Verhoeven paper mentions using emission spectroscopy, which is the commonest method, my lab does that as well. They call it OES for ‘optical emission spectroscopy’.
Another way to look at the info in Gene’s previous post is in terms of ranges, a later Verhoeven paper summarizes the previously published data on wootz thusly:
C 1.0-1.87%
Mn 0.005-0.014%
Si 0.005-0.11%
S 0.007-0.038%
P 0.026-0.206%
Cu 0.03-0.18%
Cr <0.01%
Ni 0.008-0.07%

So if one were to analyze some metal and find it far outside these ranges (especially if it was elements other than carbon which is fairly easy to move) there would have to be some other good reason (like solid provenance) to include it in the wootz pile, sword 8 not withstanding. The old steel was a very clean steel, not easy to replicate in modern industrial practice.

[Jens Nordlunde]

Jeff, thank you for your explanation.

It’s a heavy subject when you are not used to it. I also tried to Google on the subject ‘Mill balls’ and I got 46800 links – enough to satisfy everyone.