Picture shows 18th­century Persian­forged sword made from Damascus.Crucible steels, such as wootz steeland Damascus steel, exhibit uniquebanding patterns because of theintermixed ferrite and cementitealloys in the steel

Wootz steelFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wootz steel is a crucible steel characterized by a pattern ofbands, which are formed by sheets of micro carbides within atempered martensite or pearlite matrix in higher carbon steel, orby ferrite and pearlite banding in lower carbon steels. It is thepioneering steel alloy matrix developed in South India in thesixth century BC and exported globally. It was also known in theancient world by many different names including Wootz, Ukku,Hindwani and Seric Iron.

Contents

1 History1.1 Development of modern metallurgy

2 Characteristics3 Reproduction research4 See also5 References6 Further reading7 External links

History

The Wootz steel originated in South India.[1][2] There are several ancient Tamil, Greek, Chinese andRoman literary references to high carbon Indian steel since the time of Alexander's India campaign. Thecrucible steel production process started in the sixth century BC, at production sites of Kodumanal inTamil Nadu, Golconda in Telangana, Karnataka and Sri Lanka and exported globally; the Tamils of theChera Dynasty producing what was termed the finest steel in the world, i.e. Seric Iron to the Romans,Egyptians, Chinese and Arabs by 500 BC.[3][4][5] The steel was exported as cakes of steely iron thatcame to be known as "Wootz."[6]

The Tamilakam method was to heat black magnetite ore in the presence of carbon in a sealed claycrucible inside a charcoal furnace. An alternative was to smelt the ore first to give wrought iron, thenheated and hammered to be rid of slag. The carbon source was bamboo and leaves from plants such asAvārai.[6][7] The Chinese and locals in Sri Lanka adopted the production methods of creating Wootz steelfrom the Chera Tamils by the 5th century BC.[8][9] In Sri Lanka, this early steel­making methodemployed a unique wind furnace, driven by the monsoon winds, capable of producing high­carbon steeland production sites from antiquity have emerged, in places such as Anuradhapura, Tissamaharama andSamanalawewa, as well as imported artifacts of ancient iron and steel from Kodumanal. A 200 BC Tamiltrade guild in Tissamaharama, in the South East of Sri Lanka, brought with them some of the oldest ironand steel artifacts and production processes to the island from the classical period.[10][11][12][13] TheArabs introduced the South Indian/Sri Lankan wootz steel to Damascus, where an industry developedfor making weapons of this steel. The 12th century Arab traveler Edrisi mentioned the "Hinduwani" orIndian steel as the best in the world.[1]

Another sign of its reputation is seen in a Persian phrase – to give an "Indian answer", meaning "a cutwith an Indian sword."[14] Wootz steel was widely exported and traded throughout ancient Europe andthe Arab world, and became particularly famous in the Middle East.[14]

Development of modern metallurgy

From the 17th century onwards, several European travelers observed the steel manufacturing in SouthIndia, at Mysore, Malabar and Golconda. The word "wootz" appears to have originated as amistranscription of wook, an anglicised version of ukku, the word for steel in the Kannadalanguage.[15][16] According to one theory, the word ukku is based on the meaning "melt, dissolve"; otherDravidian languages have similar sounding words for steel. The Tamil language root word for the alloyis urukku.[17] Another theory says that the word is a variation of uchcha or ucha ("superior"). WhenBenjamin Heyne inspected the Indian steel in Ceded Districts and other Kannada­speaking areas, he wasinformed that the steel was ucha kabbina ("superior iron"), also known as ukku tundu in Mysore.[18][19]

Legends of wootz steel and Damascus swords aroused the curiosity of the European scientificcommunity from the 17th to the 19th Century. The use of high carbon alloys was not known in Europepreviously and thus the research into wootz steel played an important role in the development of modernEnglish, French and Russian metallurgy.[20]

In 1790, samples of wootz steel were received by Sir Joseph Banks, President of the British Royalsociety, sent by Helenus Scott. These samples were subjected to scientific examination and analysis byseveral experts.[21][22][23]

Specimens of daggers and other weapons were sent by the Rajahs of India to the International Exhibitionof 1851 and 1862. Though the arms of the swords were beautifully decorated and jeweled, they weremost highly prized for the quality of their steel. The swords of the Sikhs were said to bear bending andcrumpling, and yet be fine and sharp.[14]

Characteristics

Wootz is characterized by a pattern caused by bands of clustered Fe3C particles made ofmicrosegregation of low levels of carbide­forming elements.[24] There is a possibility of an abundance ofultrahard metallic carbides in the steel matrix precipitating out in bands. Wootz swords, especiallyDamascus blades, were renowned for their sharpness and toughness.

Steel manufactured in Kutch particularly enjoyed a widespread reputation, similar to those manufacturedat Glasgow and Sheffield.[14]

The techniques for its making died out around 1700. According to Sir Richard Burton,[7] the Britishprohibited the trade in 1866:

About a pound weight of malleable iron, made from magnetic ore, is placed, minutelybroken and moistened, in a crucible of refractory clay, together with finely chopped piecesof wood Cassia auriculata. It is packed without flux. The open pots are then covered withthe green leaves of the Asclepias gigantea or the Convolvulus lanifolius, and the tops arecoated over with wet clay, which is sun­dried to hardness. Charcoal will not do as asubstitute for the green twigs. Some two dozen of these cupels or crucibles are disposed

archways at the bottom of a furnace, whose blast is managed with bellows of bullock's hide.The fuel is composed mostly of charcoal and of sun­dried brattis or cow­chips. After two orthree hours' smelting the cooled crucibles are broken up, when the regulus appears in theshape and size of half an egg. According to Tavernier, the best buttons from about Golcondawere as large as a halfpenny roll, and sufficed to make two Sword­blades. These "cops" areconverted into bars by exposure for several hours to a charcoal fire not hot enough to meltthem. They are then turned over before the blast, and thus the too highly carburised steel isoxidised.

According to Professor Oldham, "Wootz" is also worked in the Damudah Valley, atBirbhum, Dyucha, Narayanpur, Damrah, and Goanpiir. In 1852 some thirty furnaces atDyucha reduced the ore to kachhd or pig­iron, small blooms from Catalan forges; as manymore converted it to steel, prepared in furnaces of different kind. The work was done bydifferent castes; the Muslims laboured at the rude metal, the Hindu preferred the refiningwork. I have read that anciently a large quantity of Wootz found its way westward viaPeshawar.

When last visiting (April 19, 1876) the Mahabaleshwar Hills near Bombay, I had thepleasure to meet Mr. Joyner, C.E., and with his assistance made personal inquiries into theprocess. The whole of the Sayhddri range (Western Ghats), and especially the great­Might­of­Shiva mountains, had for many ages supplied Persia with the best steel. Our Government,since 1866, forbade the industry, as it threatened the highlands with disforesting. The orewas worked by the Hill­tribes, of whom the principal are the Dhdnwars, Dravidians nowspeaking Hindustani. Only the brickwork of their many raised furnaces remained. For fuelthey preferred the Jumbul­wood, and the Anjan or iron­wood. They packed the iron andfourteen pounds of charcoal in layers and, after two hours of bellows­working, the metalflowed into the forms. The Kurs' (bloom), five inches in diameter by two and a half deep,was then beaten into tiles or plates. The matrix resembled the Brazilian, a poor yellow­brown limonite striping the mud­coloured clay; and actual testing disproved the commonidea that the "watering" of the surface is found in the metal. The Jauhar, ("jewel" orribboning) of the so­called Damascus blade was produced artificially, mostly by drawingout the steel into thin ribbons which were piled and welded by the hammer. Oral tradition inIndia maintains that a small piece of either white or black hematite (or old wootz) had to beincluded in each melt, and that a minimum of these elements must be present in the steel forthe proper segregation of the micro carbides to take place.

Reproduction research

Russian metallurgist Pavel Petrovich Anosov (see Bulat steel) was able to reproduce ancient Wootz steelwith almost all its properties and the steel he created was very similar to traditional Wootz. Hedocumented four different methods of producing Wootz steel that exhibited traditional patterns. He diedbefore he could fully document and publish his research. Dr. Oleg Sherby and Dr. Jeff Wadsworth andLawrence Livermore National Laboratory have all done research, attempting to create steels withcharacteristics similar to Wootz, but without success. J.D Verhoeven and Al Pendray reconstructedmethods of production, proved the role of impurities of ore in the pattern creation, and reproducedWootz steel with patterns microscopically and visually identical to one of the ancient blade patterns.There are other smiths who are now consistently producing Wootz steel blades identical to the oldpatterns.

One must remember while looking at reproduction efforts that Wootz was made over nearly a 2000­yearperiod (the oldest sword samples date to around 200 AD) and that the methods of production of ingots,the ingredients, and the methods of forging varied from one area to the next. Some Wootz bladesdisplayed a pattern, while some did not. Heat treating was quite different from forging, and there weremany different patterns which were created by the various smiths who spanned from China toScandinavia.

It is easy to say that Wootz/Pulad/Bulat/Hindwani is one pattern and one method with one bladecharacteristic, but that is not a correct representation of the blades that survive today or the accounts ofwitnessed methods from antiquity. Not all of the secrets of Wootz have been discovered, but it hasessentially been recreated by Anosov, Pendray and many smiths in the 20th century. Nonetheless,research continues.

See also

Damascus steelIron pillar of DelhiPattern welding

References1. Sharada Srinivasan; Srinivasa Ranganathan (2004). India's Legendary Wootz Steel: An Advanced Material ofthe Ancient World. National Institute of Advanced Studies. OCLC 82439861.

2. Gerald W. R. Ward. The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques in Art. pp.3803. Sharada Srinivasan (1994) Wootz crucible steel: a newly discovered production site in South India Papersfrom the Institute of Archaeology 5(1994) 49­59

4. Herbert Henery Coghlan. (1977). Notes on prehistoric and early iron in the Old World. pp 99­1005. B. Sasisekharan (1999).TECHNOLOGY OF IRON AND STEEL IN KODUMANAL­(http://www.new1.dli.ernet.in/data1/upload/insa/INSA_1/20005b66_263.pdf)

6. Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson (1998). The Sword in Anglo­Saxon England: Its Archaeology and Literature.Boydell & Brewer Ltd. pp. 20–. ISBN 978­0­85115­716­0.

7. Burton, Sir Richard Francis (1884). The Book of the Sword. Internet archive: Chatto and Windus. p. 111.ISBN 1605204366.

8. Needham, Volume 4, Part 1, p. 282.9. Manning, Charlotte Speir. "Ancient and Medieval India. Volume 2". ISBN 9780543929433.10. Hobbies ­ Volume 68, Issue 5 ­ Page 45. Lghtner Publishing Company (1963)11. Mahathevan, Iravatham (24 June 2010). "An epigraphic perspective on the antiquity of Tamil". The Hindu

(The Hindu Group). Retrieved 31 October 2010.12. Ragupathy, P (28 June 2010). "Tissamaharama potsherd evidences ordinary early Tamils among population".

Tamilnet (Tamilnet). Retrieved 31 October 2010.13. http://www.archaeology.lk/http:/www.archaeology.lk/wp­content/uploads/2011/02/Dinithi­Volume­1­Issue­

4.pdf14. Manning, Charlotte Speir. "Ancient and Mediæval India. Volume 2". ISBN 9780543929433.15. Roddam Narasimha; J Srinivasan; S K Biswas (6 December 2003). The Dynamics of Technology: Creation

and Diffusion of Skills and Knowledge. SAGE Publications. pp. 135–. ISBN 978­0­7619­9670­5.16. Michael Faraday, as quoted by Peter Day, The Philosopher's Tree, p. 108, ISBN 0­7503­0571­117. Girija Pande and Jan af Geijerstam (2002). Tradition and innovation in the history of iron making: an Indo­

European perspective. Pahar Parikarma. p. 45. ISBN 978­81­86246­19­1.18. Edward Balfour (1885). The Cyclopædia of India and of Eastern and Southern Asia, Commercial Industrial,

and Scientific: Products of the Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal Kingdoms, Useful Arts and Manufactures.Bernard Quaritch. pp. 1092–.

19. James Stephen Jeans (1880). Steel: Its History, Manufacture, Properties and Uses. E. & F.N. Spon. p. 294.20. Cyril Stanley Smith (1 September 2012). A History of Metallography: The Development of Ideas on the

Structure of Metals Before 1890. Literary Licensing, LLC. ISBN 978­1­258­47336­5.

Further reading

Srinivasan, Sharada Wootz crucible steel: a newly discovered production site in South India.Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 5 (1994), pp. 49–61.Srinivasan, S. and Griffiths, D. South Indian wootz: evidence for high­carbon steel from cruciblesfrom a newly identified site and preliminary comparisons with related finds. Material Issues in Artand Archaeology­V, Materials Research Society Symposium Proceedings Series Vol. 462.Hansson 2002, p 81 "Den skapande människan"urukku ­ from the Tamil Lexicon, University of Madras (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi­bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.1:1:3912.tamillex)History and Characteristics of Wootz Steel in India and Abroad. (Indian Journal of History ofScience; vol. 42, no. 3; September 2007). New Delhi: Indian National Science Academy, 2007.Srinivasan, Sharada & Ranganathan, Srinivasan India's Legendary Wootz Steel: an advancedmaterial of the ancient world. Bangalore: National Institute of Advanced Studies and IndianInstitute of Science, 2004.J.D. Verhoeven, "The Mystery of Damascus Blades", Scientific American, pp. 74–79, January2001

External links

The key role of impurities in ancient Damascus steel blades(http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9809/Verhoeven­9809.html)Nanotubes present in Damascus Blades (http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061113/full/061113­11.html)Wootz related items (http://www.wootz.co)Experiments documented (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvRqYE0ba­A) on YouTube

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21. Pearson, G. (1 January 1795). "Experiments and Observations to Investigate the Nature of a Kind of Steel,Manufactured at Bombay, and There Called Wootz: With Remarks on the Properties and Composition of theDifferent States of Iron. By George Pearson, M. D. F. R. S.". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Societyof London 85 (0): 322–346. doi:10.1098/rstl.1795.0020. JSTOR 106960.

22. Mushet, D. (1 January 1805). "Experiments on Wootz". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society ofLondon 95 (0): 163–175. doi:10.1098/rstl.1805.0010. JSTOR 107164.

23. Robert Hadfield, A Research on Faraday's "Steel and Alloys", Philosophical Transactions of the RoyalSociety of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical or Physical Character Vol. 230, (1932),pp. 221­292, at p. 225. Published by: The Royal Society. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/91231

24. Verhoeven, J.D.; Pendray, A.H.; Dauksch, W.E. (September 1998). "The Key Role of Impurities in AncientDamascus Steel Blades". Journal of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society. Archived from the original on2015­02­09.