05-02-2017, 11:35 AM
Mr. Jan, "wootz" steel is somewhat of an enigma. I've always kept an eye out for information, but everything I've seen is pretty shaky. I don't know if anyone has really figured it out.
Professor Verhoeven *might* have figured something out. He surely tried, as have countless others, since wootz is said to be almost 2000 years old. If it was as superior as they say, basically every 'smith in the old world would have been trying to recreate it. Indeed, this goes on to this day.
I've heard a lot about it, but I don't know if anyone has truly figured it out. Many say they have, but I don't know of anyone who has undoubtedly created a superior blade, as wootz has been described.
To the best of my knowledge, wootz steel probably came from a unique iron ore deposit in some mid-eastern country that supplied the Persians, from where it's said to have originated. It's likely that this source was depleted by 1700 AD, and the process for creating it was lost to humanity.
Again, it's not that people haven't tried reproducing it, I just haven't heard of anyone making steel with the same banding as wootz, with the same superior performance characteristics.
Mr. Ed Fowler has always been a huge fan of wootz, and he's spent many decades trying to get wootz out of 52100. Sometimes he gets close to something that looks it, which is about what anyone else has done. He hasn't been able to beat the performance of regular 52100, but if you had 52100, 2000 years ago, I'm sure it would have been spectacularly high performance steel.
Professor Verhoeven *might* have figured something out. He surely tried, as have countless others, since wootz is said to be almost 2000 years old. If it was as superior as they say, basically every 'smith in the old world would have been trying to recreate it. Indeed, this goes on to this day.
I've heard a lot about it, but I don't know if anyone has truly figured it out. Many say they have, but I don't know of anyone who has undoubtedly created a superior blade, as wootz has been described.
To the best of my knowledge, wootz steel probably came from a unique iron ore deposit in some mid-eastern country that supplied the Persians, from where it's said to have originated. It's likely that this source was depleted by 1700 AD, and the process for creating it was lost to humanity.
Again, it's not that people haven't tried reproducing it, I just haven't heard of anyone making steel with the same banding as wootz, with the same superior performance characteristics.
Mr. Ed Fowler has always been a huge fan of wootz, and he's spent many decades trying to get wootz out of 52100. Sometimes he gets close to something that looks it, which is about what anyone else has done. He hasn't been able to beat the performance of regular 52100, but if you had 52100, 2000 years ago, I'm sure it would have been spectacularly high performance steel.