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  #1  
Old 04-02-2001, 12:59 AM
moldy Jim
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O6 wootz(ed)


Taikng my lead from Achim, I decided to play with some different off the shelf steel and see what I could do to give them a wootz type pattern grain.

According to what I have read, one of the biggest factors in creating wootz is the repeated heat cycling of the material. Bringing the steel up to slightly below the critical point and allowing it to cool down slowly causes the dendritic structure to grow and become more pronounced.
All the references and Achim's experience prove for over 50 cycles to achieve the proper structure.

Due to this fact I wanted to cycle the steels temperature as many times as possible during the week, and since
we have a programmable HT furnace at work I could set it up and run it while I was working for the company. (It helps to have a boss who is easy to get along with.)

Not NT, but then I don't have lots of free time so I figured for my first try I'd do it this way.

D2 looked like a good subject at first, had some nice qualities and was showing some interesting grain structure.
But after forging out a small blade and hardening it, most of the nice grain structure broke up into smaller segments.
Oh well, I'll try it again. Still it may just be it needs a different temp/hardening technique to work right. It won't be true wootz but it should give a nice texture.

O6 looks like a winner though!
In spite of not having any Vanadium, the Molybdenum looks like it did the trick.
Achim suggested I try the O6 straight and it did seem to work.
I still think I'll try mixing W1/W2, and O6 to match the ancient alloy sometime. I just need to get some high carbon W2, I have the others.

The little blade I made today has a nice subtle woodlike grain when sanded, and it becomes obvious when etched with hot vinegar. Not at all like pattern welded steel, the grain shows the forging flow very well.

Next time I'll try to do a ladder pattern grain and see what happens.

The edge is NASTY sharp!

It sliced a nice little corner out of the tip of my finger while I was wiping the etching acid crud off, went thru the paper towel and my finger real easy.
And that was before I sharpened it!

I'll see if I can get a pic to post tomorrow.

Very exciting to me!

Moldy
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  #2  
Old 04-02-2001, 01:20 AM
AchimW
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Wow! That sounds really interesting! And i knew that the molybdenum should work instead of the vanadium. At least, these impurity elements only act as a kind of catalytic starting point for the structure to build up. I am really looking forward to see the pics of the blade!

Achim
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  #3  
Old 04-02-2001, 04:46 AM
Jerry Stafford
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WOW!Keep us posted on your experiments Jim,you and Achim may just be what the so-called knife world needs to demystify Wootz!Maybe someday we will have a formula easy enough for even novices such as myself to reproduce without all the high-tech devices!Boy would that chap a few butts of some of those that charge a lot for Wootz!FORGE ON!!!
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  #4  
Old 04-02-2001, 06:47 AM
Dana Acker
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Yes, Moldy Jim and Achim--You da men! This really exciting. Yes, do post pictures and keep us posted at every stage. This is great stuff.
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  #5  
Old 04-02-2001, 08:30 AM
Kevin Isler
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I like to see it! Not your finger the blade!
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  #6  
Old 04-02-2001, 03:46 PM
foxcreek
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'sounds like walking a fine line just under over heating the steel and getting that bad grain growth that weakens the steel. Or is this a differeent kind of grain growth altogether? Did you know that heat treaters(at least at one time, years ago) would deliberately over heat the steel in large pieces to "open the grain" of and get grain growth? This made the steel much more responsive to hardening, for a deeper hardening on simple carbon steels that were impossible to harden all the way through in large sections. Even so on large sections you might get hardened steel a couple of inches deep over an unhardened core. In itself this had advantages, kind of like Macro-casehardening.
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  #7  
Old 04-02-2001, 04:45 PM
moldy Jim
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Under heating


Foxcreek, Yeah I beleive it's a different type of grain, the high carbon in graphitic tool steel lends itself to growing carbide dendrites intermixed with the ferrite carbides.
It has something to do with the slight amount of V or Mo in the alloy that allows it.
Check Achim's rescued Wootz thread for a more inteligent explaination.
I don't think I'm over heating the steel, on the contrary I'm keeping the temp lower to keep the carbides from re-disolving in the matrix.
Whatever it is it deffinatly shows some interesting grain pattern.
Moldy
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