> and why do so many people think we don't know how to make Damascus steel, when I've met several people who do it?
Because "damascus steel" means two different things, one of which is a process lost a few centuries ago (wootz steel), and one of which was done much more extensively, and is still widely used today (pattern welding). For a very long time, we thought the 'damascus steel' was made by pattern welding (the process used to make katanas), and so the two words became synonymous, and still are, but metallurgical studies in the 90s established that the original "damascus swords" were probably not pattern-welded.
The original Damascus swords are currently believed to have been made from wootz steel, which stopped being produced in the 1700s, possibly because the mines containing exotic rare-earth impurities in the iron were exhausted. Experiments recreating wootz manufature and sword forging have been done, and plausible techniques have been discovered, but we don't know for sure how it was done.
(My favorite suggestion involves forges and crucibles built open to monsoon winds and only used during storms so that the wind turbulence stirs up the furnace and keeps it hot enough. I don't know if that's how it was done, but it's a cool idea. Storm-forged!)
Pattern welding and modern "damascene" are made by layering and pounding or folding steels of different compositions. If a metalsmith orders an ingot of damascene to make into a sword, it's pattern-welded.
It's easy to confuse them, as both techniques end up with very similar swirly patterns on the blade, but sophisticated metallurgical analysis has revealed very different interior microstructure.
Sorry to type your ear off - metallurgy is keen and I could go on all day. :)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: Damascus nanotubes
Because "damascus steel" means two different things, one of which is a process lost a few centuries ago (wootz steel), and one of which was done much more extensively, and is still widely used today (pattern welding). For a very long time, we thought the 'damascus steel' was made by pattern welding (the process used to make katanas), and so the two words became synonymous, and still are, but metallurgical studies in the 90s established that the original "damascus swords" were probably not pattern-welded.
The original Damascus swords are currently believed to have been made from wootz steel, which stopped being produced in the 1700s, possibly because the mines containing exotic rare-earth impurities in the iron were exhausted. Experiments recreating wootz manufature and sword forging have been done, and plausible techniques have been discovered, but we don't know for sure how it was done.
(My favorite suggestion involves forges and crucibles built open to monsoon winds and only used during storms so that the wind turbulence stirs up the furnace and keeps it hot enough. I don't know if that's how it was done, but it's a cool idea. Storm-forged!)
Pattern welding and modern "damascene" are made by layering and pounding or folding steels of different compositions. If a metalsmith orders an ingot of damascene to make into a sword, it's pattern-welded.
It's easy to confuse them, as both techniques end up with very similar swirly patterns on the blade, but sophisticated metallurgical analysis has revealed very different interior microstructure.
Sorry to type your ear off - metallurgy is keen and I could go on all day. :)