# Communities > Antique Arms & Armour Community > Middle-East, India & Africa (MEIA) >  Napoleon, Faraday and wootz as a secret weapon.

## Jerry Bennett

From this much discussed, but short paper, 
"WOOTZ STEEL: AN ADVANCED MATERIAL OF THE ANCIENT WORLD 
S. Srinivasan and S. Ranganathan 
Department of Metallurgy 
Indian Institute of Science 
Bangalore"

"Following this the interest in Damascus steel moved to France. Wadsworth and Sherby [17] have pointed out that Faraday�s research made a big impact in France where steel research on weapons thrived in the Napoleonic period. The struggle to characterize the nature of wootz steel is well reflected in the efforts of Breant [18] in the 1820�s from the Paris mint who conducted an astonishing number of about 300 experiments adding a range of elements ranging from platinum, gold. silver, copper, tin, zinc, lead, bismuth, manganese, arsenic, boron and even uranium, before he finally also came to the conclusion that the properties of Damascus steel were due to �carburetted� steel. Smith [10] has indicated that the analysis of ingots of wootz steel made in the 1800�s showed them to have over 1.3% carbon. The Russian Anasoff [19] also studied the process of manufacturing wootz steel and succeeded in making blades of Damascus steel by the early 1800�s."

Megalomaniacs have contributed to mankind, even if by accident.

Please note, I'm a simple, barnyard bladesmith. I just want to pick your PhD grey matter.

Did Faraday successfully alloy said mentioned elements to wootz???? I specifically want to know about the addition of silver.  I connected a few dots lately. I'll tell you if you give me a good answer.

Please ignore terms such as "super plasticity", etc.

Mods, I beg you NOT to move this to the metallurgy forum. If you do, please trash it. For God's sake, I don't want it to end up there,  Jerry

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## Jerry Bennett

I would like to call out my friend, teacher and honorary barnyard bladesmith, Jeff Pringle.

A quote from an old thread about possible silver/iron alloys. The mention of high carbon, IE wootz, as an easy uptake for silver..

 "The magnetite ore I smelt has some gold in it, and in California gold and silver are commonly found together.
But when I take a sample to the lab for testing, they just check the usual steel alloy elements, so gold, platinum and silver are not on the list.
Pure iron might melt at 2777 F, but add some carbon and the melting temp drops  at 1% its closer to 2600 degrees F. for complete melt, and the mix of gamma and melt starts as low as 2400.
Copper is a useable steel alloy, Corten steel is commonly used for shipping containers and sculpture, and has a little copper to resist stress and corrosion. I bet if copper is alloyable, silver would be no problem. They are similar metals in a lot of respects.

Ill try to remember to throw some silver in the next time I have some molten steel around the house, but just based on the fact that copper works as an alloy I think you can count on silver, too.

Jeff"

Well, did you do that yet? :Big Grin: 
Sorry Jeff, got a wild hair, Jerry

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## Greg T. Obach

Hi Jerry

I tried it...  i tossed two silver rings into a crucible...   it made wootz but i couldn't tell if it had any effect..?   but that was aways back..

maybe Jeff got a different result... ?  :Wink:  


Hey ... any new 5000 deg alloys  lately...?   :Wink:   :Wink:  

Greg

... oh yah... i forgot that i did have a melt with a silver ring go sour....  it just didn't mix right....   but i think thats cause i got my temps wrong...

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## Manouchehr M.

Jerry

Thanks for posting this.  No worries.  I will make sure that this thread stays here.

Kind regards
Manouchehr

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## Jerry Bennett

> Jerry
> 
> Thanks for posting this.  No worries.  I will make sure that this thread stays here.
> 
> Kind regards
> Manouchehr


Thanks Manouchehr.
I think some of the results of the many attempts to replicate wootz, produced a product better in many ways, but was trashed because it failed to copy wootz.

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## Richard Furrer

Jerry,
It was my understanding that the silver used in the alloy experiments was done so because the silver color in the wootz (the white carbidy stuff) could have been silver and thus it was tried.
300 or more experiments no doubt led to many materials which were of no use and most likely some that were.
Keep in mind that faraday was working for the French Mint which may have led to some ideas that the "steel guy" would not have thought of to explore.

As to the addition of copper to steel
yes, Corten (at 2% I think) was supposed to stop the heat effective zone of welding from leading to cracks...this is not proving to be the case many years later. Some newer 4% copper steels are also being experimnted with...also with the same promises...time will tell.


Odd alloys may well be found in old wootz if they were looked for...as you said...many elements are simply not looked for.

Aluminum may also be an issue.


Ric

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## Jerry Bennett

Ric,
Do you know if an electrical conductivity test, (eddy),  MIL-STD-1537, been done on antique and or modern wootz?  Thanks,  jerry

Greg;
If you have a few small chunks of that, could I borrow them for some non destructive testing? Thanks, jerry

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## Greg T. Obach

Hi Jerry

sadly... i made them into blades and lost track what happened to them..there here ... just don't know which is which....   I was just trying one of the old recipes and it called for a little bit of silver to be added at the end...
- i didn't notice anything different....it etched ok and it hammer out the same as usual..     maybe i didn' t use enough silver...

i thought silver ....long time ago was symbolic for purity...

hey... maybe they had some problems with were wolves.... :Cool:  


Greg

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## jeff Pringle

I read something that made me think the silver was not going to do anything, shortly after posting that, so I may not have thrown any in. I'll check my wootz notebooks, see if I can find it on the ingredient list, or find the thing I read - when was that quote from?



> I think some of the results of the many attempts to replicate wootz, produced a product better in many ways, but was trashed because it failed to copy wootz.


Good point, and since replicating wootz has more then just a chemistry component, i.e. they had failures due to heat treating and forging errors, who knows how many babies got thrown out with the bathwater?

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## Jerry Bennett

> I read something that made me think the silver was not going to do anything, shortly after posting that, so I may not have thrown any in. I'll check my wootz notebooks, see if I can find it on the ingredient list, or find the thing I read - when was that quote from?.....
> 
> ?



From this thread http://forums.swordforum.com/showthr...ghlight=silver

Greg,
I had a somewhat different idea for the silver, but the werewolf idea sounds cool.  :Cool:   :Big Grin:

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## Richard Furrer

[QUOTE=Jerry Bennett;915834]Ric,
Do you know if an electrical conductivity test, (eddy),  MIL-STD-1537, been done on antique and or modern wootz?  Thanks,  jerry

Not as far as I know.

I learned a bit more about wootz while in India, but I have yet to place the findings and my opinions into any sort of useful collection.

Ric

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## Jerry Bennett

[QUOTE=Richard Furrer;915983]


> Ric,
> Do you know if an electrical conductivity test, (eddy),  MIL-STD-1537, been done on antique and or modern wootz?  Thanks,  jerry
> 
> Not as far as I know.
> 
> I learned a bit more about wootz while in India, but I have yet to place the findings and my opinions into any sort of useful collection.
> 
> Ric


 Well we are awaiting your latest thoughts, with great anticipation.
Although the purpose of this particular thread is sort of "dumpster diving" for wootz scraps 

I would like your thoughts on this paper, which I haven't read, that deals with Faraday's steel experiments.
You to access it via a participating university library. I have access to Mt. Angel Abbey, that's it. It didn't make the list.

Opinions please.. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=026...OR-enlargePage

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## Richard Furrer

Jerry,
I am sure that the Univ of Wisc-Madison has that book...I probably had it in my records at some point.... I have loaded out so many articles over the years that my files are depleted......I think it was ben Franklin who said that for a library to grow one must never lend a book nor return one....it seems I am poor on both counts.

My guess is that there are few kernels of wisdom in that text, but I hope you get top read it if you wish too.

I may have some small samples of steel around here somewhere.
Northwestern Univ still has the samples I loaned them for the wootz testing they did years ago (the one that was online conducted by Matt Harsh). I have been trying to get them back for some time without luck.

Such things make me hesitant to loan anything out again.

Ric

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## jeff Pringle

Have you read Faraday's original article on this set of experiments? 
It makes me wonder if there is any correlation between the properties he's attributing to the various alloys and the alloys, rather than other manufacturing or heat treat inconsistencies....it is not exactly rigorous science - -
http://books.google.com/books?id=wRw...rr=1#PPA201,M1
Scroll to page 199 for the start of the article, if the link does not bring you there.

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## Jerry Bennett

With special thanks to Jeff and Emanuel Nicolescu for providing me with the papers and articles I was after.  I've read the paper several times, because I'm a little thick :Big Grin: 
Confirmed a few ideas I had.

Thanks also to you all for taking me seriously here.  

Just to let you know, I submitted a possible R&D project to the company. They actually were interested, and  will ask for funds to do my experiments. :Smilie:  

Sorry, but can't give details, but couldn't have done it without your help and patience with my, sometimes strange line of questioning.

They may turn me down, but at least I got their attention and wasn't laughed out of the joint  :Big Grin:   I may even hire a couple of you as consultants :Big Grin:   :Big Grin:   :Big Grin:   :Big Grin:  

Wootz really has contributed to steel making, way beyond it's self.  Jerry




> Hey ... any new 5000 deg alloys lately...?
> 
> Greg


Mmmm... Yes! :Big Grin:

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## jeff Pringle

> They actually were interested, and will ask for funds to do my experiments


Super cool, congrats!
We'll try not to take you for granted, until you get one  :Wink:

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## Lee Cordochorea

> Have you read Faraday's original article on this set of experiments? 
> It makes me wonder if there is any correlation between the properties he's attributing to the various alloys and the alloys, rather than other manufacturing or heat treat inconsistencies....it is not exactly rigorous science - -
> http://books.google.com/books?id=wRw...rr=1#PPA201,M1
> Scroll to page 199 for the start of the article, if the link does not bring you there.


I'm not so eager to sell Faraday short - he was a pretty sharp cookie. He did everything carefully and scientifically whether working with chemistry or electricity. The paper cited indicates tests were made after "proper hardening and tempering." Specifics of both are given later in the paper. platinum is like nickel, so it is not surprising (in retrospect) that Faraday et.al. found it to increase toughness. Rhodium and iridium (like cobalt) do indeed contribute to wear resistance, as noted in the paper.

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## jeff Pringle

I meant no disrespect to Mr. Faraday, he and others were pretty much inventing the scientific method at the time, or at least thats how I think of him. And he did a lot of valuable work in many fields, if youll pardon the pun. 
But I had just read this bit, which indicates that a current (oops) level of  rigorous control had not been worked in yet

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## Gonzalo G

Hey Greg, that about werewolves was good, hahaha. 
I think oriental writters consciously used esoteric languaje to describe their processes, in order to: a) use symbolic languaje for the initiateds (that was common among arab and irani alchemists), and b) disorient the white people, who were stealing their inventions and knowledge from time ago. And some people falled into the trap, not only using silver, but also herbs and other incredible ingredients. Remember wootz was not patented until a proper occidental researcher used the proper procedure to have the proper patent, very recently (???!!!). Wootz was a secret of the trade, and they were trading with wootz for many years. It seems that maybe even it was produced in Toledo, Spain, during the arab domination, to make the those great and beautiful swords, very well known in the world. More HISTORIC research must be conducted here, in this matter.

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## Jennifer Yabut

Thread pruned.  Please refrain from political discussion and personal attacks.  Thank you.

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## Jerry Bennett

> ......
> Good point, and since replicating wootz has more then just a chemistry component, i.e. they had failures due to heat treating and forging errors, who knows how many babies got thrown out with the bathwater?


I fully intend to retrieve some of those babies my friend.  With the help of Uncle Bill :Big Grin:

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## RionMotley

> ... 
> I think oriental writters consciously used esoteric languaje to describe their processes, in order to: a) use symbolic languaje for the initiateds (that was common among arab and irani alchemists), and b) disorient the white people, who were stealing their inventions and knowledge from time ago. And some people falled into the trap, not only using silver, but also herbs and other incredible ingredients [...] Wootz was a secret of the trade, and they were trading with wootz for many years. It seems that maybe even it was produced in Toledo, Spain, during the arab domination, to make the those great and beautiful swords, very well known in the world. More HISTORIC research must be conducted here, in this matter.


If you check your history, the "esoteric" language is really just leftover remnants of alchemy - not arab alchemy, but honest-to-goodness european "let's spin straw into gold" alchemy.

It wasn't until the late 1700's IIRC that a standardized notation for chemistry was established. Newton (while ripping off some others...) only invented calculus around then, and even into the 1800's there was extensive use of "astronomy" for the purposes of astrology. Copernicus, Kepler, and most other astronomers of their era were in fact astrologers. The whole motivation for developing better astronomical models was to generate better horoscopes!

Not until industrialization started catching up to scientific knowledge did a standardization become neccesary. So, you have in the late 1800's the development of the periodic table as a tool to better work with the known (and unkown) elements... from Wikipedia:

"Unknown to Mendeleev, several other scientists had also been working on their own tables of elements. One was John Newlands, who published his Law of Octaves in 1864. However, the lack of spaces for undiscovered elements and the placing of two elements in one box were criticised and his ideas were not accepted. Another was Lothar Meyer, who published a work in 1864, describing 28 elements. Like Newlands, Meyer did not seem to have the idea of using a table to predict new elements. In contrast to Newlands' methodical approach to creating a table, Mendeleev's was almost accidental and emerged gradually.

As a better understanding of atomic weights was developed and better data became available, Mendeleev made for himself the following table:
Cl 35.5 	K 39 	      Ca 40
Br 80 	        Rb 85 	      Sr 88
I 127 	        Cs 133       Ba 137

By adding additional elements following this pattern, he developed his version of the periodic table..."

So, the tradition of alchemy finally became codified into chemistry. Other standardizations occurred somewhat earlier than this, but it was really Mendeleev's "Principles of Chemistry" that seem to have marked the transition from esoteric mythos and secrecy to scientific method and shillings - in the scientist's pockets.

even with standardization, in this era, professors who had taught the then-current generation of scientists had been trained in more alchemical language, so it can be accepted that language would be rather more esoteric than otherwise expected.

Mein 2 cents.

Rion

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## Gonzalo G

"My" history? I don´t understand. I live in America. Here, I´m concerned about arab and indian alchemists, not occidental. Yes, that point about their languaje is well known. But occidental alchemists also used deceit. Needs from the time, you know. You forgot to mention the Inquisition and similar people. The christian churches were all time distrusting scientifics, sometimes burning them alive. Nice people, isn´t it?

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## RionMotley

not "your" history - like you, personally - just history in general, really. But maybe the history you're using to make your assumptions. Like everything, there are many cited reasons in literature for various occurances, but I finished up a class detailing the history of modern science - basically, where'd it come from. Essentially, you can go all the way back to plato, socrates, and archimedes and find terminology we're still using. Lots of wacky things happened during the renniasance due to the recycling of old ideas. Just look at the history. I wasn't saying neccesarily that there WERE no secrets, but that alot of the obscure terminology used wasn't obscure at the time - everyone involved in the field used much the same terminology, but it had very little to do with the terminology we use today. Today, it's a descriptive terminology based on chemical properties - words like divalent, polychromatic, dichroic, dendritic, etc. etc. etc. whereas back then you had funky symbols that represented the planetary ruler of an element. Oxygen was named because it was thought that its presence made things bitter, and Oxy was the greek root for bitter. Perfectly logical, and useful at the time, but the name itself tells you zip about what it does chemically.

It took a while for the words and symbols to disappear and be more or less completely replaced by what we have now. That hadn't happened by the early 1800's. Eventually it would become more algebraic - chemical formulae and reactions couldn't be reliably written and reproduced - it was literally greek, a hodgepodge of greek and alchemical symbols with very little fractional notation, but now it's no harder than reading 2A + 3B = A2B3.

I'll dig up my old textbook and post a link or maybe some excerpts and you might get a better idea of what I'm really trying to hit at, but the gist is that you're not neccesarily dealing with some old codger actively trying to decieve you, it may simply be the rather occult/esoteric nature of the language still in use at the time.

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## Gonzalo G

I understand what are you talking about. I also read the history of science (Bernal, for instance). I only pointed to an isolated case of deceit, and I was not saying that all the alchemist languaje is based on it. The situation was the same for all the sciences, until they were properly codified in a common languaje based on known scientific principles, shared by everybody. This is basic knowledge. No need for you to bother.

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## Rob Pawulski

> ... The mention of high carbon, IE wootz, as an easy uptake for silver....


Hi Jerry,
Something that I had to do a bit of footwork to find equivalent recently might be of note on this. BS 1407:1970 Specification for high carbon bright steel (silver steel)  of British Standards. It is C Mn Cr 1.2 0.4 0.4 but no silver even if the common name is Silver Steel... 
Hope it is relevent.
Rob

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## RionMotley

> I understand what are you talking about. I also read the history of science (Bernal, for instance). I only pointed to an isolated case of deceit, and I was not saying that all the alchemist languaje is based on it. The situation was the same for all the sciences, until they were properly codified in a common languaje based on known scientific principles, shared by everybody. This is basic knowledge. No need for you to bother.


No problem. I just loved that course, so I might dig up the text for my own purposes and drift away for a few hours :-p

Rion

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## Gonzalo G

Rion, please don´t be offended, it was only a clarification. I also loved that course, please feel free to post all the relevant material you consider useful. It would be interesting.

Rob, that was relevant indeed.

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## RionMotley

hey, not at all - trust me, if I was offended, you'd know it! :-p

The whole point here is to share information - it's like forge welding - we all bring our bits and pieces together, throw it in the forge and beat it around until it sticks together into a whole.

It's a process - so anyhow, for future reference, I'm really hard to offend/annoy/etc. - and on the same token, if I seem to say something offensive, take it with a grain of salt until it's confirmed that i indtended to razz you - otherwise I just like the whole discourse thing. Let's have some fun and learn some stuff!

Back soon,
Rion

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## Jerry Bennett

Thanks Rob.
I'm not so interested in the silver, as I am the transitional metals.  It has  a lot to do with electrical resistance, hence the question about eddy.  Also grain formation/nucleation and properties. Induction *hint hint* :Wink:   :Wink:  

Rion,
See, told you about the politics of bladesmith metallurgy and heat treatment  :Big Grin:  Keep posting though, and don't let anyone chase you away. Youve made some interesting posts.  Jerry

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