Damascus, wootz, jauhar, andanicum, hundwani, watered steel, all strange and often miss-used names for different types of patterned steel weapons. Why the confusion and how were they produced?
To begin, let us examine production of early iron. There is strong evidence today to show that iron production began in China and India by at least 2000 BCE. By 1100 BCE, the technology had migrated into the Middle East and Egypt but it did not reach the area of Britain until possibly as late as 100 BCE. In all areas, the production of early iron was some variation on the following two processes. In the first process, you make a layer of fuel. Stack ore on top of it, then fuel, then ore (this might total many layers according to how much fuel and ore you had). Cover the whole with mud or clay or something to hold in the heat and hold out the air. Vent the top and bottom to create a draft and leave a place for the molten iron to run out. Light it and wait. If you did it right and if your fire is hot enough and if the ore is rich enough (and if and if and if), eventually a puddle of iron will form at the bottom of your pile. This method generally produces three types of product. ‘Puddle iron’ which is very low in carbon content (and therefore, very soft) and high in impurities; cast iron, which in Europe was usually thrown away as being unworkable (until they learned how to cast it); and some small amounts of steel with a moderately good carbon content. After this puddle solidifies, it was broken up and the steel and soft iron were reheated and hammered repeatedly to beat out the impurities. Another effect of this process is that repeated heating and hammering raises the carbon content of the iron, making it harder and better able to hold an edge. It is interesting to note that this method is similar to the method used to produce copper from malachite ore and is still used in some poorer regions of the world today.
The second primitive technique is to build your furnace on the side of a hill or the build a tower where the wind can blow steadily into the draft making a hotter fire. Using this method, you can also continually feed fuel and ore into the furnace. This allows greater control of the production process and generally produces a more uniform product and more of it. Foundries of the hillside type which are estimated to be nearly 2000 years old have been found in the Philippines. The short tower (8 to 15 feet) method was used in China as late as the 1940's to produce pig iron to feed the steel refineries.
The problem with both of these methods is that the iron produced is usually too soft in its newly refined state to make a weapon that will hold an edge. However, the more this material was worked, the more the smiths learned about making it harder. Eventually, three methods of hardening iron into steel came into common usage: watered or pattern-welded steel, wootz, and true damascus.
Watered or pattern-welded steel was the method most common in early Europe, Japan and later, the Philippines. In a simplified explanation, small soft bars of iron are obtained and forge welded (joined by heating to a very high temperature and hammering the pieces together) over and over until sufficient size and hardness were reached. The repeated folding and welding increased the hardness of the steel by introducing carbon through the repeated heating and hammering. This was a long and tedious process and many pieces were ruined before reaching a finished product since it is very easy to burn steel when it is heated to welding temperature. In fact, the higher the carbon content gets, the easier it is to burn the metal, thus ruining the piece. The subsequent layering of hard and soft metal created by this process produces the characteristic ‘watered’ pattern. The fewer the welds, the larger the watering pattern. Some Japanese swords have upwards of 36,000 layers and it is very difficult to discern the watering with the naked eye. Obviously, these pieces were able to be reheated and re-forged at will and (according to how the metal is manipulated during the forging) many different patterns are possible. This is a very beautiful, functional method of blade production and was the only method available in Europe prior to the Crusades, but it is not Damascus.
Wootz also shows a ‘watered’ pattern often seen on the surface of the steel but for a very different reason. Wootz is produced (mainly in the Indo-China region) by the following method: Iron ore and charcoal powder were placed in a sealed box, (I assume the box was ceramic) and heated in a furnace until the mixture is reduced to slag and ‘buttons’ of steel. The buttons are separated from the slag, re-melted and poured into stone molds in the shape of the item desired. As the liquid steel cools slowly in the mold some structural segregation of the molecules occurs creating concentric ring patterns in the steel. After the item reaches a solid state but before it cools completely, it is removed from the mold and hammered into final shape. These pieces can be reheated and re-forged if necessary but often are not. Final work was usually done by filing, grinding and polishing.
The final method to be discussed here is true Damascus. The most famous and probably most misunderstood of all production methods, damascus steel gained it’s fame in Europe and later world wide due to encounters with the Crusaders. There are many legends surrounding the famed Damascus steel, all of them dealing with its fantastic flexibility and ability to hold a razor edge. One such story tells of a meeting between Richard Lion-Heart and Saladin (by the way, they never did meet). As the story goes, Richard, to impress the Muslims, cut through a thick iron bar with a single blow from his broadsword. Saladin, rather than showing any awe at this feat, threw a silk pillow into the air and sliced it to ribbons with his damascus blade. According to another legend, a damascus blade was so flexible that a man could take the hilt in one hand and the point in the other and bend the blade in a circle around his body and when released, the blade would spring straight again.
So what is different about the production of this steel than that of pattern welded or wootz?
True damascus steel, as made in the vicinity of the city of Damascus, was produced in this manner. Low carbon wrought iron was hammered into very thin sheets. A stack of sheets was wired together in a tight bundle. Meanwhile, a vat of high carbon cast iron was heated until molten. The bundles of low carbon wrought iron were plunged into the vat of molten high carbon cast iron. The cold wrought iron would ‘suck’ the molten cast iron into the spaces of the bundle by a process called capillary action. This would partially re-melt the wrought iron, ‘welding’ the bundle together into one solid mass. This mass is forgable for a short time, so it was hammered into rough shape while it was still hot. The major problem with pieces made this way is that they cannot be reheated and re-forged like pattern welded and wootz steel can. Due to the cast iron content, when a piece of true damascus is reheated, a blow with a hammer causes it to splatter into numerous pieces, (as European smiths found out when they tried to reshape some of the weapons brought home by the Crusaders). Therefore, after the rough shaping as the initial heat cooled, all of the work done on true damascus blades was done by filing, grinding and polishing. As the pieces were shaped by removal of metal, layers were revealed creating the distinctive pattern which creates the confusion in identifying these processes. I was not able to find any commentary on how these blades were tempered to make help them so flexible.
Some additional facts are pertinent in discussing blades made by these processes:
First, in blades made from any of these methods, the cutting edge is not a single razor edge but is actually jagged. In sharpening the alternating layers of hard and soft metals created by these processes, the softer layers grind away quicker than the harder layers, leaving a microscopic, serrated edge. This edge slices better than a single edge but does not stand up as well to hitting armor having a tendency to break the tiny teeth off and dull quickly.
Second, the iron ore in the vicinity of the city of Damascus has a 7% content of a mineral which was called Wolfram in the Middle Ages. Today we call that mineral Tungsten and it is used to make some of the best metal alloys in the world. In retrospect, it means that the smiths in the vicinity of Damascus unwittingly produced some of the worlds first mass produced composite alloy steels.
Thirdly, true damascus stopped being produced in the 14th century when the Tartar conqueror Timur Leng raided the city of Damscus and took all of the swordsmiths to work for his army. The city never did recover as a metal working center after that and the Tartars did not produce weapons by this method..
I would also like to clarify one further point. True damascus production was stopped by the invasion of Timur Leng and wootz continued to be made in India but what happened to Europe? The pattern welded blade went out of favor rapidly in Europe with the invention of the Catalan furnace in the 1300’s in Spain. The Catalan furnace was an early forced air blast furnace which increased the carbon content and lowered the impurity content of whole batches of steel by blowing hot furnace gases up through the molten metal. It was the first method of directly producing large amounts of steel with a uniform carbon content and made possible for the first time the forging of weapons and armor from one large uniform piece of steel.
Now that you know a little more about the processes, look a little closer at the next damascus sword you pick up. You might be surprised at what you now see.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Art of Blacksmithing - Alex W. Bealer - Funk and Wagnell's, New York 1969
Compton’s Encyclopedia - Volume D
Decorative and Sculptural Ironwork - Dona Meilach - Crown Publishers, Inc., NY 1977
Introduction to Ore Deposits- Ludwig Baumann -
The Making, Shaping and Tempering of Steel - United States Steel Corporation
The Metalsmiths - Time-Life Books
Metal Techniques for Craftsmen - Oppi Untracht - Doubleday & Co., Inc., NY 1975
The New Book of Knowledge - Volume 18 - “T”
Stone’s Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor - George C. Stone - Jack Brussel Publishing, NY
Wrought Iron - James Aston and Edward Story - A.M. Byers Co., Pittsburgh, PA 1939