Wootz steel was a steel made out of India. It is believed to have been first made in 300 BC. One of the main characteristics of this steel is pattern and or bands of carbon in the steel. The word Wootz is thought to be a mistranscription of the word wook, a translation of the word urukku the work for steel in Tamil or Malayalam. Or ukku witch is the word for steel min Kannada, or Telugu, and many more southern Indian languages. India traded this steel with ancient Europe and the Arab world. It gained popularity in the middle East. There it was worked and made into the well known and desirable Damascus steel. Archaeological evidence says that this steel was being manufactured in south India well before the Christian era.

Wootz steel had a very big impact on metallurgy all over the world. The swords that where made out of Wootz or Damascus steel really made Europeans curios and the making of them was studied by scientists from the 17th to 19th century. The high carbon alloys that was being used in the steel was not really known to the European power, and for this reason this steel played a large impacted on the development of English, French and Even Russian Metallurgy. When the British Occupation of the 1750s they were able to get some samples of wootz steel and was examined and analyzed by many experts.

One of the main characteristics of the steel was a lot of very hard metallic carbides in the steel Precipitating out with bands. Wootz swords and also Damascus swords were well known for there toughness and incredible sharpness. There are many was that people are making this steel today but the traditional way of making this steel is made in crucibles. To make crucibles, or crucibles steel is to combine a mixture of iron ore and charcoal with glass. It would then be sealed in a hot furnace. This would leave you with a mixture of impurities mixed with glass as slags, and buttons of steel. These buttons would then be separated for the slag and then forged into ingots. At this point the steel could be made in to knives or other tools. If you wanted to make a lager blade such as a sword you would have to weld two ingots together for a increase in size.

The recipe of making wootz steel was lost around 1700. This is when the main source of the very unique ores needed to make the steel was at last depleted. This ore had trace amounts of tungsten or vanadium, and other ores did not. Wootz steel was thought to be rediscovered in the 19th century by a Russian metallurgist named Pavel Petrovich Anosov. This steel was called Bulat steel. But he refused to tell others the secrets of his manufacturing methods. All this man left was five one sentence descriptions of ways that it might be made.

A blade smith by the name of Alfred pin dray rediscovered classical technique in the early 1980, and this was later verified by Dr. John Verhoeven. Other people have developed ways to make Wootz steel using modern technology. Although this steel bands and micro carbides, witch is the characteristics of the steel, but many dispute that it is wootz steel for the reason that it is not made in the classical and traditional manner.

James Huff