On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 10:34:52PM -0400, Rick McGeer wrote:
> "It is suggested by Parr[18] that real production of steel began as early 
> as 500 BC in India. This material was referred to as wootz. By Alexander's 
> time the production of wootz was a well established two step process using 
> the crucible method. Two methods could be used, conversion from a cast iron 
> form or conversion from a wrought iron form. " 
> 
There was a very nice article about wootz steel in Scientific American:

@Article{Verhoeven:2001:MDB,
  author =       "John D. Verhoeven",
  title =        "The Mystery of {Damascus} Blades",
  journal =      j-SCI-AMER,
  volume =       "284",
  number =       "1",
  pages =        "74--79",
  month =        jan,
  year =         "2001",
  CODEN =        "SCAMAC",
  ISSN =         "0036-8733",
  bibdate =      "Thu Mar 1 09:12:47 MST 2001",
  bibsource =    "http://www.sciam.com/2001/0101issue/0101quicksummary.html;
                 OCLC Contents1st database",
  abstract =     "Centuries ago craftsmen forged peerless steel blades.
                 But how did they do it? The author and a blacksmith
                 have found an answer.",
  acknowledgement = ack-nhfb,
}

Interesting article.. I allways thought that damascus blades are made
by folding two different kinds of steel over and over again. In this
article, Verhoeven shows that the orginal damascus blades were  made
of wootz steel directly, the structure happends to be built up due to
the process of how the wootz steel is made... no folding at all is needed.  

   Marcus


-- 
Marcus Denker marcus at ira.uka.de  -- Squeak! http://squeak.de