Скачать или смотреть Crucible "Damascus" Steel: A Response to The Welsh Viking

"Damascus" steel is a topic which is often discussed here on youtube - and rarely is it discussed with the necessary level of nuance.

Today I am responding to a video by The Welsh Viking, ‎@TheWelshViking  on the topic of Damascus steel.

Overall, this video was better than most - but still perpetuated some myths, falsehoods and widely believed misinformation.

Articles Mentioned:

https://www.academia.edu/35997825/Isl...

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/a...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...

Writeup for the last time someone made a video on "Damascus" a month ago:

  / sideprojects_doesnt_understand_damascus_steel  

Videos:

The Welsh Viking
   • Damascus Steel Isn't What You Think! Asian...  

Side Projects
   • The Most Mysterious Ancient Technologies L...  

Secrets of the Exhibit
   • The Art of Armour | Secrets of the Exhibit...  

"Damascus steel" usually refers to two main types of steel:

The most common you'll see made today is "pattern-welded steel", where alternating layers of nickel rich and nickel deplete steel are stacked, forge welded, and folded or manipulated to create a pattern. The blade is then polished and etched to reveal the layers. While modern pattern welded blades typically use nickel containing steels to maximise contrast, historically this was not usually the case.

This method of construction using stacked, folded or otherwise forge welded, dissimilar* steels is how the majority of sword steels were made, worldwide, until advances in technology allowed for the use of more homogenous steel products. Pattern welding, and variants such as multibar patterns and laminated blades, were used widely and includes swords like spatha, “viking” swords, katana and more. It is worth noting that even "monosteel" swords which were made without the use of dissimilar steel, but still made from bloomery or refined blast furnace steel, were also subject to similar stacking, folding and forge welding techniques.

*Bloom is here considered to contain multiple dissimilar steels due to the heterogeneous nature of bloom.

**Utsa / Wootz (sanskrit - and mistranslated sanskrit), Pulad (Persian), Fuladh (Arabic), Bulat (Russian), Polat (Turkish) and Bintie (Chinese) are all names for ultra-high carbon crucible steel typified by carbide segregation, which can be otherwise referred to as "crucible damascus steel".

In the present day, this is the type you will see chef’s knives, swords, and even pocket knives being made of, and it can range from being rather cheap to incredibly expensive depending on the materials and workmanship.

The other type of "Damascus Steel" is a form of hypereutectoid, pattern forming crucible steel.

And that is what I will be discussing today, as it was the primary topic of the video.

It is a hypereutectoid steel, which means that it has over 0.8% carbon by definition. It is formed by liquifying steel in a crucible, and is NOT produced by folding or layering steel. The typical composition is around 1% to 2% carbon, which by modern standards makes this an “ultra-high carbon steel”, often abbreviated as UHCS.

It is formed by melting steel with specific impurities in a crucible (historically, made of high kaolin content clay, rice husks as chaff, quartz sands, and other additives), and the process of turning this crucible “charge” into steel is quite complicated, with the potential for failure to produce an attractive pattern being high if any part of the process is not conducted correctly.