Not only were Damascus swordssharp and beautiful, they were also objectsof mystery. The best European bladesmithsfrom the Middle Ages on up weren’t able tomake them, even though they carefullystudied examples of blades made in the East.Damascus blades became even
more
mysterious when the art of making themactually died out. The last Damascusswords were made in the early 1800s.Over the years metallurgists (peoplewho study metals) have suggested manydifferent ways of making the swords, butwhen they were tested, none of the methodsmade blades that matched the Damascusswords in the museums. The recipe for aDamascus sword was a puzzle thatchallenged people for centuries. With all theknowledge and technological advances of the 20
th
century, people still couldn’t figureout how to make these swords. What wasthe secret? I’m a metallurgist who teachesabout metals at Iowa State University. Ibecame interested in Damascus swordswhen I read an article about them that one of my students gave to me. Alfred Pendray,my coauthor, is a blacksmith in WillistonFlorida, who also became interested in theswords by reading about them. We workedon the problem independently until a mutualfriend put us in touch. For a year, we wroteback and forth, and in 1989 we finally metand decided to try to solve the mysterytogether. At first, we tried methods formaking Damascus swords that had beenpublished in science journals. But thosemethods didn’t give us blades that matchedthe old blades. So we decided to go back tothe very beginning. We would trace step bystep how the swords were made in ancienttimes and see if we could figure out how theancient craftsmen did it.According to reports of travelers to the East,the swords were made by forging smallcakes of steel that were manufactured insouthern India. This steel was called wootzsteel. Wootz steel first appeared in Indiabetween 300 BC and AD 500. It was morethan a thousand years before steel as goodwas made in the West. Wootz was the firsthigh-quality steel made anywhere in theworld.Steel is a mixture of iron and carbon. Tomake wootz steel, the craftsman melted ironand materials that contain carbon, such ascharcoal, wood or leaves. They did this in asealed crucible, which is simply a meltingpot able to withstand high temperatures.When the cooled and hardened steel wastaken out of the crucible, it was in the shapeof a cake. The wootz cakes (which wereabout the size of hockey pucks and weighedabout four pounds) were then shipped toDamascus, where smiths made them intobeautiful blades.To shape the cake into a blade, the smithsrepeatedly heated and hammered it until itwas stretched and flattened into a bladeshape. As the metal was heated and beaten,the wavy pattern somehow formed on thesurface of the blade.One of the major problems we faced inmaking a Damascus sword was to get theright pattern on the surface. And in order toget the right pattern on the
outside
of thesword, you had to have the right structure
inside
the sword. In steel, some carbonchemically combines with iron to form anew kind of chemical called iron carbide.These iron carbide particles are surroundedby metal that is almost pure iron. But it isthe
arrangement
of these carbide particlesthat cause the famous Damascus pattern.The interesting thing is that the carbideparticles aren’t scattered randomlythroughout the Damascus blade. If yousawed the sword blade in half and looked atthe cut surface under a microscope, you’dsee how the carbide particles arrangethemselves in rows. This is called banding.These bands of carbide particles form thepattern you see on Damascus swords. Whenthe steel is beaten with a rounded hammer,the bands of carbides near the surface are
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