Wootz Damascus steel blades

Wootz Damascus steel blades contain surface patterns produced by bands of cementite particles which are generated in situ as the blades are forged from small ingots. A process for making these blades has recently been developed which involves making ingots in a gasfired furnace followed by forging to blade shapes. This study presents a series of additional experiments which provide strong evidence that the mechanism responsible for the formation of the aligned cementite bands is similar to the mechanism that produces banded hypoeutectoid steels. That mechanism attributes the selective formation of ferrite bands to microsegregated alloying elements. The results of this study show that the cementite bands will form in ultraclean hypereutectoid steels (P and S levels