I'm a curious guy. I recently stumbled on an ad for a "cheap " knife, one of those glossy magazine ads, that claimed to be made of wootz steel, which I gather is kinda like Damascus. New one on me and got me to wondering if anyone actually made wootz steel blades, which I gather is very primitive stuff, originally developed in India.


Grizz

I thought wootz was steel cable.

There are a few people making their own crucible wootz steel. Cheap magazine ad material it is not.

I have not kept up with it like I did at one time, but I am not aware of anyone mass producing it. You can find it in custom form or some antique blades.

Some of the Russian steel and knife guys call it Bulat.

Cable Damascus is something else entirely.

The watering or pattern in Wootz is not from pattern welding as in most "Damascus."

Griz..read that ad again. It's very misleading. I saw it too.

I am not aware either of it commercial made because of the time it takes to make. The year Moran brought his pattern welded Damascus blades out and old maker there in Russia brought bulat (Wootz) out there. I only got to meet him briefly there but the interpreter did not technical terms well enough with his broken up English. Very frustrating as I really wanted to know some details. I do know at the time they were using ground green glass for a flux in their Damascus, it could not work with any other color but green according to them .

Let me get into some technical stuff .
Damascus is layered and can be made as a production process .There are products made to look like Damascus . Typical Damascus uses an excellent mix of 1084 and 15n20. It can be forged into interesting patterns thus called " pattern welded " Shotgun barrels are found with the makers logo in the pattern.
Wootz is a different story ! Labor intensive [$$ ], made in small amounts [ crucibles ] .After heat treating and forging steps the soft matrix has very hard, wear resistant Vanadium carbides .The modern equivalent would be CPM 3V .It's manufacture stopped when the used up all the Vanadium containing ore.
Maybe the green glass was in the safety glasses ! Except that OSHA hadn't been invented in the old days .
And Mr Fisk can make all this stuff with his eyes closed !