June 22, 2021 • 36 mins
Damascus steel and the recipe behind it remained a mystery for many years. But it turns out the key was a bygone ingredient. Listen in to this medieval mystery to learn all about it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's the beautiful and illustrious Charles W. Chuck Bryant right there,
and there's the equally awesome Jerry Droom Rowland right here
(00:22):
to my right, about to chow down on some stuff
for lunch. You were just cussing her out before we
hit record. What are you talking about? And this is
stuff you should know? That's right, the Disordered Edition. Uh yeah,
this was a bit of a mess about Damascus Steel.
It's just my favorite American gladiator. Oh that's a good one, Chuck,
(00:43):
pretty good. Yeah, that was great. It's all I could
think about was that off the cuff. Okay, it's off
the cuff in that. I thought about it five minutes
before we came in here. It's still counts. It's good. Well,
it wasn't a real character, right, This is a joke. No,
but it sounds like it does. Okay. I wanted to
make sure we're on the same page. I also wanted
to take your joke and mash it into pieces. Good job,
(01:06):
Thank you. So um, we're talking today about Damascus Steel,
which I was perfectly aware of before this, but I
didn't know at all by any stretch. And what it
turns out that apparently a lot of people who write
about Domescus steel don't know, is that there was a
metal metallurgical mystery that developed over time that was only
(01:27):
solved in the nineties that other people, yes exactly, thank you,
that other people have you know, tried and maybe somewhat
contributed to. And now, finally, thanks to the um the
efforts of these metall aregists who really got involved and
tried to figure this out, this mystery has been solved.
But it's possible that had they really not taken up
(01:49):
this this gauntlet and tried to figure out what was
Damascus steel, we might never have known, because even if
you rewind all the way back two thousand years ago
when Damascus steel was started in production, they had no
idea what Damascus steel was. Either. No, it's kind of
an accidental find. Uh. If you look up Damascus steel
(02:10):
on a picture viewer on the Internet, you will probably say, oh,
it's like those cool swords or knives or guns that
have that cool like wavy watery etching on them, like
Game of Thrones. Even talks about Damascus steel, and or
or if you're an interior designer and you're like, I've
(02:32):
never seen a sword. It's like the damask material that
sometimes people used for window treatments. That pattern is the same. Yeah,
and that spelled D A M A S K. Yes.
But it is based on that yes, exactly, um, and
it is gorgeous stuff. Like if you see a if
you're a knife collector or whatever, and you collect like
a new knife that says Damascus steel, or a gun
(02:53):
that has a cool pattern. That is what we're gonna
refer to as quote unquote Damascus steel. It is not
the original, it's not the o G Damascus steel. It
is something that people have learned to do these days
to look like Damascus steel, and that itself, the technique
they used from what I saw, was actually based on
a pretty ancient technique as well. But it's still not
(03:15):
Damascus steel now. And the reason why anybody would care
about Damascus steel is not just the way it looked, right,
which I think that if Damascus steel didn't have that
very characteristic watery look to the to the steel, UM,
I don't think people would have taken up that quest
to recreate it. Yeah, I think that's really part of
its a lure that drew the metal or just sin
(03:37):
at least. Well, yeah, it's um, I mean we should
go ahead and say the allurea is a few fold.
It is super cool looking. Yeah, I can't deny it.
I won't. But if it's super cool and like your
sword breaks on some guy's suit of armor, he's not
gonna be like that was a pretty cool story. I
feel bad for you. Let's just call it even know
you're dead meat. So uh, it is super super strong
(04:00):
and super cool looking and very flexible for a metal.
It's got all these cool properties kind of all wrapped
up into one and it's it's like this super super
steel super steel. That's exactly what it wasn't It was
produced in the ancient world. We here in the modern
world don't like to think of people in the ancient
world having better steal than we have. Well they didn't really.
(04:23):
I mean, supposedly modern steel is better than even O G. Damascus.
Think supposedly is the operative word. So um. But there
was a period in time from at least I think
the first mentioned in the West that we are aware
of comes from like the third or fourth century b c.
Where the Greeks, I think Alexander the Great is basically
(04:44):
like this stuff is awesome. Yeah, um, And so it
was well known by that time, you know, more than
two thousand years ago for being the steel you wanted
to use if you were creating a weapon. Yeah. And
you know, let's go back in time a bit. If
you're a swordmaker couple of thousand years ago, you've got
your work cut out for you because you don't really
(05:05):
know what you're doing yet, Like you don't know what
kind of of metal that you're getting. And if you
get some iron, iron is going to have other properties
in there. But you just kind of have what you have.
And the R and D process. If you imagine how
long it takes to forge a sword. Then you go
out there and swing it and it breaks, You're like,
all right, let me try again, but maybe let me
(05:27):
try a different uh type of or or different type
of iron. And swords are long and their thin, and
it's just the very nature of making a broadsword is
really difficult. To make it super strong and sharp and
all the things that you like not so heavy that
you can't even carry it. So they were sort of
I mean they were brilliant in one sense that they
(05:48):
were figuring this stuff out on the fly, but they
were also just sort of victims of whatever materials they
had available. So that's what makes Damascus steel so interesting
to me is that it was a fluke of nature
and it happened to be mined. As we'll see, it
was a fluke of nature. It happened to be mine
in this one area in South India. Um, and it
(06:12):
just so happens that this particular iron ore that was
being mined in the area made some of the finest
steel the world's ever seen. Yeah. So they called it
woots w O O t z steel. And like you said,
it was mine near Hyderabad, India, into these two point
(06:32):
three to two point five km cakes or ingots by
the size of a hockey puck I saw. Yeah. So
they would shift these things out and they were mining,
and they didn't know like, hey, we've got this secret
super metal that you know, no one is going to
believe what we're sending them. They were just mining stuff
and they sent a lot of this to Damascus in
Syria and they made them into swords. And most people
(06:55):
think that's probably where the name comes from. Even though
some people do say the root word uh Damas and
Arabic is watered. Oh, I didn't know that that could
have been like one of the things. But my money
is on the fact that they sent them to Damascus
and the ship it makes sense. Yeah, I mean, I
guess it depends on how old the city of Damascus is,
but I get the impression it's pretty old. It's not young.
(07:17):
But watery steel makes a lot of sense to for
that particular type of steel. Maybe it was either way,
it was very It was well known outside of the
Middle East and West Asia and India um as like
the go to steel. But at the time, like you
were saying, they don't seem to have understood, um that
(07:40):
what they had on their hands was just this incredibly
high grade steel, just perfect steel for making weapons. I
get the impression that the metal smith's tended to take
all the credit for it, where in retrospect, you or
I could have taken a lump of woots steel and
just hammered it with our elbows, you know, would have
turned into like a world class sword, you know, yeah,
(08:01):
or at least something you could punch somebody, right, But
the metal smith's over the years. Um, kind of circle
the wagons and pretended like they had some great secret
or technique and maybe even thought that they did. But really,
as we'll see, the secret ingredients, we're all in the
steel that was being mined from India. Yeah, but also
in the technique, which we'll get to as well. But um,
(08:24):
but I think that was happenstance more than yeah, then understood.
I think, so we know that what they should have
done to see if they had the good stuff. They
should have dabbed their pinky and it touched it to
their tongue, rob their gums with it. Yeah, that's how
you know you got the good that's true. All right.
So where were we We were in the Crusaders, right.
The Crusaders get a hold of these things, and they
(08:47):
kind of did what they wanted to do. Yeah, we
should do an episode on the Crusades. No, okay, fair enough.
I feel like we've talked about this before. Uh so
this is the beginning of the eleventh century. They got
these swords off the battlefield, and there's there's a lot
of lower that surrounds this Damascus steel, like you could
(09:08):
cut a silk scarf that was falling through the air.
What about a feather, because you cut a feather, cut
that feather right in half. What about a hair? You
can split that hair right into my friend long ways?
Oh I thought you just met No, I'm talking bugs
bunny style. Yeah, you could split that hair. Um. But
all this was lower. It was really good stuff. Nonetheless,
but there are a lot of like you know, sort
(09:29):
of ancient stories about the properties, like the magical properties
of this steel. Right. Well, I saw one thing, though
I don't think it has anything to do with magic,
but I saw it from a metallurgy website. Somebody took
a bunch of notes off I guess some lecture, and
I'm not entirely certain what the lecture was, but it
was pretty intense. But they said that this would cost
(09:52):
about the equivalent of a car today. One of these swords,
one of these weapons. So they were highly prized. So
you can imagine the Crusaders coming back to Europe and saying, hey, smithie,
um make me something like this. And from from what
I understand, what the smith's came up with, because they
were hamstrung by the iron that they had to work with,
(10:15):
they came up with a different technique for creating a
type of Damascus steel that isn't true Damascus steel, but
became so widespread and basically all Europe had to offer
that it became what's known as a type of Damascus
steel pattern well to Damascus steel, right, and that is
you know, it's still strong and it has that nice
(10:37):
looking you know, watery uh etching or whatever. But it
kept them from getting their heads cut off. Probably it
was good enough, yeah, I would say, but it's off
market Damascus steel. It's the knights of the round table
of Damascus steel, you know what I mean? Sure, because
it wasn't that woots. You gotta have that woots, right,
(10:58):
But they didn't know that at the time. So because
they were able to form that watery pattern from taking um,
two different kinds of steel, that's what pattern well, the
Damascus steel is made from use at least two different kinds,
apparently ultimately for the color contrast. Because that creates that
watery patterns, the two kinds of steel hammered into one another.
(11:22):
That creates the pattern in in that type, which makes
it not really true Damascus steel. If you have true
Damascus steel, that pattern goes all the way through that
that Damascus steel blade like you can, Yes, you can
wear it down and wear it down until you make
it through the other side. And that water patterns all
the way through. See that is pretty cool, Like it's
(11:43):
a part of the the or itself at that point.
Absolutely that is what differentiates true Damascus steel from anything else.
That's right, And boy, I can't wait to talk about
that stuff at the end. How they figure this out?
I know, I feel like we've been paying this out tantalizingly.
All right, well, we'll take a break here and talk
about some of the efforts over the years to try
and figure out what this uh what the steel was?
(12:05):
Right after this? Okay, chuck, this is going so well,
(12:39):
by the way, Uh, should we tell people that we've
had some technical difficulties as well? They're probably like, why
is wrong with these Yeah, and we're kind of giggly
and we're not drunk but dry. Didn't bring champagne today.
Rare technical difficulties have causes to have to redo some stuff.
We're just not used to that or not. Usually everything
(12:59):
runs like a Swiss watch around here, Swiss army knife
with the corkscrew outgoing right up our butts. That's more
what it's like we gotta say that it's not Jerry's fault. No,
we would never blame Jerry for something like somebody. It's
like the three little pigs. Somebody has been sleeping in
our bed, you know, that's what I blame. Somebody got
in our studio and and touch some stuff. Yes, well,
(13:21):
they're gonna be very surprised by the padlock that they
encountered exactly. And you're like, and there's only one key,
and I swallow, I'm gonna have to get it out
with the Swiss Army corkscrew. Alright. So from the beginning
they started to try and recreate this stuff. And you know,
like I said, that was during the eleventh century, and
then it just sort of that. It seems like it
(13:41):
just continued on throughout the ages of people trying to
recreate this. Yes, but at the same time, they were
still able to keep making Damascus steel from India, the
quote unquote Damascus steel up until depending on no, no,
the real stuff. Oh yeah, because they had this ingod
yes up until um and I think India was still
producing it up until depending on you ask, either the
eighteenth century or the nineteenth century, right, good point. And
(14:03):
then all of a sudden, Damascus steel just stops and
all you have is the pattern. Well that you cannot
find true Damascus steel anymore. And it was quite perplexing
to a lot of people, it was. And they were
making uh, they're making guns, gun barrels with the stuff.
That's how long it continued. Yeah, And that's I think
(14:25):
that's supposedly what supplanted Damascus steel in a lot of
people's mind, because some people said they didn't even realize
that there was a mystery to damascus stell. He just
thought it had been supplanted by advances in steelmaking, so
you didn't need Damascus steel anymore. And another explanation I
saw was that Domascus steel is actually terrible for um
(14:45):
rifling in the gun barrel because that watery pattern would
actually hold onto the powder residue and that your gun
would be likelier to backfire, but it would. It was
actually very useful in that you could make a gun
barrel which is long and narrow from this Damascus steel
because that's the special kind of steel that stays strong
(15:07):
even when you're elongating it, right, And I mean, let's
be honest, the people wielding those guns were like, this
is pretty boss. It is. But I also think, you know,
if I'm on the battlefield, I want the guy who's
just who only cares about the function of his gun,
not the guy who's admiring what his gun looks like.
You know what I mean, Like when you're walking through
(15:28):
the old gun market, you want the guy that's like,
she's ugly, but she shoots straight. That's right, Yes, the
guy from Jaws. Is that Quint? Yeah? Uh so this
one guy there was a Russian medal are just named
p Anasoft and he thought that he had it all
figured out. They called it. He called it blat. And
(15:50):
he even said and no, in certain terms, our warriors
will soon be armed with bulat blades. Are agricultural laborers
will till the soil with bulat plows airs, Bulat will
supersed all steel. And he didn't. It didn't work. He didn't, No,
And he actually was part of this initial wave of scientists.
(16:11):
I think as metallurgy was really developing, because we said,
before the ancients had it was all just intuition and technique,
and they knew what, you know, they were doing, but
they also couldn't be like, oh, it's because of this
that's happening on a microscopic level. Right, of course, they
didn't have microscopes and no chemistry. You can thank Anto
(16:32):
Van Levin Hook for that, that's right. Um. But as
metallurgy started to develop, as science itself started to develop
as a field, that was a sub discipline that really
kind of came around. And one of the things they
tried to figure out was what was the deal with
Damascus steel. It was one of the first things they
really applied their mind to. And um, Michael Faraday actually
(16:53):
who is the guy who crosses over from this episode
to the other one today. He was the son of
a blacksmith, very him a scientist, the father of electricity. Um.
He tried his hand at figuring out what Damascus steel was.
And what everybody kind of had a suspicion was that
the steel had more carbon than that your average steel,
but there had to be some secret ingredient. And so
(17:15):
it kind of became trendy in the first half of
the nineteenth century among metal or just in just scientists
in general to figure out what that secret third ingredient was. Yeah,
and there were a lot of attempts I think in
that UM. I think Faraday thought it might have been
silica and aluminum or aluminium to him. Oh yeah. In
(17:36):
the eighteen twenties, Jean Robert Brent at the Paris Meant
did a six week study in the trial, and I
think he did like three experiments he was trying to
reproduce this woods unsuccessfully. I think he tried platinum, gold, silver, copper, tin, zinc, lead,
(17:59):
this manganese he was close there, uranium, arsenic and boron,
and then that Russian even tried diamond. Yes, it's like,
let me throw some diamond in there and see what
that does. Why not at this point, like I think
somebody melted down a kitchen sink. And then the whole
time they were like still hearing about this lore. Like
(18:19):
I think by this point they didn't, you know, they
knew if it came out of like these stories that
came out of the Middle Ages certainly were not true.
But there were stories about about cooling it in dragon's blood,
about quenching it and dragon's blood liking when you cool
it down or red medicine or green medicine is what
they called it. There was also when I saw where
(18:40):
you're supposed to quench it in the urine of a goat,
that's been fed nothing but ferns for three days is real.
It's real. I mean it's not real obviously, but no,
but I can't tell if you're making it up. No, no, no,
that I wish I were that clever. That was pretty good.
That sounded like a you joke. Uh oh, a you joke. No, Okay,
(19:02):
that's sheep. Right, Um, let me see. They had to
have been heated until it glowed like the rising sun
in the desert, and then cool to royal purple and
plunge into the body of a muscular slave to transfer
the strength of that person into the sword. So obviously,
in the eighteen hundreds they know all of this is hogwash, right,
(19:23):
But over the thousands of years that Domascus steel have
been produced, like these are the lower that kind of
developed around, right, Yeah, I mean, and they were. They
wanted to keep this stuff a secret. That's one of
the reasons. Aside from running out of that original woots.
Another factor was the fact that they didn't, you know,
spread this around. You wanted to if you if you
knew something like this, you wanted to keep it in
(19:45):
the family. I think, well that's what a lot of
people thought. So so you have a whole like the
whole world is just confused about Damascus Steel and and
will be and was until this episode comes out where
we finally explain the deal. But there were different camps
running around, Like we said, some people were aware that
Domeascus steel just wasn't around anymore, uh, and that something
(20:06):
had happened. Other people just thought it was supplanted by
increasingly better technology. Um so what other people thought, And
the most interesting idea to me was that the smiths
who created these these incredible blades, like you said, kept
it in the family and then just some generation failed
(20:27):
to tell the next generation. The secret was lost forever.
And that is really like up the Damascus Steel alley
that it shrouded in mystery and secrecy and magic and dragons,
blood and furn eating goats that p all over the place,
you know, And that's that's so it's really interesting. But
no one knew exactly what was going on. They just
(20:50):
knew that nobody was making true cast domestics Damascus steel anymore.
Should we take another break? Alright, this third act, you guys,
just get ready, it's gonna knock your socks off right
after this. All right, So everyone's trying to make this stuff.
(21:35):
Everyone's trying to recreate it. The answer is, uh, it's
kind of right under their nose. But it's not because
it's not under their nose because this stuff had been
gone for a long time, dried up that woots, dried
the w up and was was gone. Uh. And then
I think it was when was this in the nineteen
(21:59):
sixties that a guy named CS Smith and he was
a medal or just the Chief Metal or just the
Manhattan Project. He wrote a paper about Damascus steel and
again this is the nineteen sixties, and and said this
stuff was lost to history and a bunch of people
tried over the years to recreate it. He kind of
like laid down the gauntlet like this is a this
(22:19):
is a metallurgical mystery, guys. Yeah, and it seemed like
it's sort of kicked off a renewed interest here in
the mid twentieth century. It definitely did. It became kind
of like the I don't want to say Holy Grail
because it's just so cliche, but it is pretty accurate
among metal or just to figure out Damascus steel and
to recreate it too, I think it's fair. So there
(22:40):
was there were many attempts. Like we said, there had
been previously many attempts back in the nineteenth century. But um,
I think in the seventies a pair of Stanford researchers
really kind of thought they had cracked this. And and
as I was saying at the outside of this episode,
they weren't entirely raw. They just didn't complete the thought
(23:03):
they thought they had. But they didn't. They figured out
one very important part and they actually did it by accident. Um.
They were looking up ways to make metal that is
much more shapeable but still equally strong, because you had
said these early smiths, where you know, they knew some
metals were strong, some metals were um hard, some metals
(23:23):
would break easily, but you could fold them into shapes
or whatever. They these guys were looking for a kind
of metal that you that was extremely strong but also shapable,
and they came up with this super plastic metal. And
somebody said, I think this is kind of similar to
Damascus steel. Yeah. Their names were Dr Jeffrey Wadsworth and
Dr o Leg Sherby the Sherbs And that's a good
(23:48):
movie name. Dr o Leg Sherby, Uh so there, Yeah,
And trying to find the superplastic metal. They found something
that I think someone at one of their presentations a
swordsman stood up in the movie version from the crowd
yeah and said, hey, this is uh, this is very
much like Damascus steel, which was you know, it was
very rich in carbon. And they went, what carbon or
(24:13):
did they already know it was carbon? Surely this was
not the reveal, right, they knew that this high carbon
um content was making their steel super plastic. And I
think the swordsman Zoro will call him, said surebs Um,
I think that Damascus steel also was high in carbon,
(24:33):
and I think maybe the super plastic thing is what
you guys have stumbled on. Here is the secret to
Damascus steel. Yeah, so let's go write a paper based
on this Rando Stranger's thoughts. Yeah, and when, because I
mean his name is Zoro, he carved in z in
my chest. Um, when we say a lot of carbon
between one and two, about one point five, which doesn't
(24:53):
sound like much, but regular steel has a fraction of
one percent of carbon. Yeah, so it's a lot for
a sword. Yeah. I think anything over point seven or
point no point seven eight percent rounded a point eight
percent is considered ultra high carbon steel, So really not
much like you said. But but as you add this carbon,
(25:18):
it does start to give the metal different properties it
UM and in particular with UH, with Damascus steel, it
turns out that that woots, that that woots alloy was
a hyper u tectoid ferro carbon alloy, which means that
that word, it had so much carbon in it that
(25:41):
there is um it changes the EU technic point. The
EU technic point is the temperature where all the all
the different materials that make up the alloys just separate
their different materials. They're melted apart, they're no longer together.
This has so much carbon in it that the melting
point is actually after the U tecnic point, So this
(26:02):
stuff can kind of fall apart either after the melting
point or before the melting point, I can't remember. But
it has to do with that, right and UM and
we'll get to the other secret property. But there was
also technique involved in that to create this Damascus steel,
you know, to forge a sword compared to other ores,
you were you were hammering at a relatively lower temperature, yeah,
(26:26):
than you would normally. That was the other thing that UM.
The Sherbs and Wadsworth, we're saying was it has to
do with this, but but on again a microscopic metallurgical level.
What they came upon was we think that the true
secret who's they gotta shot him out? Sherbs, Well, no,
I'm still on them. I'm still on them. So Shrubs
(26:48):
and Wadsworth said, we think that there's has to do
with these carbides that are forming. And so carbides are
a it's like iron and carbon mixed together, and in
particular what this form is called cementite. And these cementites
are forming as spheres and as you hammer and heat woots,
(27:09):
these iron carron iron carbides, spears align themselves just so
with the shards of iron to create this really strong
but also really resilient type of steel. Yeah, and this
is something that you're looking at under a microscope, and
that is one of the problems and one of the
(27:29):
reasons that it was so hard to figure this out
over the years is that in order to do that,
you have to take one of these blades and cut
it into sections and put it under a microscope. And
these were like rare collectible. So yeah, people weren't coming
off of them very not much. I mean, there were
a few museums donated some pieces. And then there was
this guy, Henrie Moser, who was a collector. I think
(27:51):
he had two thousand damask blades, and he donated two
daggers and four swords in the nineteen twenties to a
guy name uh z s h O k K. So
I'm gonna say shook, okay uh And so that that helped, obviously,
but but even hard to get ahold of this stuff
(28:11):
to to cut it up and put under a microscope,
and that's problem one. But then even when you put
it under a microscope, you're like, what, Okay, I kind
of understand what I'm seeing, But then how do I
how do I recreate this? And even more to the point,
how did these ancient Smith's two thousand years ago create this?
So they figured out, yes, so they figured out that
the iron carbides are definitely a big part of it.
(28:33):
And Wadsworth and the Srubs took a victory lap. But
then C yeah, something like that. But then C. S. Smith,
the metallurgist from the Manhattan Project, who I get the
impression he's kind of like this metallergy god. He's like,
I don't think that's it. Everybody I don't think this
is the true explanation. And so it remained unanswered for
(28:55):
another decade or so, and he checked in with the
other metallergy god on his right, Mr Bruce Dickinson, and
he said, make it so, that's right. Uh So then
these other dudes came along, um John deve Verhoeven from
the University of Iowa, and then a smithy from Florida
(29:16):
named al Pendre, And they spent I think like four
or five years again like running all these trials trying
to figure out what this last little secret sauce was. Yeah,
because so this is what he was up against. I
fight this may interject real quick. He was saying, was
it one of the components making up the slag? Was
it something being extracted from the crucible walls, the little
(29:37):
pot you melted in? Was it the type of iron
used to make it? Was at the time or temperature
used to heat the molten metal? Was at the cooling rate? Uh?
He had all these questions. He did not know what
it was. He just knew that Wadsworth and um the
Sherbs had not answered it yet. Right. Every time you
say Wadsworth and I want to think of the Muppet
show guys, was that there? No, I don't think it
(29:59):
was Wadsworth, but it was something like that, right, It
was not Bergdorf, Bergdorf and Goodman. It was we'll figure
it out. Oh goodness, somebody screaming out there. I think
it was Walmart and wolver Worse that was them. Uh well,
(30:22):
we don't look stuff up on the show. It's just
a long standing role generally, right, Yes, because it's rude
because we're actually sitting in front of each other. Uh so,
I mean I feel like you should announce it since
you're the one who kind of no, really you got this,
all right? Just wanting to interject that one thing about
like all the confounding factors that it could have possibly
(30:43):
been in that this guy's applying science to this, all right.
So what they found out was what happens on that
level was something that's called a micro segregation, which is
a chemical separation of alloy elements on very small scales
of low levels of carbide forming elements. They had a
list of five things. Vanadium our newest best friend, Molly
(31:06):
b Yeah, I was on the list. It's so funny,
how like that's come up like three or four times. No,
I never even knew it existed until like a month ago. Chromium, manganese,
and neobium. And what they found out was the winner overall,
ladies and gentlemen, was vanadium. Yes, the chemical element V
with a little bit of manganese they said, that has
(31:27):
something to do with it, but mainly vanadium. I think
as low as forty parts per million is actually effective.
And uh, that was so close to vibranium. I was like,
I got really excited and I was like, oh, man,
is it vibranium. Of course that's not real really, Yeah,
you're not into the marble at the m c U,
(31:48):
are you. Okay, what's it from? Vibranium is the fictional
alloy in uh Waconda, Okay make their weapons out of that. Yeah,
and that's what Cap Captain America shield is made from. Vibranium.
Did he get that from Wakonda? He got the vibranium
(32:09):
from Waconda. Oh that's neat. Yeah, I like it. You know,
I've noticed here there um in the Marvel universe. Sometimes
it almost seems like there's like crossovers between characters. That's
a great example of it. Yeah, it's almost like they
had it all plotted out. Uh, well, it's funny. Another
marvel Um shout that there's this company in Sweden making
(32:30):
this new Damascus steel and they give it all these like,
you know, sort of Viking names. One it's called thor one,
it's called Loki, it's called fern eating goat peek. But
they're just you know, they're trying to to increase sales
by naming it something super cool. Yeah, and they make
fake Damascus steel. It's like stainless steel with the pattern
(32:52):
blown onto it. Yeah, basically using powder. This is this
is they figured out finally true Damascus steel, which is
just absolutely wonderful. And it's it's that little bit of
now I can't remember, it's vanadium, right. Those are carbide
forming um elements, So it is the carbides. You do
(33:14):
have to start off with ultra high carbon steel. And
apparently the ancient Indian um uh smith's created that alloy
by putting a little bit of charcoal in there. Maybe
a little bit would in with the iron so it
would absorb a lot of carbon from it. It just
so happened that the iron ore that they were starting
off with had some vanadium in it, and that is
(33:36):
ultimately what created that amazing watermark pattern, but also gave
it its strength and survivability in battle. And I'm hoping
someone out there makes uh Damascus steel daggers and send
us one. Oh that'd be neat. I want to Damascus
steel dagger. Somebody I can't remember who it was. Remember
(33:57):
they sent us knives. I still have my Filet knife,
the chefs knife. Those are gorgeous, amazing. Thank you again.
I cannot remember your name as years ago, but thanks
many years ago. Uh you got anything else? I got
nothing else? And I'm still seeing that we're we recorded
this episode successfully that eventually yeah, uh well, if you
(34:18):
want to know more about Damascus Steel, go to your
local gas station. They probably have something that looks like it.
It's probably not real, probably not, but you can look
at it and say, oh, that's what they're talking about.
I got it. And since I said I got it,
it's time for listener mail. All right, I'm gonna call this.
Uh this is the most recent email in my in box.
(34:40):
Hey guys, I'm writing to tell you about numerical palindromes.
You dismissed them as being quite unexceptional, and while I
agree that alphabetic palindromes are much more complicated and difficult
that to tell you. I'm obsessed with palindromes on the
odometer of my car. Okay, I can see how that
could be fun looking up recognizing a palindrome on your
old Yeah, I guess so, sure. Uh. I actually shared
(35:06):
two cars with my husband, and when I got in
and saw that the odometer read three three nine three four,
I actually gasped. Today I was able to resolve my
stress in that car, as you see. I would is
that a palandrum though, oh, okay, just involved subtraction, because
(35:28):
if so, it's not a palant I think this person
just missed the palindrome because they share a car with
her husband. That makes sense. Today I was able to
resolve my stress in that car, as you can see.
Once again, I particularly enjoy ones with eight and zeros
or six is in opposition to nines like two, six, nine,
(35:49):
nine two or eight eight. Yeah, there's some satisfying about
seeing those numbers. I think it's nice and round plus
nine is unlucky in Japan, Oh it is? Yeah, okay,
nine and four If you can imagine rotating it around
on its central number, there's always another cooler balanced number
on the horizon, even if it isn't a perfect palindrome.
I hope you have. I hope I have elevated numerical palindrumes.
(36:11):
A little bit for you, A little bit chow for now.
That is from Robin van Guessel in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada,
North America, beautiful town, Planet Earth. Thanks a lot, Robin.
Appreciate that, really appreciate the chow as well. That was
very nice. Nice ad could send off super eighties throwback
uh and uh. If you want to get in touch
(36:32):
with us like Robin did, you can send us an
email to wrap it up spanking on the bottom and
send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's the beautiful and illustrious Charles W. Chuck Bryant right there,
and there's the equally awesome Jerry Droom Rowland right here
(00:22):
to my right, about to chow down on some stuff
for lunch. You were just cussing her out before we
hit record. What are you talking about? And this is
stuff you should know? That's right, the Disordered Edition. Uh yeah,
this was a bit of a mess about Damascus Steel.
It's just my favorite American gladiator. Oh that's a good one, Chuck,
(00:43):
pretty good. Yeah, that was great. It's all I could
think about was that off the cuff. Okay, it's off
the cuff in that. I thought about it five minutes
before we came in here. It's still counts. It's good. Well,
it wasn't a real character, right, This is a joke. No,
but it sounds like it does. Okay. I wanted to
make sure we're on the same page. I also wanted
to take your joke and mash it into pieces. Good job,
(01:06):
Thank you. So um, we're talking today about Damascus Steel,
which I was perfectly aware of before this, but I
didn't know at all by any stretch. And what it
turns out that apparently a lot of people who write
about Domescus steel don't know, is that there was a
metal metallurgical mystery that developed over time that was only
(01:27):
solved in the nineties that other people, yes exactly, thank you,
that other people have you know, tried and maybe somewhat
contributed to. And now, finally, thanks to the um the
efforts of these metall aregists who really got involved and
tried to figure this out, this mystery has been solved.
But it's possible that had they really not taken up
(01:49):
this this gauntlet and tried to figure out what was
Damascus steel, we might never have known, because even if
you rewind all the way back two thousand years ago
when Damascus steel was started in production, they had no
idea what Damascus steel was. Either. No, it's kind of
an accidental find. Uh. If you look up Damascus steel
(02:10):
on a picture viewer on the Internet, you will probably say, oh,
it's like those cool swords or knives or guns that
have that cool like wavy watery etching on them, like
Game of Thrones. Even talks about Damascus steel, and or
or if you're an interior designer and you're like, I've
(02:32):
never seen a sword. It's like the damask material that
sometimes people used for window treatments. That pattern is the same. Yeah,
and that spelled D A M A S K. Yes.
But it is based on that yes, exactly, um, and
it is gorgeous stuff. Like if you see a if
you're a knife collector or whatever, and you collect like
a new knife that says Damascus steel, or a gun
(02:53):
that has a cool pattern. That is what we're gonna
refer to as quote unquote Damascus steel. It is not
the original, it's not the o G Damascus steel. It
is something that people have learned to do these days
to look like Damascus steel, and that itself, the technique
they used from what I saw, was actually based on
a pretty ancient technique as well. But it's still not
(03:15):
Damascus steel now. And the reason why anybody would care
about Damascus steel is not just the way it looked, right,
which I think that if Damascus steel didn't have that
very characteristic watery look to the to the steel, UM,
I don't think people would have taken up that quest
to recreate it. Yeah, I think that's really part of
its a lure that drew the metal or just sin
(03:37):
at least. Well, yeah, it's um, I mean we should
go ahead and say the allurea is a few fold.
It is super cool looking. Yeah, I can't deny it.
I won't. But if it's super cool and like your
sword breaks on some guy's suit of armor, he's not
gonna be like that was a pretty cool story. I
feel bad for you. Let's just call it even know
you're dead meat. So uh, it is super super strong
(04:00):
and super cool looking and very flexible for a metal.
It's got all these cool properties kind of all wrapped
up into one and it's it's like this super super
steel super steel. That's exactly what it wasn't It was
produced in the ancient world. We here in the modern
world don't like to think of people in the ancient
world having better steal than we have. Well they didn't really.
(04:23):
I mean, supposedly modern steel is better than even O G. Damascus.
Think supposedly is the operative word. So um. But there
was a period in time from at least I think
the first mentioned in the West that we are aware
of comes from like the third or fourth century b c.
Where the Greeks, I think Alexander the Great is basically
(04:44):
like this stuff is awesome. Yeah, um, And so it
was well known by that time, you know, more than
two thousand years ago for being the steel you wanted
to use if you were creating a weapon. Yeah. And
you know, let's go back in time a bit. If
you're a swordmaker couple of thousand years ago, you've got
your work cut out for you because you don't really
(05:05):
know what you're doing yet, Like you don't know what
kind of of metal that you're getting. And if you
get some iron, iron is going to have other properties
in there. But you just kind of have what you have.
And the R and D process. If you imagine how
long it takes to forge a sword. Then you go
out there and swing it and it breaks, You're like,
all right, let me try again, but maybe let me
(05:27):
try a different uh type of or or different type
of iron. And swords are long and their thin, and
it's just the very nature of making a broadsword is
really difficult. To make it super strong and sharp and
all the things that you like not so heavy that
you can't even carry it. So they were sort of
I mean they were brilliant in one sense that they
(05:48):
were figuring this stuff out on the fly, but they
were also just sort of victims of whatever materials they
had available. So that's what makes Damascus steel so interesting
to me is that it was a fluke of nature
and it happened to be mined. As we'll see, it
was a fluke of nature. It happened to be mine
in this one area in South India. Um, and it
(06:12):
just so happens that this particular iron ore that was
being mined in the area made some of the finest
steel the world's ever seen. Yeah. So they called it
woots w O O t z steel. And like you said,
it was mine near Hyderabad, India, into these two point
(06:32):
three to two point five km cakes or ingots by
the size of a hockey puck I saw. Yeah. So
they would shift these things out and they were mining,
and they didn't know like, hey, we've got this secret
super metal that you know, no one is going to
believe what we're sending them. They were just mining stuff
and they sent a lot of this to Damascus in
Syria and they made them into swords. And most people
(06:55):
think that's probably where the name comes from. Even though
some people do say the root word uh Damas and
Arabic is watered. Oh, I didn't know that that could
have been like one of the things. But my money
is on the fact that they sent them to Damascus
and the ship it makes sense. Yeah, I mean, I
guess it depends on how old the city of Damascus is,
but I get the impression it's pretty old. It's not young.
(07:17):
But watery steel makes a lot of sense to for
that particular type of steel. Maybe it was either way,
it was very It was well known outside of the
Middle East and West Asia and India um as like
the go to steel. But at the time, like you
were saying, they don't seem to have understood, um that
(07:40):
what they had on their hands was just this incredibly
high grade steel, just perfect steel for making weapons. I
get the impression that the metal smith's tended to take
all the credit for it, where in retrospect, you or
I could have taken a lump of woots steel and
just hammered it with our elbows, you know, would have
turned into like a world class sword, you know, yeah,
(08:01):
or at least something you could punch somebody, right, But
the metal smith's over the years. Um, kind of circle
the wagons and pretended like they had some great secret
or technique and maybe even thought that they did. But really,
as we'll see, the secret ingredients, we're all in the
steel that was being mined from India. Yeah, but also
in the technique, which we'll get to as well. But um,
(08:24):
but I think that was happenstance more than yeah, then understood.
I think, so we know that what they should have
done to see if they had the good stuff. They
should have dabbed their pinky and it touched it to
their tongue, rob their gums with it. Yeah, that's how
you know you got the good that's true. All right.
So where were we We were in the Crusaders, right.
The Crusaders get a hold of these things, and they
(08:47):
kind of did what they wanted to do. Yeah, we
should do an episode on the Crusades. No, okay, fair enough.
I feel like we've talked about this before. Uh so
this is the beginning of the eleventh century. They got
these swords off the battlefield, and there's there's a lot
of lower that surrounds this Damascus steel, like you could
(09:08):
cut a silk scarf that was falling through the air.
What about a feather, because you cut a feather, cut
that feather right in half. What about a hair? You
can split that hair right into my friend long ways?
Oh I thought you just met No, I'm talking bugs
bunny style. Yeah, you could split that hair. Um. But
all this was lower. It was really good stuff. Nonetheless,
but there are a lot of like you know, sort
(09:29):
of ancient stories about the properties, like the magical properties
of this steel. Right. Well, I saw one thing, though
I don't think it has anything to do with magic,
but I saw it from a metallurgy website. Somebody took
a bunch of notes off I guess some lecture, and
I'm not entirely certain what the lecture was, but it
was pretty intense. But they said that this would cost
(09:52):
about the equivalent of a car today. One of these swords,
one of these weapons. So they were highly prized. So
you can imagine the Crusaders coming back to Europe and saying, hey, smithie,
um make me something like this. And from from what
I understand, what the smith's came up with, because they
were hamstrung by the iron that they had to work with,
(10:15):
they came up with a different technique for creating a
type of Damascus steel that isn't true Damascus steel, but
became so widespread and basically all Europe had to offer
that it became what's known as a type of Damascus
steel pattern well to Damascus steel, right, and that is
you know, it's still strong and it has that nice
(10:37):
looking you know, watery uh etching or whatever. But it
kept them from getting their heads cut off. Probably it
was good enough, yeah, I would say, but it's off
market Damascus steel. It's the knights of the round table
of Damascus steel, you know what I mean? Sure, because
it wasn't that woots. You gotta have that woots, right,
(10:58):
But they didn't know that at the time. So because
they were able to form that watery pattern from taking um,
two different kinds of steel, that's what pattern well, the
Damascus steel is made from use at least two different kinds,
apparently ultimately for the color contrast. Because that creates that
watery patterns, the two kinds of steel hammered into one another.
(11:22):
That creates the pattern in in that type, which makes
it not really true Damascus steel. If you have true
Damascus steel, that pattern goes all the way through that
that Damascus steel blade like you can, Yes, you can
wear it down and wear it down until you make
it through the other side. And that water patterns all
the way through. See that is pretty cool, Like it's
(11:43):
a part of the the or itself at that point.
Absolutely that is what differentiates true Damascus steel from anything else.
That's right, And boy, I can't wait to talk about
that stuff at the end. How they figure this out?
I know, I feel like we've been paying this out tantalizingly.
All right, well, we'll take a break here and talk
about some of the efforts over the years to try
and figure out what this uh what the steel was?
(12:05):
Right after this? Okay, chuck, this is going so well,
(12:39):
by the way, Uh, should we tell people that we've
had some technical difficulties as well? They're probably like, why
is wrong with these Yeah, and we're kind of giggly
and we're not drunk but dry. Didn't bring champagne today.
Rare technical difficulties have causes to have to redo some stuff.
We're just not used to that or not. Usually everything
(12:59):
runs like a Swiss watch around here, Swiss army knife
with the corkscrew outgoing right up our butts. That's more
what it's like we gotta say that it's not Jerry's fault. No,
we would never blame Jerry for something like somebody. It's
like the three little pigs. Somebody has been sleeping in
our bed, you know, that's what I blame. Somebody got
in our studio and and touch some stuff. Yes, well,
(13:21):
they're gonna be very surprised by the padlock that they
encountered exactly. And you're like, and there's only one key,
and I swallow, I'm gonna have to get it out
with the Swiss Army corkscrew. Alright. So from the beginning
they started to try and recreate this stuff. And you know,
like I said, that was during the eleventh century, and
then it just sort of that. It seems like it
(13:41):
just continued on throughout the ages of people trying to
recreate this. Yes, but at the same time, they were
still able to keep making Damascus steel from India, the
quote unquote Damascus steel up until depending on no, no,
the real stuff. Oh yeah, because they had this ingod
yes up until um and I think India was still
producing it up until depending on you ask, either the
eighteenth century or the nineteenth century, right, good point. And
(14:03):
then all of a sudden, Damascus steel just stops and
all you have is the pattern. Well that you cannot
find true Damascus steel anymore. And it was quite perplexing
to a lot of people, it was. And they were
making uh, they're making guns, gun barrels with the stuff.
That's how long it continued. Yeah, And that's I think
(14:25):
that's supposedly what supplanted Damascus steel in a lot of
people's mind, because some people said they didn't even realize
that there was a mystery to damascus stell. He just
thought it had been supplanted by advances in steelmaking, so
you didn't need Damascus steel anymore. And another explanation I
saw was that Domascus steel is actually terrible for um
(14:45):
rifling in the gun barrel because that watery pattern would
actually hold onto the powder residue and that your gun
would be likelier to backfire, but it would. It was
actually very useful in that you could make a gun
barrel which is long and narrow from this Damascus steel
because that's the special kind of steel that stays strong
(15:07):
even when you're elongating it, right, And I mean, let's
be honest, the people wielding those guns were like, this
is pretty boss. It is. But I also think, you know,
if I'm on the battlefield, I want the guy who's
just who only cares about the function of his gun,
not the guy who's admiring what his gun looks like.
You know what I mean, Like when you're walking through
(15:28):
the old gun market, you want the guy that's like,
she's ugly, but she shoots straight. That's right, Yes, the
guy from Jaws. Is that Quint? Yeah? Uh so this
one guy there was a Russian medal are just named
p Anasoft and he thought that he had it all
figured out. They called it. He called it blat. And
(15:50):
he even said and no, in certain terms, our warriors
will soon be armed with bulat blades. Are agricultural laborers
will till the soil with bulat plows airs, Bulat will
supersed all steel. And he didn't. It didn't work. He didn't, No,
And he actually was part of this initial wave of scientists.
(16:11):
I think as metallurgy was really developing, because we said,
before the ancients had it was all just intuition and technique,
and they knew what, you know, they were doing, but
they also couldn't be like, oh, it's because of this
that's happening on a microscopic level. Right, of course, they
didn't have microscopes and no chemistry. You can thank Anto
(16:32):
Van Levin Hook for that, that's right. Um. But as
metallurgy started to develop, as science itself started to develop
as a field, that was a sub discipline that really
kind of came around. And one of the things they
tried to figure out was what was the deal with
Damascus steel. It was one of the first things they
really applied their mind to. And um, Michael Faraday actually
(16:53):
who is the guy who crosses over from this episode
to the other one today. He was the son of
a blacksmith, very him a scientist, the father of electricity. Um.
He tried his hand at figuring out what Damascus steel was.
And what everybody kind of had a suspicion was that
the steel had more carbon than that your average steel,
but there had to be some secret ingredient. And so
(17:15):
it kind of became trendy in the first half of
the nineteenth century among metal or just in just scientists
in general to figure out what that secret third ingredient was. Yeah,
and there were a lot of attempts I think in
that UM. I think Faraday thought it might have been
silica and aluminum or aluminium to him. Oh yeah. In
(17:36):
the eighteen twenties, Jean Robert Brent at the Paris Meant
did a six week study in the trial, and I
think he did like three experiments he was trying to
reproduce this woods unsuccessfully. I think he tried platinum, gold, silver, copper, tin, zinc, lead,
(17:59):
this manganese he was close there, uranium, arsenic and boron,
and then that Russian even tried diamond. Yes, it's like,
let me throw some diamond in there and see what
that does. Why not at this point, like I think
somebody melted down a kitchen sink. And then the whole
time they were like still hearing about this lore. Like
(18:19):
I think by this point they didn't, you know, they
knew if it came out of like these stories that
came out of the Middle Ages certainly were not true.
But there were stories about about cooling it in dragon's blood,
about quenching it and dragon's blood liking when you cool
it down or red medicine or green medicine is what
they called it. There was also when I saw where
(18:40):
you're supposed to quench it in the urine of a goat,
that's been fed nothing but ferns for three days is real.
It's real. I mean it's not real obviously, but no,
but I can't tell if you're making it up. No, no, no,
that I wish I were that clever. That was pretty good.
That sounded like a you joke. Uh oh, a you joke. No, Okay,
(19:02):
that's sheep. Right, Um, let me see. They had to
have been heated until it glowed like the rising sun
in the desert, and then cool to royal purple and
plunge into the body of a muscular slave to transfer
the strength of that person into the sword. So obviously,
in the eighteen hundreds they know all of this is hogwash, right,
(19:23):
But over the thousands of years that Domascus steel have
been produced, like these are the lower that kind of
developed around, right, Yeah, I mean, and they were. They
wanted to keep this stuff a secret. That's one of
the reasons. Aside from running out of that original woots.
Another factor was the fact that they didn't, you know,
spread this around. You wanted to if you if you
knew something like this, you wanted to keep it in
(19:45):
the family. I think, well that's what a lot of
people thought. So so you have a whole like the
whole world is just confused about Damascus Steel and and
will be and was until this episode comes out where
we finally explain the deal. But there were different camps
running around, Like we said, some people were aware that
Domeascus steel just wasn't around anymore, uh, and that something
(20:06):
had happened. Other people just thought it was supplanted by
increasingly better technology. Um so what other people thought, And
the most interesting idea to me was that the smiths
who created these these incredible blades, like you said, kept
it in the family and then just some generation failed
(20:27):
to tell the next generation. The secret was lost forever.
And that is really like up the Damascus Steel alley
that it shrouded in mystery and secrecy and magic and dragons,
blood and furn eating goats that p all over the place,
you know, And that's that's so it's really interesting. But
no one knew exactly what was going on. They just
(20:50):
knew that nobody was making true cast domestics Damascus steel anymore.
Should we take another break? Alright, this third act, you guys,
just get ready, it's gonna knock your socks off right
after this. All right, So everyone's trying to make this stuff.
(21:35):
Everyone's trying to recreate it. The answer is, uh, it's
kind of right under their nose. But it's not because
it's not under their nose because this stuff had been
gone for a long time, dried up that woots, dried
the w up and was was gone. Uh. And then
I think it was when was this in the nineteen
(21:59):
sixties that a guy named CS Smith and he was
a medal or just the Chief Metal or just the
Manhattan Project. He wrote a paper about Damascus steel and
again this is the nineteen sixties, and and said this
stuff was lost to history and a bunch of people
tried over the years to recreate it. He kind of
like laid down the gauntlet like this is a this
(22:19):
is a metallurgical mystery, guys. Yeah, and it seemed like
it's sort of kicked off a renewed interest here in
the mid twentieth century. It definitely did. It became kind
of like the I don't want to say Holy Grail
because it's just so cliche, but it is pretty accurate
among metal or just to figure out Damascus steel and
to recreate it too, I think it's fair. So there
(22:40):
was there were many attempts. Like we said, there had
been previously many attempts back in the nineteenth century. But um,
I think in the seventies a pair of Stanford researchers
really kind of thought they had cracked this. And and
as I was saying at the outside of this episode,
they weren't entirely raw. They just didn't complete the thought
(23:03):
they thought they had. But they didn't. They figured out
one very important part and they actually did it by accident. Um.
They were looking up ways to make metal that is
much more shapeable but still equally strong, because you had
said these early smiths, where you know, they knew some
metals were strong, some metals were um hard, some metals
(23:23):
would break easily, but you could fold them into shapes
or whatever. They these guys were looking for a kind
of metal that you that was extremely strong but also shapable,
and they came up with this super plastic metal. And
somebody said, I think this is kind of similar to
Damascus steel. Yeah. Their names were Dr Jeffrey Wadsworth and
Dr o Leg Sherby the Sherbs And that's a good
(23:48):
movie name. Dr o Leg Sherby, Uh so there, Yeah,
And trying to find the superplastic metal. They found something
that I think someone at one of their presentations a
swordsman stood up in the movie version from the crowd
yeah and said, hey, this is uh, this is very
much like Damascus steel, which was you know, it was
very rich in carbon. And they went, what carbon or
(24:13):
did they already know it was carbon? Surely this was
not the reveal, right, they knew that this high carbon
um content was making their steel super plastic. And I
think the swordsman Zoro will call him, said surebs Um,
I think that Damascus steel also was high in carbon,
(24:33):
and I think maybe the super plastic thing is what
you guys have stumbled on. Here is the secret to
Damascus steel. Yeah, so let's go write a paper based
on this Rando Stranger's thoughts. Yeah, and when, because I
mean his name is Zoro, he carved in z in
my chest. Um, when we say a lot of carbon
between one and two, about one point five, which doesn't
(24:53):
sound like much, but regular steel has a fraction of
one percent of carbon. Yeah, so it's a lot for
a sword. Yeah. I think anything over point seven or
point no point seven eight percent rounded a point eight
percent is considered ultra high carbon steel, So really not
much like you said. But but as you add this carbon,
(25:18):
it does start to give the metal different properties it
UM and in particular with UH, with Damascus steel, it
turns out that that woots, that that woots alloy was
a hyper u tectoid ferro carbon alloy, which means that
that word, it had so much carbon in it that
(25:41):
there is um it changes the EU technic point. The
EU technic point is the temperature where all the all
the different materials that make up the alloys just separate
their different materials. They're melted apart, they're no longer together.
This has so much carbon in it that the melting
point is actually after the U tecnic point, So this
(26:02):
stuff can kind of fall apart either after the melting
point or before the melting point, I can't remember. But
it has to do with that, right and UM and
we'll get to the other secret property. But there was
also technique involved in that to create this Damascus steel,
you know, to forge a sword compared to other ores,
you were you were hammering at a relatively lower temperature, yeah,
(26:26):
than you would normally. That was the other thing that UM.
The Sherbs and Wadsworth, we're saying was it has to
do with this, but but on again a microscopic metallurgical level.
What they came upon was we think that the true
secret who's they gotta shot him out? Sherbs, Well, no,
I'm still on them. I'm still on them. So Shrubs
(26:48):
and Wadsworth said, we think that there's has to do
with these carbides that are forming. And so carbides are
a it's like iron and carbon mixed together, and in
particular what this form is called cementite. And these cementites
are forming as spheres and as you hammer and heat woots,
(27:09):
these iron carron iron carbides, spears align themselves just so
with the shards of iron to create this really strong
but also really resilient type of steel. Yeah, and this
is something that you're looking at under a microscope, and
that is one of the problems and one of the
(27:29):
reasons that it was so hard to figure this out
over the years is that in order to do that,
you have to take one of these blades and cut
it into sections and put it under a microscope. And
these were like rare collectible. So yeah, people weren't coming
off of them very not much. I mean, there were
a few museums donated some pieces. And then there was
this guy, Henrie Moser, who was a collector. I think
(27:51):
he had two thousand damask blades, and he donated two
daggers and four swords in the nineteen twenties to a
guy name uh z s h O k K. So
I'm gonna say shook, okay uh And so that that helped, obviously,
but but even hard to get ahold of this stuff
(28:11):
to to cut it up and put under a microscope,
and that's problem one. But then even when you put
it under a microscope, you're like, what, Okay, I kind
of understand what I'm seeing, But then how do I
how do I recreate this? And even more to the point,
how did these ancient Smith's two thousand years ago create this?
So they figured out, yes, so they figured out that
the iron carbides are definitely a big part of it.
(28:33):
And Wadsworth and the Srubs took a victory lap. But
then C yeah, something like that. But then C. S. Smith,
the metallurgist from the Manhattan Project, who I get the
impression he's kind of like this metallergy god. He's like,
I don't think that's it. Everybody I don't think this
is the true explanation. And so it remained unanswered for
(28:55):
another decade or so, and he checked in with the
other metallergy god on his right, Mr Bruce Dickinson, and
he said, make it so, that's right. Uh So then
these other dudes came along, um John deve Verhoeven from
the University of Iowa, and then a smithy from Florida
(29:16):
named al Pendre, And they spent I think like four
or five years again like running all these trials trying
to figure out what this last little secret sauce was. Yeah,
because so this is what he was up against. I
fight this may interject real quick. He was saying, was
it one of the components making up the slag? Was
it something being extracted from the crucible walls, the little
(29:37):
pot you melted in? Was it the type of iron
used to make it? Was at the time or temperature
used to heat the molten metal? Was at the cooling rate? Uh?
He had all these questions. He did not know what
it was. He just knew that Wadsworth and um the
Sherbs had not answered it yet. Right. Every time you
say Wadsworth and I want to think of the Muppet
show guys, was that there? No, I don't think it
(29:59):
was Wadsworth, but it was something like that, right, It
was not Bergdorf, Bergdorf and Goodman. It was we'll figure
it out. Oh goodness, somebody screaming out there. I think
it was Walmart and wolver Worse that was them. Uh well,
(30:22):
we don't look stuff up on the show. It's just
a long standing role generally, right, Yes, because it's rude
because we're actually sitting in front of each other. Uh so,
I mean I feel like you should announce it since
you're the one who kind of no, really you got this,
all right? Just wanting to interject that one thing about
like all the confounding factors that it could have possibly
(30:43):
been in that this guy's applying science to this, all right.
So what they found out was what happens on that
level was something that's called a micro segregation, which is
a chemical separation of alloy elements on very small scales
of low levels of carbide forming elements. They had a
list of five things. Vanadium our newest best friend, Molly
(31:06):
b Yeah, I was on the list. It's so funny,
how like that's come up like three or four times. No,
I never even knew it existed until like a month ago. Chromium, manganese,
and neobium. And what they found out was the winner overall,
ladies and gentlemen, was vanadium. Yes, the chemical element V
with a little bit of manganese they said, that has
(31:27):
something to do with it, but mainly vanadium. I think
as low as forty parts per million is actually effective.
And uh, that was so close to vibranium. I was like,
I got really excited and I was like, oh, man,
is it vibranium. Of course that's not real really, Yeah,
you're not into the marble at the m c U,
(31:48):
are you. Okay, what's it from? Vibranium is the fictional
alloy in uh Waconda, Okay make their weapons out of that. Yeah,
and that's what Cap Captain America shield is made from. Vibranium.
Did he get that from Wakonda? He got the vibranium
(32:09):
from Waconda. Oh that's neat. Yeah, I like it. You know,
I've noticed here there um in the Marvel universe. Sometimes
it almost seems like there's like crossovers between characters. That's
a great example of it. Yeah, it's almost like they
had it all plotted out. Uh, well, it's funny. Another
marvel Um shout that there's this company in Sweden making
(32:30):
this new Damascus steel and they give it all these like,
you know, sort of Viking names. One it's called thor one,
it's called Loki, it's called fern eating goat peek. But
they're just you know, they're trying to to increase sales
by naming it something super cool. Yeah, and they make
fake Damascus steel. It's like stainless steel with the pattern
(32:52):
blown onto it. Yeah, basically using powder. This is this
is they figured out finally true Damascus steel, which is
just absolutely wonderful. And it's it's that little bit of
now I can't remember, it's vanadium, right. Those are carbide
forming um elements, So it is the carbides. You do
(33:14):
have to start off with ultra high carbon steel. And
apparently the ancient Indian um uh smith's created that alloy
by putting a little bit of charcoal in there. Maybe
a little bit would in with the iron so it
would absorb a lot of carbon from it. It just
so happened that the iron ore that they were starting
off with had some vanadium in it, and that is
(33:36):
ultimately what created that amazing watermark pattern, but also gave
it its strength and survivability in battle. And I'm hoping
someone out there makes uh Damascus steel daggers and send
us one. Oh that'd be neat. I want to Damascus
steel dagger. Somebody I can't remember who it was. Remember
(33:57):
they sent us knives. I still have my Filet knife,
the chefs knife. Those are gorgeous, amazing. Thank you again.
I cannot remember your name as years ago, but thanks
many years ago. Uh you got anything else? I got
nothing else? And I'm still seeing that we're we recorded
this episode successfully that eventually yeah, uh well, if you
(34:18):
want to know more about Damascus Steel, go to your
local gas station. They probably have something that looks like it.
It's probably not real, probably not, but you can look
at it and say, oh, that's what they're talking about.
I got it. And since I said I got it,
it's time for listener mail. All right, I'm gonna call this.
Uh this is the most recent email in my in box.
(34:40):
Hey guys, I'm writing to tell you about numerical palindromes.
You dismissed them as being quite unexceptional, and while I
agree that alphabetic palindromes are much more complicated and difficult
that to tell you. I'm obsessed with palindromes on the
odometer of my car. Okay, I can see how that
could be fun looking up recognizing a palindrome on your
old Yeah, I guess so, sure. Uh. I actually shared
(35:06):
two cars with my husband, and when I got in
and saw that the odometer read three three nine three four,
I actually gasped. Today I was able to resolve my
stress in that car, as you see. I would is
that a palandrum though, oh, okay, just involved subtraction, because
(35:28):
if so, it's not a palant I think this person
just missed the palindrome because they share a car with
her husband. That makes sense. Today I was able to
resolve my stress in that car, as you can see.
Once again, I particularly enjoy ones with eight and zeros
or six is in opposition to nines like two, six, nine,
(35:49):
nine two or eight eight. Yeah, there's some satisfying about
seeing those numbers. I think it's nice and round plus
nine is unlucky in Japan, Oh it is? Yeah, okay,
nine and four If you can imagine rotating it around
on its central number, there's always another cooler balanced number
on the horizon, even if it isn't a perfect palindrome.
I hope you have. I hope I have elevated numerical palindrumes.
(36:11):
A little bit for you, A little bit chow for now.
That is from Robin van Guessel in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada,
North America, beautiful town, Planet Earth. Thanks a lot, Robin.
Appreciate that, really appreciate the chow as well. That was
very nice. Nice ad could send off super eighties throwback
uh and uh. If you want to get in touch
(36:32):
with us like Robin did, you can send us an
email to wrap it up spanking on the bottom and
send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
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