"Wootz" and "Damascus" are technically the same, but "Wootz" is pretty rare. "Damascus" has come to be used to describe steel that is, technically, "pattern-welded." Pattern-welded steel is really not that hard to make if you can figure out how to forge-weld, which is also not as difficult as it sounds when someone describes it. If I can do it, it can't be that hard!
Making Wootz, on the other hand, is very difficult, can only be done with exactly the right alloy, and was a lost art for hundreds of years. It's only in the last 20 years that Al Pendray and some others have rediscovered the way to make Wootz.
The process of making Wootz involves placing just the right iron alloy (in the old days, the smiths who made it in the Middle East knew it had to come from a certain area, but they didn't really know why) into a crucible with clay, leaves, etc. The types and proportions of all the ingredients have to be pretty exact--this is not case-hardening although it sounds similar. If it's done right, the resulting steel has a grained or veined appearance on the outside. This stuff is in fact superior to many modern steels in many ways. In fact, when Pendray and the others first figured out how to make it again, there was talk of mass-producing Wootz for aerospace parts! Amazing the things we've forgotten.
Anyway, this seemingly magical steel was justly famous. Europeans mostly bought it in Damascus, so it became known as Damascus steel. The smiths who could create it were in demand, and they protected the secrets of creating Damascus so fiercely that eventually the method died out and was lost for a couple hundred years. I don't know exactly how to make Wootz and I get the impression that one would have to be a VERY good smith to make the method work even if he knew it. Note that Pendray and the others have shared their findings pretty freely and yet Wootz is still pretty rare. There are people making it, but it's expensive, difficult, and easy to ruin.
Pattern-welding is the art of taking two different types of steels and welding them together into one billet, mixing the steels in some way as you go. The usual methods are to fold, twist, or cut and re-weld the billet as you forge it. By welding two steels together, the old-time smiths sought to combine the hardness of one steel with the toughness of another, for instance. Of course, this is far from a perfect way to do so, but it was better than either steel alone at the time, or at least that was the theory. Nowadays, modern steel alloys far outperform most pattern welds. There is the additional danger, as Jim points out, that the smith might leave "voids" or open spaces in the steel where the weld didn't take. This is devilishly easy to do, but any decent smith will have tested the blade thoroughly before he tries to sell it to you.
Now, I have no expert confirmation on this, but if I were looking for a pattern-welded blade for serious use (defined as all out abuse where I was afraid the blade might break, bend or dull out) I'd look for a very small-grained type pattern--I tend to think that's a tighter, more even "mixture" of the steels and so less likely to have a soft chunk next to a hard chunk and so on. It also usually means the smith spent more time manipulating the billet, thus "mixing" the steels better.
For most people's purposes, such as cutting food or skinning and butchering game, any decent Damascus should work fine.
The short version? Pattern-welded steel is probably what you want. It's beautiful stuff if it's done right, and it can be plenty tough for what you want. Wootz . . . . well, if you have a Wootz pocketknife, you'll never lack for a conversation starter! It is, however, expensive.
Wootz info:
Historical and Scientific overview of Wootz
Wootz appearance:
Pattern-welded steel can be just about anything you imagine. To get the "Damascus" appearance, the steels are forged together and the resulting blade is etched. The etchant reacts with the different steels at different rates, so one always gets darker, is etched more deeply, etc. This creates the contrast. You can get Damascus with ladder patterns, spiral patterns, stripes, swirls, polka dots, "raindrops" and even words. Daryl Meier once made a bowie with the American flag repeated down the blade--with thirteen stripes and fifty stars in every single flag!
(Don't bother asking me how he did that. If I knew, I'd have made one.
)
A couple of shots from
Daryl's Page:
And one more I can't explain. This one is actually less impressive than the flag, except that he took the time to make the "USA" read correctly on
both sides of the blade:
OK, now you all know my dirty little secret. I'm a steel geek. Emphasis on Geek.
