The Key Role of Impurities in Ancient Damascus Steel Blades (1998)
tms.org
tms.org
> Nor did wootz production mysteriously vanish either – there is evidence for extensive production of crucible steel in Hyderabad in the 17th century; early 19th century accounts by British and Russian writers also describe the process It was never lost! D. Mushet patented what was, as Craddock notes, “clearly a copy of the Indian process” in 1800 (Craddock, op. cit. 283) in Britain. My impression, though none of my sources quite say this directly, is that the remaining Indian steelmaking industry subsequently withered away due to competition with British steel and (perhaps more decisively) a British desire to keep steel production (with its obvious implications for weapon production) in Britain and not in the (potentially rebellious) colonies.
It seems like the process was lost only relatively briefly, or simply unknown. maybe this is just a terminology question.
Once the studies described in the article revealed details of the chemical and physical structure of the blades, and, in particular, of the necessity for trace elements to promote the formation of carbides, the authors successfully replicated the process.
This leads the authors to suggest that the decline in quality and eventual disappearance of the practice of making such steels was due to the exhaustion of ores yielding iron containing the necessary trace elements. The manufacturers, having no knowledge of the existence, let alone importance, of these elements, were in the dark about how they might rectify the situation.
I imagine that all the factors you mention were also relevant, including the relative cheapness of Bessemer-process steel, the relative ease of creating good quality knives from it, and the supplanting of the sword by the gun.
This is an interesting story for anyone who may find themselves in a present or recent state of success at any endeavor, given that any sufficiently complex endeavor probably includes inputs that you don't fully understand or may be entirely unaware of.
Probably goes double at the organizational level; brains tend to be distributed roughly about 1 per person and institutional knowledge with it, absent substantial effort to spread it around. But even that hits its limits: there are almost certainly things that no one knows why they're working and could change or stop.