Tungsten carbide (WC) is a widely used substance in manufacturing industries because of its higher wear-resistance property. The high hardness and melting point with excellent abrasive and corrosion-resistance properties makes it most suitable substance for cutting tool industries. There are a number of processes for the synthesis of tungsten carbide powders and each process varies in the characteristics of the powder produced, including mechanical milling and combustion synthesis techniques which lead to produce ultrafine grain tungsten carbide. Tungsten carbide powders with submicron grain size are characterized by a higher abrasive wear resistance and hardness. So interest for making nanograin tungsten carbide has been growing rapidly during last decades. Metalothermic reduction of tungsten oxide by several materials has been done including aluminium, magnesium and zinc. In this research, zinc was chosen as the reducing agent and In-situ carburizing via graphite was used for direct synthesis of tungsten carbide. Mechanical alloying and Self-propagating high-temperature synthesis (SHS) technique were employed to produce nanograin tungsten carbide powder. Powder mixtures at the stoichiometry ratio were milled for 20, 40, 60 hours and also pellets were compacted by using of a 10MPa press and were ignited at 800 °C and 900°C. While characterising the products, the path of SHS was studied using Differential Thermal Analysis (DTA) technique. Characterizations of the products were done using X-ray diffraction (XRD) method and Scanning electron microscope (SEM). SHS results showed that without mechanical activation, at T ig = 800 °C, only Metalothermic reduction of tungsten oxide by zinc takes place and the products are pure tungsten and zinc oxide. At T ig =900°C, some zinc tungstate (ZnWO 4 ) is produced in addition to the main products. DTA results showed that the minimum temperature required to reduce tungsten oxide is 600 °C. Studies showed that the zinc is melted at the beginning of reaction and wets the surface of tungsten oxide and starts the reduction reaction. The heat of metalothermic reduction activates carbothermic reduction too and the rest of the reduction takes place via carbothermis reduction. Analysis of milled samples showed that the reduction starts at 40hr of milling to produce the products (tungsten carbide and zinc oxide) and the product of 60hr of milling is amorphous and needs to be heat treated. Phase analysis of the samples heat treated at 800°C confirmed the presence of WC and ZnO. In order to eliminate the zinc oxide from the tungsten carbide, the heat treated product was leached using hydrochloric acid. The calculated grain size for tungsten carbide after heat treatment was about 10 nm. Keywords : Tungsten carbide, Mechanical Alloying, SHS, Nanostructured