[Forging a sword]
>Actually, that is not my understand of the matter. Depending on the
>process, there is considerable wastate. In the case of the pattern
>welding method used by the vikings and the celts, up to 3/4 of the
>bar was lost.
A bit of googling turned up the following outline of medieval
technology
http://filebox.vt.edu/users/jselmer/technology_article.htm
and description of modern sword making
http://people.howstuffworks.com/sword-making5.htm
among other less useful articles.
As far as I can see the high wastage rates refer to the use of semi-refined ore rather than bar stock or giblets. This would explain the high difference between weight and volume loss with the first operation being the hammering out of impurities.
Interestingly there was little quality control. There was no way of being sure a sword would actually survive combat so old swords were more valuable than new ones.
>And once contaminated by carbon, the steel cannot be immediately reused
>but has to be resmelted - which I am not sure was readily achieved at that
>level of technology. One of the problems with steeling iron is that it is
>very easy to go too far and add too much carbon and is impossible to go
>back.
How common is knowledge of steel in Glorantha? I would have thought it was restricted to Mostali which is the source of the Steel Swords Legion's weapons. Pattern welding was a means of getting round the problems of using iron with varying proportion of carbon to create a weapon which didn't bend or break in use.
>Traditionally, wastage was melted back together and then turned into
>the much more brittle wrought or cast irons.
>
>Of course, there were methods of producing sword blanks which are then
>used as the basis of swords. These are sharpened and shaped to taste
>(again, much wastage).
>
>I suspect that the dwarfs might sell punched metal blanks to those
>surrounding them. They're not as good as something hand-forged but
>they are extremely cheap to make.
Depends how advanced the Mostali are, punching metal into sword sized blanks needs a good sheet metal facility and powered machinery to do it - post-industrial revolution technology. Although some of the dwarf constructs could possibly replace the machinery.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/ ------------------------------
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