> That's a heck of a lot of wastage for working iron.
Have you ever seen the corroded surface of a worked piece of iron splinter off and fall down (translated from German this is called "Hammer's Beat")? Have you seen the black broth called water after used for cooling the piece? Do you have an idea how much iron gets lost in the heating?
I expected a cache of rusted iron implements reworked into ingots, then into swords.
If you have damascened iron, the waste is actually larger than my estimate.
> While there will
> be some loss from finishing, polishing and sharpening there'll be
> little or none in the forging. It's not a modern process where you
> cut off the bits you don't need and throw them away because it's
> more trouble than it's worth to reuse. Instead you hammer the ingot
> into the right size and shape for the blank you need and then
> hammer and fold it into the sword. Any cutting is done early on in
> the process and the scraps are recycled. A lot of the skill is in
> knowing how the hammering needs to be done to get the right result.
I was referring to the classical process, under the assumption that the corroded bits cannot be recycled.
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