MRPolo13
The Arbiter of the Gods
Just to clarify this post isn't about the smith character whot I wanted to make. I'm not salty, promise... Shut up! No but yeah but no it's not about that.
What is steel?
Steel is simply put iron with added carbon. To give you a short explanation as to why this makes it great is that carbon particles are tiny, far smaller than iron particles, so when carbon is added to iron, it gets trapped in between the iron particles, giving them far less space to move around than they would otherwise, and making the metal tough. Any iron with a carbon content is steel, so essentially seeing iron on its own is basically impossible. Today's day iron? Usually called mild steel. High carbon steel? Not that high carbon, as I'll discuss in a few moments.
How is/was steel made?
There is something you have to understand about steel. It is a product made out of two of the most abundant materials on Earth. Carbon and iron are everywhere, in very large amounts. Eggheads think that the core is made out of iron, while carbon is in so many places we're literally made out of carbon. So to conclude both of these are everywhere.
But how were these two materials combined in the Medieval period? Well, it's quite simple, we used something called the blast furnace in Europe. A blast furnace puts a ton of heat and a ton of pressure at the bottom and less so towards the top. Iron ore and charcoal and all sorts of goodies would be thrown into the blast furnace and at the bottom two things would be created: The bloom and the slag. The slag was essentially useless, unless you were pressed for iron and you could smelt it again to make tiny bit more steel. The slag is everything that you don't want, mostly silicons and oxides of all sorts of things (more on this later). The bloom is where the magic is.
The bloom is what is called pig iron. Ironically (HAHAHAH) pig iron is actually a steel with a very high carbon content of around 3-4.5% where the perfect sword steel is arguably in the region of 0.5% to 0.9%ish (0.9 being a very high carbon content for sword steel). The bloom is also very impure. It just went through a mess of impure stuff and got mixed with sand and other nasty things that you generally don't want unless you're masochistic and like to get hurt by your own snapping blade. So what do you do? You hit it.
Turning the bloom into a workable material is simple. You whack it a bunch, then you snap/cut it in half and fold them together, then keep whacking it. You do that a lot of times, but fret not, in 15th century people had water-powered hammers that would speed everything up (trip hammers to be specific.) This would allow you to whack things faster without your poor hands getting tired. This process does three things. First, anything that isn't an oxide burns away. So all those impurities that weren't an oxide? They'll go. Oxygen bonds with stuff that isn't oxygen afterall. Second, impurities that are oxides get spread throughout the bloom. Third and most importantly, this process decarburises the material. Here's the word oft he day: decarburisation. You know how oxygen bonds to stuff that isn't oxygen? It does that to carbon too, and as you work the material the carbon content within it lowers slowly because the carbon flies away as part of one of the Carbon Oxides (I assume Carbon Dioxide because I haven't heard of many blacksmiths dying of Carbon Monoxide poisoning but idk I'm not your mum). That pig iron from before with 2-4% carbon content overtime will be lower to whatever. Depends how much you work it?
So where do master smiths come from?
Well, dear imaginary friend because I'm lonely, let me tell you. The quality of steel is down to how much whacking you do to the metal, and how well you quench your metal afterwards to realign the crystal structure (some other bull here about that. It's a subject far beyond my comprehension.) Making steel isn't difficult, you see, but making good steel for what you're trying to achieve is an entirely different story. If you decarburise the metal too much you're making it too soft and it won't heat treat properly (see above for the bull thing). If you don't do it enough your metal will be brittle because high carbon isn't always good.
Now, the reason why most smiths worked with 'iron' (in actuality mild steel not iron) is because everything is a lot easier. The metal can be worked a lot more without breaking and you don't have to worry about how much you whack it under heat.
So the metal is impure either way? How do you fix that?
Well you have to melt the steel. If you want to completely purify the metal you have to entirely melt it, which means making it reach roughly 1,600 degrees Celsius (which is something high in Fahrenheit. I don't work in crappy measurements. Later nerds.) Then you can simply scrape the slag off, since it floats to the top. The sad thing is that you can't reach that temperature. I'm hot as hell and I can't reach that temperature. Medieval people couldn't reach that temperature. That temperature would be reached in 18th century I believe, or maybe 19th... Anyway, fairly late. Later than the server. So our steel would be relatively impure but not to the point of being somehow crapper than 15th century European steel because chemistry. It'd just be meh. Also because of all the whacking the carbon would be spread unevenly through the piece. The larger the piece the worse.
That's all folks, now back to self-loathing and crying while I desperately seek attention elsewhere because I'm vain. Hahahah
(Don't take this seriously please. The rest of the post is serious. This isn't.)
What is steel?
Steel is simply put iron with added carbon. To give you a short explanation as to why this makes it great is that carbon particles are tiny, far smaller than iron particles, so when carbon is added to iron, it gets trapped in between the iron particles, giving them far less space to move around than they would otherwise, and making the metal tough. Any iron with a carbon content is steel, so essentially seeing iron on its own is basically impossible. Today's day iron? Usually called mild steel. High carbon steel? Not that high carbon, as I'll discuss in a few moments.
How is/was steel made?
There is something you have to understand about steel. It is a product made out of two of the most abundant materials on Earth. Carbon and iron are everywhere, in very large amounts. Eggheads think that the core is made out of iron, while carbon is in so many places we're literally made out of carbon. So to conclude both of these are everywhere.
But how were these two materials combined in the Medieval period? Well, it's quite simple, we used something called the blast furnace in Europe. A blast furnace puts a ton of heat and a ton of pressure at the bottom and less so towards the top. Iron ore and charcoal and all sorts of goodies would be thrown into the blast furnace and at the bottom two things would be created: The bloom and the slag. The slag was essentially useless, unless you were pressed for iron and you could smelt it again to make tiny bit more steel. The slag is everything that you don't want, mostly silicons and oxides of all sorts of things (more on this later). The bloom is where the magic is.
The bloom is what is called pig iron. Ironically (HAHAHAH) pig iron is actually a steel with a very high carbon content of around 3-4.5% where the perfect sword steel is arguably in the region of 0.5% to 0.9%ish (0.9 being a very high carbon content for sword steel). The bloom is also very impure. It just went through a mess of impure stuff and got mixed with sand and other nasty things that you generally don't want unless you're masochistic and like to get hurt by your own snapping blade. So what do you do? You hit it.
Turning the bloom into a workable material is simple. You whack it a bunch, then you snap/cut it in half and fold them together, then keep whacking it. You do that a lot of times, but fret not, in 15th century people had water-powered hammers that would speed everything up (trip hammers to be specific.) This would allow you to whack things faster without your poor hands getting tired. This process does three things. First, anything that isn't an oxide burns away. So all those impurities that weren't an oxide? They'll go. Oxygen bonds with stuff that isn't oxygen afterall. Second, impurities that are oxides get spread throughout the bloom. Third and most importantly, this process decarburises the material. Here's the word oft he day: decarburisation. You know how oxygen bonds to stuff that isn't oxygen? It does that to carbon too, and as you work the material the carbon content within it lowers slowly because the carbon flies away as part of one of the Carbon Oxides (I assume Carbon Dioxide because I haven't heard of many blacksmiths dying of Carbon Monoxide poisoning but idk I'm not your mum). That pig iron from before with 2-4% carbon content overtime will be lower to whatever. Depends how much you work it?
So where do master smiths come from?
Well, dear imaginary friend because I'm lonely, let me tell you. The quality of steel is down to how much whacking you do to the metal, and how well you quench your metal afterwards to realign the crystal structure (some other bull here about that. It's a subject far beyond my comprehension.) Making steel isn't difficult, you see, but making good steel for what you're trying to achieve is an entirely different story. If you decarburise the metal too much you're making it too soft and it won't heat treat properly (see above for the bull thing). If you don't do it enough your metal will be brittle because high carbon isn't always good.
Now, the reason why most smiths worked with 'iron' (in actuality mild steel not iron) is because everything is a lot easier. The metal can be worked a lot more without breaking and you don't have to worry about how much you whack it under heat.
So the metal is impure either way? How do you fix that?
Well you have to melt the steel. If you want to completely purify the metal you have to entirely melt it, which means making it reach roughly 1,600 degrees Celsius (which is something high in Fahrenheit. I don't work in crappy measurements. Later nerds.) Then you can simply scrape the slag off, since it floats to the top. The sad thing is that you can't reach that temperature. I'm hot as hell and I can't reach that temperature. Medieval people couldn't reach that temperature. That temperature would be reached in 18th century I believe, or maybe 19th... Anyway, fairly late. Later than the server. So our steel would be relatively impure but not to the point of being somehow crapper than 15th century European steel because chemistry. It'd just be meh. Also because of all the whacking the carbon would be spread unevenly through the piece. The larger the piece the worse.
That's all folks, now back to self-loathing and crying while I desperately seek attention elsewhere because I'm vain. Hahahah
(Don't take this seriously please. The rest of the post is serious. This isn't.)
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