Cinnabar is the ore of mercury that is present in DF, but mercury doesn't seem very useful in DF unless you plan on practicing dentistry. :D
Mercury fulminate. Easy to make, powerful, high explosive. Very dangerous to handle, forms poisonous gases on detonation, leaves poisonous residue. Very dwarfy. I think the alchemist should be able to make it, as it only takes metallic mercury, nitric acid, and distilled alcohol.
Mercury(II) fulminate is prepared by dissolving mercury in nitric acid and adding ethanol to the solution. It was first prepared by Edward Charles Howard in 1800.
Actually, all the ingredients for mercury fulminate fall into DF's arbitrary time period, even if the end result doesn't. Nitric acid was discovered by Middle Eastern alchemists in the 8th century. It's made from saltpeter and water, both of which are already in the game.And anyone with half a brain with a time machine could go back to Alexander the Great's time and invent the steam engine then. After all Heron actually had created a sort of basic steam engine. There are many example of things where you could go back and invent something if you already had the knowledge even if you only used their technology.
Steam engines were described a mere 400 years after Alexander the Great's rule.
Cinnabar is the ore of mercury that is present in DF, but mercury doesn't seem very useful in DF unless you plan on practicing dentistry. :D
By Arrkhal I guess you could also make certain rocks be ores of mercury, though it's not yet possible to do reactions which require a container like a vial, as mercury should. Don't know what uses mercury amalgams would have in DF. Lots of crazy people throughout history were dumb enough to drink it, just because shiny has to = good.
You could give any smelting involving mercury [PRODUCT:2:1:SKIN_TANNED:NO_SUBTYPE:LEATHER:NO_MATGLOSS] to give a small chance of killing the worker (and anyone in the room). If anyone else has more experience with deadly leather than me, go ahead pint out where I went wrong.
Steam engines were described a mere 400 years after Alexander the Great's rule. No one thought they would amount to anything, but that's because they weren't dwarves. Well, except one guy thought that steam engines could be used to forecast the weather, and he was actually probably correct, since air pressure changes the boiling point of water.The basic sorta steam engine you are talking about was the one I mentioned Heron or Hero had created.
Which wasn't a steam engine any more than aFixedpaper fanwindmill is a wind turbine.
Yes. The deciding factor is if it implies the knowledge required to make a functional steam engine.
Dwarves are known throughout lore and video games, and films and movies, as the type of folk who would have been the first to invent something such as a steam engine.
If the dwarves understand water wheels and pumping concepts, theres only so much time until a dwarf notices that that steam blasting off of that fresh layer of obsidian could indeed knock a dwarf clean off his feet, and then realizes it is capable of being harnessed, just like a mighty river.
We're talking about people who are mighty enough to tame dragons, people who are smart enough to forge some of the greatest weapons in lore...
and the lore of dwarves have said over and over again, they are able to harness the power of steam.
If we're going with lore from outside of DF [...]
Where has Toady said he is putting Steam engines in? He hasn't. He doesn't appear to have even mentioned them.I never said he did, I said that if he wants to do whatever he wants to do, he is free to do so, and argueing about what should go in is pointless, as toady is the one in control.
Where has Toady said he is putting Steam engines in? He hasn't. He doesn't appear to have even mentioned them.
Not to mention it doesn't fit the setting at all. The gun and black powder were invented long before 1400 but you don't see them in the game.
You quoted the wrong person! I didn't say that.Please read the wikipedia articles about metallurgy. History of ferrous metallurgy is particularly helpful.
I'm also still not sure if there's a valid technological/metallurgical reason that dwarves couldn't make about a 95% iron 5% nickel alloy. Even if the metals don't mix well, it could be done in small batches with lots of stirring.
Some people really don't want poo in the game, some really don't want steam engines.
Clearly, what every fortress needs is a steam-powered sewer system which doubles as a poo cannon.
Also, I'm trying to figure out what kind of technical difficulties there'd be with making iron-nickel alloys. One guy says the technology to make them didn't exist until the 1800's, but maybe he misspoke. Nickel wasn't identified until the 1800's, even though it had been smelted by many different cultures as early as 3500 BC, but most of them thought that it was either the same thing as silver, or that it was some type of "white copper."
I can't really think of any reasons you couldn't just mix some nickel into a crucible of molten iron, other than the fact that the nickel would sink to the bottom if you kept the mixture molten long enough.
And nickel is already known by the dwarves in-game to be a different metal than silver and copper, so that argument won't work. They can also smelt zinc, which is an anachronism.
* Ok yes the Chinese had them from about 500 BCE and could make cast iron tools, they couldn't make wrought iron in the blast furnace until about 200 CE.
There is probably a limit imposed a by lack of knowledge as well (mostly chemistry, alternate refining techniques, and how to extract the rare metals from ore).
Another thing to consider with any metal forging is that there are various methods of forging that get very different results. For instance, and traditional European blacksmith would hammer an object into shape and then either leave it to cool or douse it. Both of these would have the same effect: The metal crystals would contract away from each other, leaving the metal weaker than the Asian method. The Asian method was to hammer it constantly as it cooled, so that the crystals would not draw away from each other. This would make the metal very much stronger, and therefore their weapons could be thinner and sharper, and their armour less prone to bend/break.
The word "crystals" is probably a reference to the crystalline structure of the iron itself, not to some foreign material.
QuoteThe word "crystals" is probably a reference to the crystalline structure of the iron itself, not to some foreign material.
The thing is, wrought iron shouldn't have any kind of crystalline structure other than the slag, unless it's high enough in carbon to count as a near-steel. And in that case, you'd want to harden it like a steel, not like an iron.
At temperatures up to 906 the metal has a body-centered lattice. From 906 to 1401, it is cubic close-packed, but at the latter temperature it again becomes body-centered.
100% pure iron has a crystal structure. Laymen don't think of metals that way, but chemists do.
Presumably this is the crystalline transformation to which metallurgists are referring when they talk about the phase diagram for steel, which is just slightly impure iron and not the result of some magical transformation of one metal into another.
Quote100% pure iron has a crystal structure. Laymen don't think of metals that way, but chemists do.
Presumably this is the crystalline transformation to which metallurgists are referring when they talk about the phase diagram for steel, which is just slightly impure iron and not the result of some magical transformation of one metal into another.
I'm completely failing to see a point here. I can only guess misunderstanding of semantics. What I mean by "crystalline structure" is interactions between discrete micro- and nano-crystals embedded within the metal.
There's a big difference between iron itself being one big crystal (in an ideal state), and banging on it while hot "making the crystals, plural, closer together." Work-hardening only dislocates crystalline bonds, thus making further dislocation require more effort. It neither compresses the crystal lattice, nor does it spontaneously form a different type of lattice. The fact that work-hardening metal turns it amorphous is kind of the reason why amorphous alloys never fatigue.
Water, it's just oxygen with a ~12.5% hydrogen impurity, right? You can totally compare the physical and mechanical properties of oxygen and water, because hydrogen makes up such a small amount of the weight, right?
You're really making too fine a distinction for most people to follow.
No, steel isn't its own chemical compound, but it's only "slightly impure iron" in the exact same sense that hydrochloric acid is "slightly impure water."
Yes, chemically, hydrochloric acid is just slightly impure water. That doesn't change the fact that the chemical interactions change pretty significantly due to that slight impurity.
It also doesn't change the fact that "making the crystals closer together" is a pretty fallacious statement, from both a chemical and a physical point of view.
You said you don't know what effect working has on iron (and presumably also copper, brass, silver, etc., which were also all historically work-hardened). And I did tell you what it is.
Working a crystalline metal destroys the crystal structure, making it partially amorphous; amorphous forms of metals are generally harder and brittler. 100% amorphous copper or iron would just be an ultrafine powder, so functional work-hardening will make the metal only partially amorphous, to strike some balance between malleability and hardness. When the amount of amorphous metal in the mix gets too high, the metal "fatigues" and becomes brittle and crumbly, because there's an insufficient crystal matrix to hold the noncrystalline parts together.
The fancy thing about the amorphous alloys is they're already amorphous from the start. There is no crystal structure to deform, so they do not work-harden, and do not fatigue.
And what makes steel different from iron in that respect is that iron carbides are substantially stronger and harder than amorphous iron. Cold-working steel to any degree weakens it, while iron gets stronger up to a point.
If steel loses a valued property by a treatment which causes iron to gain that valued property "up to a point", might that not mean that the material called steel has already been given the optimal amount of that treatment as a matter of course in making the material?
Sometimes in unusual ways, too; it's not rare for an alloy to have a melting point higher or lower than the melting points of all the constituent metals.
Frankly, no, that's not how it works. You're trying to understand structural chemistry from, apparently, a mixture of an aqueous inorganic chemistry background, and complete ignorance of the gross physical properties of metal as well. No offense, but you're failing miserably.
You're just going to ignore or intentionally misinterpret any scientific data I may throw at you, so you're on your own to find your own citations, or to remain argumentatively ignorant if you'd rather do that.
I have to wonder just what kind of strength difference this person thinks there is between wrought iron (or the misnamed "low-carbon steel" which isn't really a steel at all) and high-carbon steel.
Is it really that unprecedented in solution chemistry that 0.6% by weight of an impurity will fundamentally change the properties of a solution?
That's a really minor difference, though, when you compare how much magic carbon adds to iron. (note: I'm not talking about you at all, G-Flex)
Steel actually is pretty unique in multiple ways. But I suppose certain peoples' brains are broken by that fact.
I don't even want to know how inorganic solution chemists react to carbon nanotubes or buckyballs. Or kevlar. Or spider web. Or aluminum chloride.
It's amazing how people with (claimed) degrees can be so incredibly ignorant of things outside their specialties, but oh, well. Frankly, your understanding of metallurgy and the interactions between alloying elements made me seriously think you were still in chem 101, at first. That's the approximate understanding level that your conclusions show, anyway.
Once again, you're on your own to find "better" sources (meaning ones written by people who club you over the head with their degrees). I've explained how steel actually works, in incredibly basic terms. If you don't believe it because it doesn't match your incredibly rudimentary understanding of elemental metals, tough cookies.
I'm willing to bet you won't bother to look, because you know you'll be proven wrong.
I'm just going to add this to my list of "Things Arrkhal has been told by other PhDs" and call it a day.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
http://www.feine-klingen.de/PDFs/verhoeven.pdf
This is from an actual accredited metallurgist and bladesmith, and pretty clearly and simply explains the distinct molecular differences between iron and steel. It even starts out by describing the ways in which iron and steel actually are similar, and how low-carbon steels work (which actually are just iron with a slight carbon impurity), before transitioning into the high-carbon, hardenable steels. It's obvious your education was only equivalent to the first handful of chapters there.
Ferrite and austenite are common between iron and high-carbon steel. Cementite, otherwise known as iron carbide is not. Unhardened steel or iron contains no iron carbide. Work-hardened steel or iron contains no iron carbide. Heat treated high carbon steel does. It's really impossible to make it any simpler than that.
Thank you very much for that excellent reference document. I consider that to be a reputable source of information and I will read through it. I can even forgive the source of the link! :D
Am I the only one that has noticed how derailed this thread has become?I noticed that two pages ago, and by making this comment we derail it even further. :D
So let me see if I understand this correctly, you continued this argument because you don't view wiki as a valid source of information? Even if the people giving you the wiki links are familiar with the material in question through schooling and careers and can vouch for it being mostly or completely right?
Thank you very much for that excellent reference document. I consider that to be a reputable source of information and I will read through it. I can even forgive the source of the link! :D
So let me see if I understand this correctly, you continued this argument because you don't view wiki as a valid source of information? Even if the people giving you the wiki links are familiar with the material in question through schooling and careers and can vouch for it being mostly or completely right?
4. Low-carbon/mild steels cover nearly the exact same range of carbon content that's present in wrought iron; 0.01% to 0.29% for low-carbon/mild steels, 0.01% to 0.25% for wrought iron. That actually is one of those commercial steel industry obfuscations; either "mild steel" is a misnomer, or "wrought iron" is.
6. Low-carbon/mild steels are actually slightly weaker than wrought iron, even given the same manufacturing techniques, due to their lack of silaceous slag. Low-carbon/mild steels also corrode faster, for the same reason. For the same carbon content, low-carbon/mild steel will be equally as hardenable as wrought iron, only lacking slag strands.
Am I the only one that has noticed how derailed this thread has become?already declared that 2 pages ago. at least the conversation has return to metals. searching around the internet i discovered Damascus steel. now the process for production is a pain in the ass plus testing for true products produced few but the results was a tough flexible steel that is able to hold its blade and cut though other metals without damage.
searching around the internet i discovered Damascus steel. now the process for production is a pain in the ass plus testing for true products produced few but the results was a tough flexible steel that is able to hold its blade and cut though other metals without damage.
well im talking about the real stuff. whet was special about this type of stell that it can cut though other metal AND keep a blade for a long time due to carbides and carbon nanotubes in the steel. now of course the 1400's they didn't know what was nanotubes but they were present.searching around the internet i discovered Damascus steel. now the process for production is a pain in the ass plus testing for true products produced few but the results was a tough flexible steel that is able to hold its blade and cut though other metals without damage.
Real Damascus or False Damascus (Pattern) Steel people are claiming is Damascus? If the production of the steel involves crucibles and the word Wootz shows up then it is the real stuff, if the process involves welding different steels together than it is the fake pattern stuff.
Cutting through other metals without damage is nothing special, many of the harder metals will cut the softer ones with ease: bronze will cut gold or copper or tin, hardened steel will cut soft (annealed) steel (yes even if the hardened steel is mid-grade 0.6% carbon and the annealed steel is tool grade 0.95% carbon, it just won't do it for very long).
hardened steel will cut soft (annealed) steel (yes even if the hardened steel is mid-grade 0.6% carbon and the annealed steel is tool grade 0.95% carbon, it just won't do it for very long).
Quotehardened steel will cut soft (annealed) steel (yes even if the hardened steel is mid-grade 0.6% carbon and the annealed steel is tool grade 0.95% carbon, it just won't do it for very long).
Actually, a hardened 0.60% carbon steel will cut annealed steel of nearly any carbon content (as long as it's not one of those crazy new high-alloy things) for a very long time. That's what machining often is. ;) (well, okay, most high speed steels are 0.80% carbon or higher, and cobalt alloys work even better, but you get the idea). Yes, the modern fancy ceramic coatings help, but that just means replacing the bit every month instead of every week.
Posted by: Arrkhal
The vast majority of info about wootz steel, just like katanas, is pure fabrication.
For the topic of the ores of wootz steels, would it not be possible to create several different hematites with some of them giving different types of iron (possibly even percentage chances of different irons)? It would let you create different irons with different levels of impurities (low-grade sulphur-rich ores, or high-grade nickel-trace ores, for example).
You might have a cutting tool last weeks or a month if you were a low-volume shop, but they don't last that long for our high volume CNC factory.
While it is true that most of the stories about katanas are exaggerated beyond mortal comparison, they did quite a good job considering the poor quality of their ores. The folding to create fine, alternating layers of high and low carbon steels is both an early example of composite construction (it's too macroscopic to be considered an alloy) and more importantly for this thread, easily doable by dwarves. Just a simple steel + pig iron = 2x folded steel.