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Author Topic: Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold  (Read 1717 times)

StagnantSoul

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Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold
« on: September 21, 2017, 06:53:08 pm »

I was thinking, since Dwarves can't make foreign weapons, moods and mods aside, in vanilla, why don't we have a way to make them, just longer an more resource intensive? What I was thinking is
1: Buy a -iron longsword- from a caravan. A potter takes said sword and some clay to the kiln, and makes a mold of said item, and the mold effects the quality output of the sword afterwards.
2: Now, you have your, say, exceptional porcelain longsword mold. This won't guarantee a exceptional candy longsword, what it'll do is add a little better quality to the sword than what the smith would usually do. Say they made a fine candy longsword usually, this'd have a good chance of bumping it to superior, whereas a masterwork one is almost 100% chance to upgrade the quality one step, and an artifact mold would jump the quality up two or maybe just masterwork.
3: Smith takes the materials and mold to the forge and makes the weapon, at a set speed unaffected by skill, and makes the weapon like normal. Maybe non-artifact molds are destroyed for balancing.
4: Enjoy the candy ≡longsword≡!
5: Profit?

What do you think?
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Djarskublar

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Re: Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2017, 12:29:42 am »

This would be a cool idea if, you know, weapons were cast. It's a forge, not a... lost the word for it, but a place that does cast things, like pans or whatever. I know it's a common misconception, so I don't blame you in the least. At the most basic level, swords are made by getting the metal hot and malleable, then hitting it into the right shape. No actual melting involved once you have your ingots.

On the other hand, once things progress further economy wise, I'd totally be down for the ability to reverse-engineer the tech other civs happen to get at world gen, given enough resource sinking.

To speak more to your actual idea, though, I wonder if any use could be gleaned from the idea of casting things, especially since some of the items in game are cast irl. Then again, maybe dwarf smithing is really that good and they just forge everything for the fun of it.
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LMeire

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Re: Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2017, 12:33:56 am »

Should be a limit on what metals are useful for this form of production, cast-iron weapons aren't going to be equal to cast-bronze like forged iron is. Also wouldn't gypsum plaster be a better material for casts than porcelain?
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StagnantSoul

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Re: Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2017, 12:54:07 am »

Porcelain was just a random example, going by DF standards glass casting would be used.

And yeah, that's a good point. A forge isn't the actual place, this post was more a barebones concept. I don't know the name of the job/building either actually, just know they made good frying pans.  :P I'd love to see it involved in the game though, along with other stuff like apothecaries.
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bloop_bleep

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Re: Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold
« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2017, 12:57:01 am »

I believe the word you're looking for is "foundry."
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SixOfSpades

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Re: Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold
« Reply #5 on: September 22, 2017, 02:06:14 am »

This would be a cool idea if, you know, weapons were cast. It's a forge, not a... lost the word for it, but a place that does cast things, like pans or whatever.
Actually, copper and bronze weapons were cast, it wasn't until the Iron Age that forges took over.

Off I go on a tangent: There's also a very interesting theory that the (mostly mythical) figure of King Arthur was partly based on a Bronze Age swordsmith. After all, one of the primary aspects of being a king is the ability to raise an army, and to do that, you had to equip said army--which a swordsmith would have been uniquely qualified to do. Traditionally, bronze swords were cast by splitting a large stone along a cleavage line (so it'd be a straight, clean break), carving out identical sword-shaped depressions in each half, then tightly binding the halves back together and pouring molten bronze into the hole. After it had cooled, you separated the stone mold, and pulled out your new sword. Some edge-trimming & sharpening would still be required, of course.
And how does Sir Thomas Malory describe how young Arthur became recognized as the rightful King? By pulling a sword out of a stone, by way of an anvil.

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Urist McClown

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Re: Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold
« Reply #6 on: September 22, 2017, 04:53:53 am »

Foundries are an interesting concept; they should however be incapable of casting steel (iron, bronze and copper would all be fine though).

Incidentally, foundries could make the anvil creation problem go away - you could probably create an anvil without needing an anvil first, just a foundry. It might also be possible to have all weapons forged at least to some degree - a bronze foundry could produce swords, but their edge would have been too soft, so there would need to be hardening done at the forge afterwards.
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FantasticDorf

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Re: Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold
« Reply #7 on: September 22, 2017, 08:29:55 am »

Unless you were to treat it as a entirely seperate building, something like this also what the metalsmith's forge is for already in the game with a stretch of the imagination, shaping and moulding metal as it exists already, requiring fuel. Except its not exactly denoted what dwarves do in this process because dwarf workshop working is ambigious, and making the metal itself is done at the smelter.

- Its not nessecary, and copying objects using moulds (can actually be done quite easily by making seperate 'mould' tool items using mods then buying moulds sold by other civs as a component for crafting the object)

- Or change how metalworkers make their materials entirely, very likely for toady to change when workshops eventually get a overhaul to how they function, which is on the roadmap. Same goes for all other workshops like carpentry.

Now to the OP's point of interest, there's already RAW modifications to the game such as the 'inventors workshop' (quick search may find it) that allow you to duplicate objects you find in much a similar manner by bringing the object to the workshop (say it drops as goblinite) and supplying the provided materials. With the explicit condition that the object has to arrive to your fortress in some shape or form first, via adventuer drop-offs, visitor accidents or invasions.

Meph (a well known modder) has got onto this idea, and used existing RAW editing modification tools to do that : http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=158163.msg7000643#msg7000643
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Quarque

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Re: Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold
« Reply #8 on: September 22, 2017, 08:59:34 am »

Did a quick search. It seems that steel is not very suitable for casting; it can be done, but tends to result in lower quality goods. Cast iron (which isn't in the game at this point) is a different composite that has been optimized for, well, casting. Cheaper and great for making various tools, less suitable for the production of sharp weapons though.

Sources: wiki, also see this link:
http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/general-archive/why-cast-steel-not-often-used-91598
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Urist McClown

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Re: Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold
« Reply #9 on: September 22, 2017, 10:39:52 am »

Pig iron could be the basis for casting iron; gray cast iron is usually produced by smelting pig iron and casting it.
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Aquillion

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Re: Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold
« Reply #10 on: September 24, 2017, 12:51:05 pm »

A more straightforward option would just be to have your dwarves learn how to make foreign weapons by studying them, reading books, or talking to visitors who know how they're made.
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Djarskublar

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Re: Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold
« Reply #11 on: September 24, 2017, 04:49:20 pm »

This would be a cool idea if, you know, weapons were cast. It's a forge, not a... lost the word for it, but a place that does cast things, like pans or whatever.
Actually, copper and bronze weapons were cast, it wasn't until the Iron Age that forges took over.

Yeah, I know that (it wasn't in my head when I wrote that, but still). He did specifically mention an iron longsword.
And yes, foundry is the word, thanks guys.

It's just a matter of too many movies showing iron/steel swords being cast, especially when they occationally just pull the completed sword straight out of the cast. It's just a bit of a peeve, y'know?
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bluephoenix

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Re: Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold
« Reply #12 on: September 29, 2017, 07:39:34 am »

A steel sword that has been made by casting it using a mould would be incredibly brittle and would break into two or more pieces when you hit something with it.
Like SixOfSpades said, copper or bronze weapons yes but not iron or steel.
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AceSV

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Re: Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold
« Reply #13 on: October 03, 2017, 04:02:50 am »

Even if molds are not the right answer, you could still have similar in-game process.  When historians and enthusiasts want to recreate a sword from an archaeological example, they take measurements and weights and then make the weapon to those characteristics. 

So your dwarven scribe or scientist or whatever creates a blueprint of the foreign weapon, and your dwarven smiths can then recreate them. 

However, for those of us with mod games, you can't necessarily recreate something like a katana with just measurements.  If you are a metallurgist familiar with laminated steel blades, you could theoretically look at a katana and say "oh, I think this is a laminated steel construction," but if you've never seen laminated steel, you'd have something that is just an imitation (which is exactly what happens with a lot of modern reproductions of katana. 

Also, historical point, while Europe didn't have the technology to cast steel by 1400, China did.  Writing in 1075, Shen Kuo describes a iron-working process similar to the West's Bessemer Process invented in 1856, and encourages his readers to switch to petroleum fuel instead of deforestation. 
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Xyon

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Re: Exceptional Porcelain Longsword Mold
« Reply #14 on: October 27, 2017, 10:23:44 am »

I would just add that the quality of the mold should determine the maximum possible quality of the item being made from it. The surface quality of a mold will impact the maximum quality the surface of the product will have, and the skill of the user will determine the actual quality based on their technique being good enough or not to make use of the mold quality.

Having said that, secondary processing could also be done to improve the quality past the maximum quality of the mold, but if you're doing that then you might as well be forging the piece from scratch.
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