Temperature needed for forging weapons

I'm putting a new d&d campaign world together and where most of the dwarves are living is very short of coal at the moment (where they used to get it from got overrun by hobgoblins a couple of generations back). It has been suggested that peat would be a possible substitute but I don't know how effective it would be at heating forges to the temperature needed to forge iron into steel. Does anyone know? Also if it isn't then would it be effective for other metals (bronze, say)?.

Many thanks

Dried peat will burn, but not nearly hot enough to melt iron. You can do some basic metallurgy with wood or charcoal. But, if I recall correctly, coal or other fossil fuels are required to work steel.

The proper temperature for shaping a sword is somewhere between 649 and 982 degrees.

http://www.selinafenech.com/swords/forging.html

There was a peat fire underground in Mali last year with reported temperatures of 830+ degrees. And that was without forge bellows.

http://www.nature.com/nsu/030630/030630-10.html

So I would say, yes, you could forge steel with a peat fire.

jtb

If I'm a dwarf, and I can cast a summoning spell, best get a fire elemental. That will heat metal, trust me. So toss out peat, use fire elemental.

Umbran said:

Dried peat will burn, but not nearly hot enough to melt iron. You can do some basic metallurgy with wood or charcoal. But, if I recall correctly, coal or other fossil fuels are required to work steel.

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Not even coal will burn hot enough to do basic metallurgy w/o a jet of air to fuel the temperature up.

Good strong, modern day steel requires a blast furnace, or the equivalent.

That's the scientific side... Now a littly mythical history (based on facts, but strung together with speculations, suitable mythos/logic for DnD)

Prehistoric bronze age/iron age transition period sites have been proven to have large communal style fires away from the normal eating areas. Excavations show increased metallic content in the nearby soil with a relatively disturbing lack of evidence of food preprations. From the site, you can re-construct this fire as being about 3-4 feet across, chuck full of charcoal when burning, and about 1-2 feet deep. From the lower quarter of this depth, 6-8 channels were dug as trenches in the ground, shallowest at the point were they connect to the bottom of the fire pit, and deepening as they run out and way. By placing long, loose pieces of stiff material over these channels, one can create significant draft into the charcoal fire pit by simply picking up the far end and dropping it. It would work as a crude sort of bellows, significantly increasing the temperature of the burning coal by supplying a lot of oxygen. Manpower intensive, but certainly hot enough to generate anything up to and including the so-called 'damascene' or 'wootz' steel - the folded steel of early India.

Combine this with low-level magics/high level magics, and you can craft true steel or even adamantite with a little work

If you need precise temps, etc., for the mundane world, I've got all the known facts in my bookmarks somewhere having recently done quite a bit of research on the subject.

Bottom line: without a proper blast furnace or the equivalent (something to force pressurized oxygen onto coal, and trap the heat therein) you cannot make anything better than the folded steel - which was made by 'folding' bars of iron with other metal alloys, a little bit of carbon, and some other stuff.

Fascinating topic - want links?

Those links would be great if you can find them, "Tilla the hun". Blast furnace shouldn't be a problem (although I don't know how they would make one and I'm interested), it's just what fuel you put in it. If charcoal would work ok with a bit of work that would be great. Any idea on how much easier it would be with mineral coal (i.e. in game terms would it be worth raiding for it)?

Absolutely.

With regular charcoal running at those temps, you also need someone standing by to dump more in as you go... that stuff will burn -fast- at those temps.

Mineral coal, on the other hand, (I assume anthracite and the like?) will burn somewhat hotter and quiite a bit longer... I'll dig up those links this afternoon and post 'em when I find 'em.

I know most people have their bookmarks organized - but most people don't have 1500+ links either. I've got them somewhere and I can find 'em it'll just take me a few minutes when the boss isn't talking to my co-worker 5 feet away...

It is a bit more complex than that...
Before you can start the forging process you have got to extract the iron from the ore and make it into steel.
For this process you need intense heat. And there is almost no fuel that can burn this hot by themselves: you have to increase the combustion rate by injecting air in the fuel. But with enough air flow almost any fuel can reach high temperature (My lab use regular alcohol to reach 2000C). The problem with peat is the amounts of rare-earth (ppm level, but you never know) and silica (causing horrible problem in the microstructure) you're going to have in your flame.
The purification of the iron into high grade steel is a complex art.
Now for the actual forging of the weapons: even if you have the crappiest steel on earth, there are still ways of making excellent weapons. The temperature is much lower for this part of the process, but you still need to assit the flame with air flow.

Here is a great page giving some basics on medieval forging and blast furnaces. Essentially, it's important to know that you don't have to melt iron to make iron or steel weapons.

abri said:

The problem with peat is the amounts of rare-earth (ppm level, but you never know) and silica (causing horrible problem in the microstructure) you're going to have in your flame.

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Now that sounds like an adventure opportunity right there. In a world of magic, who knows what sorts of impurities might be lurking in peat, and who knows what it might do to steel and weapons made of that steel?

If the dwarves are using peat to create their weapons, and that peat is made up of, say the decomposed armies of a demonic invasion (isn't peat basically organic matter that's been lying around for a long time? Like coal but not yet?) -- gee, that could be fun...

abri said:

Even if you have the crappiest steel on earth, there are still ways of making excellent weapons.

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Absolutely. Tamahagane (the type of steel used to create katanas) is not particularly "good" steel, but those Japanese smiths do turn out some pretty nice weapons...