Do any on you know how to smith weapons and armor IRL?

[Rune]

I've done a little work on my father's forge, but my knowledge and skill are nowhere near as extensive as his. Even so, I know a few things.

First of all, you're not really going to lose any metal during the process (except that which you intentionally remove), so your sword or armor piece is going to be the same weight as the metal you use for it.

You're going to need a good long-lasting fuel. Coal is not uncommon, even in the fantasy genre (the dwarves in The Hobbit had been mining it before Gandalf appeared with Thorin's map).

You're going to need to get that fire really hot. Nowadays, you can set up a motorized fan to help the process along, but you're going to need a bellows (the bigger, the better) in pre-motorized times. Unless, of course, you've got magical means.

Basically, you'll be doing two things to the metal: Shaping and welding. Shaping is done by getting the metal white hot and beating it against an anvil with a hammer. Again and again. Depending on the shape you're going for, you're going to use a different part of the anvil (there is a reason they're shaped the way they are).

Welding is the process of adding a piece of metal to another. This is usually going to be finer work and may require a smaller hammer, but is a very similar process to the shaping; that is, heat metal and hammer. During this process, while your metal is still white-hot, you're going to want to sprinkle on something like borax as flux, to make sure you aren't welding in any impurities (which would weaken the weld).

Then, of course, you'll want to temper the piece and, if it is a blade, grind an edge onto it.

Edit -- For masterwork blades, one thing you may do is forge-weld the blade over and over again. Using this process, you will be folding the metal for the blade over and welding it together (as described above). Then repeating. A lot. Each fold doubles the layers in the blade, providing both strength and beauty. Afterward, you would etch the blade with an acid wash (of some kind) to help bring out the patterns. Obviously, this is time-consuming, but the results are remarkably striking.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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[Umbran]

San Francisco is the Principality of the Mists. I suggest attending an SCA Fighters Practice and seeing real armor in action.

For some definitions of "real", at least. I occasionally do SCA "Heavy List" fighting. My armor is mostly plastic, and does not require a whole lot of patting underneath. I have a metal helm, and plastic plates on shoulders, forearms, hands, chest/stomach, and thighs.

I've seen guys fight heavy list in armor made out of... carpeting. I kid you not. The weapons are rattan, and entirely blunt - no need to protect against edges. Carpeting actually works pretty well.

I have also seen guys fight heavy list in chainmail, which makes little sense, as the stuff doesn't protect joints, or very well against blunt strikes.

All that said, what you see in SCA mass combat is probably not a bad model for Medieval mass combat.

 

[Zhaleskra]

Sort of. One of my coworkers back in the early 2000s gave me a book on 14th century armor reproduction because she knew I was in a theatrical combat troupe. While most of the book was dedicated to plate, there was a chapter each on leather and chain. I never actually smithed the metal myself, but I didn't use preformed rings either.

 

[Thunderfoot]

The process for mail(le) is actually quite involved, but once you get it started is a good way of mass producing armor (hence it's popularity).

The wire needs to be drawn, not forged, from heated slag. The process means heating the metal to near liquid form, poking a rod into the mass and pulling until you get the substance to pull out in a tail behind the rod. You then drop the tail into a square form (yes period maille was square, not round) and pull creating a long wire behind your rod. The process is usually began by the smith and then entrusted to the journeyman or senior apprentice of the shop.

Once the wire is formed it is heated slightly to make it bendable and it is wound around a rod form, this has a groove down the center. Once the wire is wrapped, a chisel and hammer break through the wire down the groove to form the rings. The rings are then heated again and either put into a press or a hand press in placed on the end so that the "locks" can be formed. Butted maille is not period, it is quite possibly a modern invention.

A second smaller wire is made. This is re-heated and ran through the locking ends of the rings, snipped off with shears and then hammered to close the rings permanently. The process of stringing the maille together is usually left to the apprentices of the shop, with the armorer making sure the pieces are properly formed to fit the subject. The final fitting is made to the subject with the armorer and the journeyman/senior apprentice seeing to all of the alterations personally.

 

[ExploderWizard]

For some definitions of "real", at least. I occasionally do SCA "Heavy List" fighting. My armor is mostly plastic, and does not require a whole lot of patting underneath. I have a metal helm, and plastic plates on shoulders, forearms, hands, chest/stomach, and thighs.

I've seen guys fight heavy list in armor made out of... carpeting. I kid you not. The weapons are rattan, and entirely blunt - no need to protect against edges. Carpeting actually works pretty well.

I have also seen guys fight heavy list in chainmail, which makes little sense, as the stuff doesn't protect joints, or very well against blunt strikes.

All that said, what you see in SCA mass combat is probably not a bad model for Medieval mass combat.

Heh. Carpeting actually works fairly well and is cheap. I'm a little surprised at folks being permitted to fight in chain only. Here in Atlantia rigid elbow, knee, throat and kidney protection is mandatory (in addition to a helmet with facial openings no greater than 1") .

At one time I had fairly good torso armor made out of a couple layers of vinyl flooring. An oversized tunic covered it up and it worked great.

 

[Zhaleskra]

Thunderfoot, my book does not detail the making of the wire, but suggests a mandrel. I use more modern materials, while going as close to the techniques as possible. For example, my wire is preformed 14 guage galvanized steel, which I coil around a wooden dowel with gloved hands. My tools are two sets of pliers that I got from a special deal from my bank, a wire cutter that I bought at a hardware store, and a wooden dowel from a different hardware store.

My book does mention riveted mail, where the rings are permanently sealed. Because my original intention was for theatrical combat (costume in our case, our safety techniques made it so armor as protection should be unnecessary), I was going for something that would be easy to repair. Break a ring? Add a new one.

 

[DnD_Dad]

Only thing I can add is that ore for iron or steel swords is usually taken from river beds from forested areas that is prone to forest fires. This is usually in the form of black dirt.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

With apologies to Thunderfoot, for contradicting him, period mail wasn't necessarily square-section at all. D-section mail was commonplace from the dark ages onwards (for example, in the Gjermundbu mailshirt). Where Thunderfoot is correct is that mail was very rarely round-section.

There are various rather complex processes involved in making a top quality sword blade. One of the most famous was pattern-forging, which is what I'll describe for you here.

First thing to understand is the difference between cast iron, steel, and wrought iron. Wrought iron is iron with a low carbon content (less than 0.05%, usually). Steel is iron with 0.05%-2% carbon content, and cast iron is iron with more than 2%.

This matters because in mediaeval technology, the iron ore was smelted in charcoal. This impregnated the iron with lots of carbon to produce cast iron. Therefore, the smith's first job was to reduce the carbon content of his materials so as to make steel. He would achieve this by heating and beating. The heating makes the carbon rise to the surface of the iron bar. The beating cracks off the resulting surface layer of carbon. Our smith needs to keep doing this several times to his iron bars. Eventually, he will have a group of bars of high-carbon steel which have been well-worked.

Our smith then separates the bars into two piles. One pile, he leaves in its current state, which is rather flexible and malleable. The other pile, he heats up to the eutectoid point (which is hot --- it varies according to the carbon content, but you can say around 720 degrees C or 1,330 degrees F). At the eutectoid point, the molecular structure of the steel changes a bit, so it becomes much harder and less flexible, but also more brittle.

Next, our smith sort of twists or plaits the bars of steel together --- a hard, brittle bar, then a soft, ductile bar, then a hard, brittle one and so on --- to form the blade. (The Vikings liked it done in a particular chevron pattern, which made the blade pretty to look at.) The smith then forges the tang and the blade edges from hard, inflexible steel that will take a sharp edge.

The quillons, handle and pommel will be made as separate pieces and attached to the tang later on.

 

[jasper]

Charles Ffoulkes The Armourer and His Craft from XIth to XVIth Century

Rob Valentine The Art of Making Armour, *

Brian Price Techniques of Medieval Armour Reproduction

Japanese Sword Making video swordsmith Shohei Miyairi Renamed “molten fire”
Joseph & Frances Gies, Cathedral Forge and Water Wheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages