Reusing Steel?

[Agemegos]

Steel is basically iron and a tadbit of carbon. If it was melted down to a molten state, would its elements become seperated?.

Well, in the first place there is no need to melt the steel. Until the invention of the blast furnace during the Industrial Revolution iron was smelted, fabricated, and hardened, and recycled without melting.

In the second place, in steel and cast iron the carbon is not just mixed in with the iron, it is dissolved. So even if you did melt it the elements would not simply separate. But on the other hand the temperature would be so high that if the environment were oxidising the carbon would burn out (converting your steel to wrought iron), and if it were too much reducing the melt would absorb extra carbon from the carbon monoxide in the atmosphere, converting your mild steel to high-carbon steel or to mild cast iron).

Finally, pre-industrial steel is not a bulk commodity. Tools and weapons are made out of wrought iron stock (or bulat, in places where that technology was used), and carefully converted into steel (or partly converted into steel) in the course of fabrication and tempering, by the craft of the smith. A piece of fine steel armour might be a micro-scale composite of martensite and iron carbide, or might have a core of tough wought iron with a surface layer of hard steel. If you melt that down (even with the utmost care), or in many cases simply if you heat it up above transition temperature (which is about 745 C, whereas the usual working temperature is about 1100 C, and the melting point of iron is about 1530 C), you can spoil the special qualities of the material without affecting its chemical composition.

In short, the special qualities of high-quality steels are not a result principally of their bulk composition but of their temper, which does not survive re-fabrication.

So I would rule that when special (eg. dwarvish) steel booty is re-cycled, the result is ordinary steel scrap. That is a perfectly good starting point from making your own high-quality goods, but no better than good quality wrought iron from a smelter.

Regards,


Agemegos

 

[Treebore]

Again, do you have dwarves in your campaign world? How many centuries or millenia have they been making/using steel weapons and better? Therefore, real world history is totally out the window. Who knows what we will be doing with steel a hundred years from now, let alone a thousand. I am sure dwarves, who are masters of metalwork, have gone a lot further than we can imagine.

You have made a judgement call, it sounds reasonable/realistic. go with it.

 

[pogre]

Interesting conversation.

It gives me food for thought in my own campaign.

The materials used to make +3 enchanted items is a different kind of metal in my campaign world and so recycling that material is very important.

I use a skill check for the metalsmith when melting stuff down for re-use. That's a practical game solution from my end and I have a chart on how much material a melted item yields.

 

[Elrik_DarkFury]

All the previous (with somes appropriate changes to create home-made rules) can be very well used in a campaign with low-very low magic (or in every campaign after all)with very skilled weaponsmiths possesing the right materials able to make magical weapons and armors.This is much better in my opinion than having every single magic weapon produced by a wizard or something..

____________

The Wizard

 

[Umbran]

Well, in the first place there is no need to melt the steel.

If you're looking for really high strength steel, there is reason to fully melt the stuff. Otherwise,the recycling process generally leaves you with material that is not as strong as the original. When we say "high quality" in D&D terms, we're talking about steel that can take abuse from giants and dragons without giving in, after all...

 

[Azure Trance]

To clarify, our campaign is in the Iron Kingdoms campaign setting which is proto-industrial. Not that it matters much since they are barbarian heathens out in the wilderness though. These are the material stats for those curious:

Iron - Hardness 6
Early Age Steel - Hardness 7
Middle Age Steel - Hardness 8
Late Age Steel - Hardness 9

I'm thinking so far of matching the crafting ranks equivalent to what age steel can be done. Either a 3/6/9 or 4/8/12 for early/middle/late periods.

Agemegos brings up a good point of that melted steel becomes wrought iron and is only useful as a basic starting material. It would make it a bit simpler as the inherent properties are lost and I could give a flat discount (10-20%) without wondering what it used to do/be. Treebore, there are dwarves in the game but none of my players, in part. the armorer himself, is one. They play simple, savage people and uses so far only simple battle loot. To get access to the interesting armor qualities (of those found in Heroes of High Favor - Dwarves) he would have to be tutored by a dwarven metal master himself.

 

[Darklone]

Funny to have so many metallurgists around here

Guess it comes with the hobby.

 

[Drakmar]

his best bet is to turn the steel into tiny filings and feed them to chickens. Honest.

 

[Darklone]

his best bet is to turn the steel into tiny filings and feed them to chickens. Honest.

Greetings from Wieland