Let's say you're making steel ingots for smithing swords.
You can't cast steel swords without them being useless, but can you cast the ingots into certain shapes that will be easier to smith into swords but will still be a flexible and quality finished product?
Pic related. Imagine working with an ingot that looked something like that. Would it end up being a shit blade after you drew it out to its final dimensions?
>>1004231
>Would it end up being a shit blade after you drew it out to its final dimensions?
There are a lot of factors determining how shit anything will be compared to anything else for whatever purpose you are making it, this being no exception. The question is too broad and you haven't stated any limitations and restrictions, especially with a topic such as metallurgy. Hardness, flexibility, your equipment, skill in material handling, available working temperature and most importantly your metal, will all affect the final product. You haven't given much information at all regarding the final design and your working materials and equipment, so we can't gauge how it will end up or go. As unreasonable as this sounds, I hope you aren't trying to make a six foot sword with a cubic inch of material, but you'd be surprised at how terribly difficult reasoning and logic can be for some people.
Regardless, read up on metallurgy and swordmaking. A wide variety of blade designs and purposes can help you reach what you are aiming for. Even look up on modern manufacturing methods and materials. As long as I'm not working with a thread or an unreasonable shape for the final product, I wouldn't be too concerned about the shape.
>>1004248
Well, metallurgy is complex but my question is kinda simple...
Let's say you have three ingots of identical weight and metal. One is a bar, one is a cylinder, and one is the picture in my OP.
You forge all three into an identical sword using identical tools and techniques.
The only variable is the shape of the ingot.
Which sword is best? Does the ingot shape make it easier or harder to forge a sword? Does the ingot shape effect quality?
Literally, eliminate all variables except the ingot shape and see how that effects the final result. If we could just cast swords that were functional sword making would be easier, the ingot shape in my pic is basically trying to bridge the gap between convenience and quality.
>>1004256
The production method will change depending on your initial material state, including shape. "Best" is relative, and you haven't stated any factor it's best at. The easiest to manufacture will be the one closest to the final design shape.
I would say something long and comparatively thin, like a fat rod, would be easiest to shape into a sword.
I dont know shit about blacksmithing tho, so take it as you will.
I think op us trying to ask about the grain structure of the steel. If the steel was moved only a little, after being cast into a close shape, would it have better grain structure for hardness/ and or flexibility.
That ingot shape would make a horrible sword. If you bang it out, the proportions would turn it into something Cloud would weld. Not to mention that if you tried to fold it 512 times, it'd look absolutely ridiculous and not anything like a matana, the best sword in the world.
>>1004350
THANK YOU.
Yes, I'm wondering if you can break up the grain structure enough for it to still be "springy" and flexible if you cast ingots into a shape that makes forging easier.
No.
the first thing you're going to do with an ingot (incidentally, if its any sort of historical steel, it wouldnt be cast anyway. I'll write more on that later), is stretch it out and then fold it, again and again. So that stumpy sword shape is a waste of time, you've just added two re-entrant corners that will get in the way.
you're going to have to draw it out a bit, then fold forgeweld, draw out, fold, forgeweld, probably draw out fold and forgeweld a third and fourth times at absolute minumum, before finally starting to draw it out from a block 40mm x 40mm x 150mm long into a blade, 50mm x 8mm, x 1000mm+
Starting with that cast shape simple means your first action is to remove those shapes, and make it nice and evenly shaped for folding.
The reality is, if you're making steel, then you will end up with a bloom, a randomly shaped spongy mass, not a cast ingot. That will have to be pounded into something slightly more rectangular squirting out the slag and shit. That wrought iron will then have to be fined, in a second process of cementation/blister steel production to transform the low carbon iron into higher-carbon steel, and that will then be folded, and formed into a billet so that the carbon can be diffused through the entire steel evenly.
>>1004474
Actually, I'm pretty sure ancient crucible steel is basically cast. It's melted quality ore with additives that cools into an ingot in a sacrificial crucible, if the dude trying to recreate an Ulfberht did it right. He made his crucible steel ingot in a cylinder shape. If his crucible was shaped like the OP pic, think of that
Bloomerys don't create steel, I thought created iron and any carbon introduced to it was incidentally from coals.
>>1004679
> if the dude trying to recreate an Ulfberht did it right
Ric did it right. I know his work pretty well.
(and others who I know better do the same as he did.).
however, crucible/wootz/pulad/bulat manufacture process isnt quite the same as that used in the forging of conventional steels, as its to elongate and draw out the dendrites in the crystal structure, rather than the folding process which is used with steels conventionally smelted. its also notoriously hard work to do without the billet crumbling.
>Bloomerys don't create steel,
Correct. Which is what I said.
Bloomeries create spongy irons, which are then fined into steel in further processes, blister steel, or cementation.
>>1004688
Yes.
But what if Ric had a crucible shaped like OP pic so it took less time to get the final shape?
Would it still be a quality, flexible sword?
>>1004723
>But what if Ric had a crucible shaped like OP pic so it took less time to get the final shape?
You have still completely missed the point of the original comment I made.
It does not help. You have two nice big re-entrant angles where the tang would start, which will cause cracking (as well as cooling irregularly while its being first drawn out to shape)
Even IF you were using a crucible steel - which is, let me remind you, pretty much the most esoteric, rare, and generally uncommon choice of any bladesmith on the entire damn planet - its certainly not anything close to the norm - then it does not confer any advantages, and instead confers a whole heap of problems.
People developed the techniques used over more than two thousand years of working this stuff, day in, day out, their entire lives. The processes are near as dammit the most efficient they can be. These sort of daft ideas are not revolutionary stroke of genius. They are inefficient. you do not simply take a mini-sword like shape and "hammer it out" and it magically becomes a bigger sword, like you seem to imagine. You have to draw it out, and you fuller it, or you swage in the tang, and each step in the processes is done in a particular way, in a particular order. In plenty of swordmaking methods, you're not using a single chunk of metal - it would be made up from multiple bars. In others, it would be dissimilar metals. others still ,its not just a case of rolling out to make it bigger like some bit of dough.
As I said:
>Starting with that cast shape simple means your first action is to remove those shapes, and make it nice and evenly shaped
What are the BEST smithing and swordmaking forums so they can be collected as a possible sticky? Perhaps mods would approve and we could consolidate the information instead of repeating old news to no benefit because people would have a better time reading forums instead of these threads?
That people go here means either they can't find other info or don't know how to sort what they have.
>>1005020
They think they'll get a less scathing reply on here than from the old salts on the better forums.
Although, to be fair, the forums do have stickies that people should read so they know which questions not to ask.
Like most people who share knowledge in tight groups, they don't suffer fools gladly.
It's not like they get better treatment here, but they seem to think they will.
