Re: [LT] No-steel-pocalypse! Lifespan of iron & steel equipment?
 

I'm not saying that it isn't possible, I'm saying that it's unlikely that the shipyards still have the knowledge to make decent ships without iron nails. Or are willing to experiment with "inferior" materials for long distance sailing. It's quite possible that some enterprising soul manages to make a push for non-iron nails, but it will meet resistance while iron nails are still available. Even if no new ones are made, there'll still be people clinging to the iron ways for several decades. "We know they're going to make some new iron soon, just give them a bit of time" and "We're about to close a deal for some iron, just hang in there" will likely be common.
The various sources I've been able to look up suggest that iron was the primary metal used for ship building even back then. They may of course be wrong, and if so my assertations could be so as well.

Re: [LT] No-steel-pocalypse! Lifespan of iron & steel equipment?
 

One such is smelting iron. A lower melting point for iron is not itself relevant to needing high-temperatures and charcoal or coke to produce iron in the first place: the reduction of iron from its oxides is not a process of melting, and indeed traditionally took place without melting until the Industrial Revolution.

It might be worth reminding the folk reading that the melting point of pure iron is 1538 C (2800 Fahrenheit), and wasn't achieved in industry until about 1850. The "cast iron" made before then (as early as the fourth century BC, in China, a thousand year later in Europe) was not jusy iron that had been melted and cast, but a mixture (solid solution) of iron with iron carbide. That has a much lower melting point and very different mechanical properties. The material in this fantasy campaign won't be cast iron even though it has been cast, it will be wrought iron even though it wasn't wrought.

One thing worth noting is that it's much easier to get fine detail in castings of material with a low melting point; you can pre-heat the mould and then the narrow channels and grooves don't get blocked with menicuses of frozen melt, which is what happens when molten iron cools rapidly in a mould because it's not practical to heat moulds to 1538 C. With a gift that allows melting iron at only a few hundred Celsius these people are going to produce iron artifacts that look quite unlike the forged iron and steel objects we are used to. Also, iron objects are going to be cheaper for them than they were for our ancestors because they will save not only a lot of fuel but also a great deal of labour workibf bloomery iron into bars, forging out the slag, and tediously shaping and welding iron pieces with the hammer and anvil.

Another point is that they might not have steel. Their bloomeries might not produce iron with significant carbide in it with the melting point of iron so much below that of iron carbide. Their workpieces won't carburise in the furnace, because they won't be forged. And finally, their iron melts below the Austenite-Marstenite transition temperature, so they wouldn't be able to quench their steel if they did make any.

The higher temperatures won't do those things if the iron melts at 327 C. You need steel to be solid at about 550 C or above for to heat-treat it.

Moreover, these people would be working steel in the forge because they can much more easily and accurately cast it.

Re: [LT] No-steel-pocalypse! Lifespan of iron & steel equipment?
 

I have a Seventeenth-Century table than is held together with trenails.

Re: [LT] No-steel-pocalypse! Lifespan of iron & steel equipment?
 

Even if shipyards run by the military and their contractors don't have knowledge to make ships without iron, it will always be cheaper for civilians to make do without metals. After all, rope and wood is all you need to make a sea-faring vessel! Of course, some sort of sail makes things much easier, but, doesn't require metals.

Re: [LT] No-steel-pocalypse! Lifespan of iron & steel equipment?
 

Iron is going to be cheap in this setting (until the gift goes away). It will melt in the smelting furnace and form a puddle under the slag, so the fuel and labour of forging the slag out of the refinery bloom, all the work that gave wrought iron its name, will be saved. Also, it will be far easier and cheaper to shape: nails could be made by thousands in a cheap, reusable open mould rather than by tediously hand-making each one.

Re: [LT] No-steel-pocalypse! Lifespan of iron & steel equipment?
 

And all theories posted about ships and such are based on what happens AFTER iron stops being cheap, and giving time for iron-clad ships to rust into oblivion ;)

Re: [LT] No-steel-pocalypse! Lifespan of iron & steel equipment?
 

In this situation, all that will happen is that you will have two different groups of craftsman. The first group makes iron products using the lower melting point provided by the boon while the second group make steel products in the same way that we have always done historically. If this is the case then there will be almost no interruption to society at all except that craftsman will move from the first group to the second and start using these techniques to work with low carbon iron as well.

Re: [LT] No-steel-pocalypse! Lifespan of iron & steel equipment?
 

That would involve trade between the culture that got the boon and other cultures that could still make steel, right?

Re: [LT] No-steel-pocalypse! Lifespan of iron & steel equipment?
 

Only if that entire culture was incapable of working with steel. Was the boon given to every person or just a select few? How hard would it be to encourage steel workers from another culture to come work for you? Why haven't these people already been conquered by someone who could outfit his army in steel weapons and armour?

Re: [LT] No-steel-pocalypse! Lifespan of iron & steel equipment?
 

Iron-clad ships? The OP said TL4.

Did you know that HMS Warrior, launched in 1860, is still afloat?