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

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

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

Might be interesting to know how many original parts, though.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Might be interesting to know how many original parts, though.

The framing, hull, and armour are original, and pretty much all the armament and fittings are restored.

As it typical for a startling innovation, HMS Warrior was very quickly rendered obsolete by refinements on her basic idea. She was taken out of service after less than twenty years and used as a storeship for fifty years, then she was stripped and her deck concreted over for use as a pontoon dock for another fifty years, then restored as a museum ship. It's unusual to refit storeships, and no-one does a refit on a pontoon dock.

I remember an article in Scientific American about the time her restoration was complete, and the Duke of Edinburgh (who led the campaign for her restoration) going on a bit about her durability. This is an ironclad iron-hulled ship — an early one — that you could pour a slab of concrete over and neglect for fifty years.

[Seneschal]

Thanks for the prompt and detailed response, guys! I really appreciate it.

Originally Posted by ADAXL

PS: That "ending of the boon", how does it work? Do people know in advance? Can they prepare by developing other technologies? If the main culture received to boon, what about the others? Can the people simply hire some engineers from another culture and shift to bronze?

How will people cope with the end of the boon mentally and culturally? Will people simply shrug and continue with work with other technology or will there be religious war, mass panic and hysteria?

They have no idea. Until recently, they believed themselves to be the entirety of mankind, not really knowing how big the world is or if distant lands are populated (spoiler: they are). Aside from advanced metalwork and some ritual magic, they are very much an early bronze-age society, have scarce written records, underdeveloped transportation technology and no contact with other offshoots of humanity. Iron also has a very spiritual aspect to them (those fantasy-iron properties like "wards off evil and blocks magic" are caused by the boon, and will stop working shortly). The fact that iron's properties are a temporary blessing, and not the natural state of things, have just been uncovered by the campaign's protagonists.

Originally Posted by PseudoFenton

So in the last thousand years, noone has developed better furnaces? Despite knowing what hotter temperatures could do when working iron? Especially when there are seemingly rival cultures who didn't receive such a boon?

The original recipients of the boon were a tribal bronze-age culture with mostly oral traditions. Their attempts at empire-building, for which the boon was originally intended, were met with several catastrophes and a wholesale exile to the remote continent where the campaign takes place. Lax timekeeping and lack of historiography ensured they would repeat their mistakes. No one remembers anything about a "boon" and merely consider iron to just behave that way naturally.

Originally Posted by PseudoFenton

It seems likely that the power exchange simply moves to the few who have bothered to find alternative methods for iron/steel working (remember, that they would've have the benefit of steel tools and goods to this this, and a good knowledge of the medium, which makes things a lot easier). Or that alternatives are very quickly financed in an attempt to recapture what has been lost.

I was wondering about that. How early did alternative ways of smelting iron or making steel exist? Like, crucibles for example. Would they be plausible for a TL1-2 society? Would some crackpot inventor still be able to make small amounts of steel that way?

Originally Posted by malloyd

Properly cared for steel tools that don't see a lot of use can last a century - half of my hand tools belonged to my father and are 50 or 60 years old - so the crisis isn't immediate.

Heavily used stuff will wear out faster, but most craftsmen who are well equipped now will still have usable gear in a decade or more. Your economy isn't going to crash overnight, or even this year, though the long term outlook is pretty poor. Nobody *new* can enter a profession that requires steel tools - your economy can't expand and is going to start contracting with a half life of decades in those industries, which is most of them.

The first really major crisis is probably plows - TL4 food surpluses are not large, so every farmer whose efficiency drops because his plow breaks mean somebody somewhere starves, and plowshares are worked pretty hard. Next year is probably OK, particularly if the planting season is already over, but if you don't solve this one pretty fast the year after that will be a hard year and half your population is going to be dead in a decade.

Good! My intention was for the transition to be near-apocalyptic, and a food shortage will do quite nicely for a violent unraveling of society.

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Just one question: has any sort of alchemist (magical or historical) discovered aluminum? If yes, they may just be able to create the purest iron possible.

If not, corrosion is dependent on environmental factors, meaning those living in deserts will have steel much longer than those near the sea.

So far, I've shied away from "magic as art/science" thing that typical fantasy settings have. There are no studious wizards or alchemical entrepreneurs. We use Path/Book ritual magic, and it usually involves dealings with otherworldly entities, so practitioners are seers, priests, bards, old crones in the woods, etc.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Seneschal

I was wondering about that. How early did alternative ways of smelting iron or making steel exist? Like, crucibles for example. Would they be plausible for a TL1-2 society? Would some crackpot inventor still be able to make small amounts of steel that way?

Crucible steel likely goes back to the Third Century BC in Sri Lanka and southern India. Note well that you need iron, already smelted from its ore, to make crucible steel.

[Seneschal]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

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.

So, if I understood correctly, under these made-up rules, the iron would be easily cast, but would have the properties of relatively pure iron? So, weapons and armor made from such a material would be softer than steel, but not as brittle?

Originally Posted by Agemegos

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.

By "quite unlike" do you mean they would more easily be made elaborate? That fits neatly with the image I presented to the players so far, where the fashion was ostentatious to the point of tastelessness, e.g. impractical full-body metalwork as street-clothes. I'm just not quite sure what decorative techniques they'd have access to (boon aside, they're technologically TL2, possibly 3).

Originally Posted by Agemegos

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.

So, just having lower-temperature iron has no bearing on making steel. That's fine. I'm assuming that means I'll have to use the stats for iron weapons and armor, which have a higher chance to break.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Crucible steel likely goes back to the Third Century BC in Sri Lanka and southern India. Note well that you need iron, already smelted from its ore, to make crucible steel.

Ok, none of that then.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Seneschal

So, if I understood correctly, under these made-up rules, the iron would be easily cast, but would have the properties of relatively pure iron? So, weapons and armor made from such a material would be softer than steel, but not as brittle?

I think that's right, yes.

By "quite unlike" do you mean they would more easily be made elaborate?

Yes, and things like bells, pots, lamps, helmets, cuirasses, stirrups, basket-hilts and so forth (which were difficult to forge and therefore which continued to be made of bronze or brass long after iron came in for simply-shaped objects such as blades) might be cast in pure iron. Mail might never be invented. Swords might be cast all in one piece with the blade, cross-guard, tang, and pommel.

So, just having lower-temperature iron has no bearing on making steel.

Correct. If anything it is an impediment, since the problems of shaping iron way below its melting-point led to it being heated repeatedly in a bed of hot carbon while it was being forged (and while the refinery bloom was being wrought into bars). It incidentally picked up carbon while that was being done, resulting in mild and case-hardened steel. That won't happen if it is being cast.

There might still be a little carbon in some iron, as a result of iron carbide forming in the blast furnace — it used to be part of the art of a smith to use different parts of the bloom for different qualities owing to different extents of carburisation. But I think there will be less with the iron melting in the furnace, and in any case these people won't be able to harden steel if they do get any, becasue theirs will melt long before it reaches heat-treatment temperatures.

That's fine. I'm assuming that means I'll have to use the stats for iron weapons and armor, which have a higher chance to break.

Yes, the stats should be as for iron. I'm not sure though that "breaking" is exactly right. Blunting and bending, perhaps.

[Sword-dancer]

Originally Posted by Seneschal

The original recipients of the boon were a tribal bronze-age culture with mostly oral traditions. .

so no druids, Brahmins, Bards/Skalds , No linear B script, Cuneiform or else?

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Might be interesting to know how many original parts, though.

Was remade as an Oil Jetty in the 1920's, so I doubt there's that many. Pity. That kind of stuff nullifies the warranty.