Crafting, Metals, Alloys, and Order of training

[Nikodemus]

stainless steel and similiar (by adding trace elements of other minerals) was developed very late, in 20th century. Everything before wasn't that durable as you would expect for a weapon for instance or was an accident.
Steel is indeed hard to produce. And basically the less carbon in it, the better the steel. Also after a certain point with too much carbon in the structure, you are unable to make steel. What you get is "cast iron".
It is when there is from 2% to 3,6% carbon in the structure. "Cast iron" can in no way be used for sword making.
Steel is when there is below 2,11% of carbon and at the point when you pour the melted alloy to the form, it isn't steel yet. It has worse durabiliti properties than steel, and steel is when you plastically tool it.
It is good to point out that it is currently all messed up in PS, where carbon is from 10% to 20% part in the so called steel, if we look at coal lumps-iron ore ratio. Only we are more interested in weight, rather than the previous. We can't say how much iron there is in PS iron ore and how much coal in the coal lumps, but at the first sight current ration looks wrong.

[Under the moon]

Niko, you just explained why weapons in PS need to be fixed so often.

As for making steel at all with the equipment provided ingame... it simply can not be done.  Even with the right equipment, it would be very hard for a single person to smelt steel, not to mention forming it into anything. Making steel takes temperatures that can not be reached in a furnace such as seen in the game. Copper, yes. Silver, likely. Gold, easily. Yes, I am being nitpicky, but so is steel.

Here are a few good (and simple) reads on the subject of steel, iron, and sword making.

http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/culture/scitech/iron_steel.html
http://swordforum.com/swords/historical/makingofmedswds.html

As to why these ores can be found in the stalactite in the first place, the answer is simply that it was not formed by the 'drip' process. Think about it, and the way the world is designed. The cave is  mass of rock pushed down from the surface under great pressures. This is proven by the existence of diamonds and rubies. My postulation is that the entire thing was molten at the moment of creation, and excess molten rock flowed away to form the lower cavern. Now, there is a huge shaft of foreign crystal thrust into the roof of the cavern, which is without a doubt the cause of the stalactite in the first place.

All in all, we are not talking about a natural formation. The entire situation reeks of an insanely catastrophic astral impact.

[Nikodemus]

Niko, you just explained why weapons in PS need to be fixed so often.

I can't agree and if i would, there is no way i can say what you assume PS weapons ara really made of.
Really steel? no, i'm sure you know you can't make steel in open furnance, so...
Casted iron? its the next thing to appear. But you can't make weapons of it, Well you can, but i will probably broken in two after few hits and there is nothing you can do to fix it. If you start hammering casted iron, it is going to crumble into pieces.
More carbon? This probably means carbon not really in the structure, but still inside, what makes the product completly unusable for any kind of craft.
Broonze weapons would be better than that i gues.

Maybe PS "steel" weapons are in fact made of iron, which was hardened for increased durability?


And more on topic the first bunch of posts:
I think it is less about skill IF you can produse some material and more about knowledge. And then you need skill for the material to be good enough to be used anywhere.
This means that to make steel you need some pages with instructions about it. Something you can always look into, lear from and put into your book, where you have other instructions for other things too.
But if your skill is say 1, even with knowledge, you are going to produce something of very bad quality, noone most likely buy from you. Lets say it was steel and assume at level 10 it starts being of decent enough quality, progressing to 20, the skill/quality function is close to linear, but after 20, the function stops being that linear.
But even if you you are going to produce crap, you are allowed to, and you will gain practice.

Of course there are toughter and simpler meterials to make. Melted forms, not alloys being the simplest most likely. How tought it is for each, should have nothing to do with historical progress, but in fact how tought it is to do each. Maybe it will match with historical order, but when it won't, the historical order goes away.

[Natrina]

 I'm with rtrentc. Again, I return to my argument that most of the problem lies in the fact that the only industry we have so far is that of war. No one is going to make brass swords, or even iron swords, because who would buy it? Some guy who can buy a steel sword from a NPC for a price you'd die of great misery to compete with? Yeah.

 So, what this would potentially create is a state of misery to the apprentices. You can't make things of good quality, you can't use good materials and I'm not sure how you're going to pay the miners or sell your product in a market flooded with loot (Nikodemus was totally right on that) and with NPC competition. Only reply to this: apprentice becomes a fighter to get PPs and money and a miner to run away from raw material expenses. RP immersion, -50 points.

 Am I going to repeat myself? Yes, I am. I do believe having us pass through an order of materials just to use them is wrong. When our blacksmiths become blacksmiths (as in: can do things other than war items) other materials will be used (actually, not. Blacksmiths are iron and steel smiths, but the point is that other materials will be used, even if, by name, by other *smiths). The material order is fine as it is.

 Nikodemus. Ignoring the fact that the density of coal and iron are quite probably different, it seems the idea of the devs was to make steel making respect it on weight terms, indeed. 9-1 gives 1,81% of coal (though the 8-2, a scheme also usable as far as I know, has 3,63% of coal). *shrugs*

P.S.: *reads Nikodemus post and nods*.

[Nikodemus]

Nikodemus. Ignoring the fact that the density of coal and iron are quite probably different, it seems the idea of the devs was to make steel making respect it on weight terms, indeed. 9-1 gives 1,81% of coal (though the 8-2, a scheme also usable as far as I know, has 3,63% of coal). *shrugs*

Yes, i was assuming the same thing, that it may indeed make a lot of sense this way, i didn't take the efford to calculate, only estimate.
Well, i just did and i see your calculations are right whe iron wears 6 and coal 1, but doesn't iron ore weight 3 ? This increases the percentage values twice and makes 8-2 complete unusable crap ;P and 9-1 casted iron, which can never be steel and as i wrote broonze would be better material for a weapon than that. Simple iron, probbly hardened if it is ever possible, even better i gues.
Maybe if i really remember right that iron ore wears 3 they make it wear 6 in future and make price for it at NPCs twice as high. That would make sense i suppose. And then make the 8-2 ratio for other purposes than weapon making, because it is not material for weapons. You can make cannons out of it though hehe, of course no cannons in PS
EDIT: or cogs! gears! Winch machinery needs some for sure (athough their shape is all messed up ;P, about that maybe later)
And Iron Ore weights really 6 ;P

And i'm concerned with apprentices into smithing in PS too. I believe we will need other craftable items in future, usable in different activities, so that the apprentice can work on easy materials, to learn his craft. But i need to note that one can learn the craft of eg steel making without going through all the simpler materials before. Now the question is how to put it into skill system?
I proposed to make these pages of instructions, so that it will take efford to get them, but decrease the effort before you can make some eg steel at all. Not to repeat myself, but maybe produced steel by such a person would be still usable as garde tools? hmm.