# Iron armour?



## Lorna (Jun 26, 2012)

Hi, 
The main character in my book wears iron armour. I've just got to the point where he needs to fix it (he's the son of a blacksmith) and started doing some research. The closest to blacksmithing I've come is watching the shoeing of a horse... I've done a bit of research on the internet, found some answers but am wondering if there's any knowledgeable people who can confirm my findings. 

Firstly how is iron suitable for armour got from the ore? 
Am I correct in thinking this is done in a blast furnace, the liquid iron is collected then to create wrought iron, which is the only type of iron suitable for armour the carbon must be hammered out? 

How do you make a breastplate from a piece of wrought iron? 
From what I've seen it involves drawing the shape on a flat piece, taking a hammer and chisel to cut it out then hammering it into shape over a small rounded piece of metal (does anybody know its name?)


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## T.Allen.Smith (Jun 26, 2012)

I've worked with steel, making my own knives but I've never really worked with raw iron.

That being said, how the metal is worked would largely depend on the time setting of your story. I'm not sure the periods where iron armor was prevalent had the tech level to fully melt down ore and then cast it into the desired shape (could be wrong there). From my understanding it is usually heated to a glow and pounded into shape.

I want to ask though.... Why does this character wear iron armor? Is it the period he lives in or is it made for some special purpose (i.e. fighting a demon that weakens around iron)?

The why & time setting might make this an easier question to answer.


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## Ireth (Jun 26, 2012)

My first impression upon reading the title was "wow, wouldn't that be horribly heavy to wear?" Part of the point of creating steel was having an alternative to iron that was much lighter, among other benefits. That said, iron armor would be very effective at repelling Fae. XD


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## Telcontar (Jun 26, 2012)

Most civilizations that discovered iron working transitioned to steel fairly quickly, because steel of varying grades was the natural product of the bloom furnace process. That link is a youtube video I've always found fascinating, showing some folks operating a bloom furnace.

As T.Allen said, most civilizations didn't have the tech to completely liquefy iron. As explained in the video, what the bloomery does is 'bake' off the other things and melt the slag, which leaves a uneven chunk of hot iron behind. That chunk is then further worked into an ingot.

I don't know much about the specifics, but I imagine a breastplate would be created much like anything else - heat the iron up to the point where it can be shaped and then pound away at it. The "rounded piece of metal" you describe is probably just an insert for an anvil. 

In any case, have some fun looking up thinks like 'iron smelting' and 'forging armor' on youtube. You can learn a lot.


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## SeverinR (Jun 26, 2012)

Where ever research takes you, let it teach you.  
The more you know the more you can sound like you know what you're talking about when you use it in a book.

I was thinking she meant a dish to round metal, I only know the very basics though. But the dish I read about were of wood in a stump, not metal.


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## ThinkerX (Jun 26, 2012)

First thought - as somebody whose handled a bit of iron for non fantastic purposes now and again - -Yee Gods, that would be heavy!  Your character would have to have the strength of one of these Pro Wrestler types even to walk in full iron plate. Even just breast and backplates...well, those alone would likely weigh near as much as some posters here.

That said, you might want to have your character find some iron stock - that is bars or plates of iron he can hammer into shape.


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## Ravana (Jun 27, 2012)

Steel _is_ iron. It just isn't _pure_ iron. 

Given that it was essentially impossible for earlier societies to completely purify iron anyway, the distinction can approach irrelevance.

In Europe, they weren't even using blast furnaces until around the 14th century–they used bloomeries to extract metal from ore. Bloomeries have been in use in the West since at least 1500 BCE, possibly as much as a millennium or so earlier. (By the way, the Swedes appear to have had blast furnaces, or something close enough to them, a hundred years earlier than the rest of Europe, for some still unknown reason.)

Western bloomery methods never fully liquefied the metal: that was something they _avoided_, rather than sought to do, as it ended up with too _high_ a carbon content, and decarburizing it was a pain. "Cast iron" (liquefied and poured into molds), what most people are probably thinking of when they hear "iron," actually contains more carbon than steel does, not less. Wrought iron falls off the other end: it has too _little_ carbon, or anything else, in it to be considered "steel"–but was used for most of the same things steel was used for, and depending on exactly which nonferrous traces were present, could be functionally indistinguishable from steel. The chief difference was that wrought iron could not be hardened by heat-treating; it could, however, be work-hardened cold (which I suspect required a lot more effort on the part of the person swinging the hammer  ).  

The Chinese were producing cast iron around two thousand years earlier than the West… but that isn't exactly the best of metals to make weapons or armor from. In spite of which, they did.

Most modern alloy steels are still over 90% iron, though there are exceptions (stainless contains at least 11% chromium, for example). Which is why the distinction used to be made, and sometimes still is, between "steel alloy" (meaning "contains more than just iron and carbon") and plain old "steel." (Manufacturers now tend to use more specific subcategories, such as "tool steel," for certain classes; they're still alloys. To make things more confusing, _all_ steels are alloys, even if it's only iron and carbon they contain.)

As for whether a particular metal is "suitable" for armor: you use what you have. If that's meteoric nickel-iron, great (having enough of it in one place, while not impossible, is unlikely). If your society has blast furnaces, but hasn't discovered decarburization processes, you may well be happier using cast iron than any of your other available choices. If you only have brass (unlikely), you could use that; if you have bronze, you might use it even if you _do_ have iron–especially if your iron isn't all that high quality. And if all you have is copper… use leather. 

A fairly good, accessible reference (with further references of its own) can be found here:

Metallurgy and Production of European Armor


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## Chilari (Jun 27, 2012)

Ravana said:


> if you have bronze, you might use it even if you _do_ have iron—especially if your iron isn't all that high quality. And if all you have is copper… use leather.
> 
> 
> > QFT. Iron was known and used in Europe long before the end of the bronze age, but the technology wasn't there to make it useful - what could be produced was brittle and unsuitable for weapons. In fact right into the iron age in Europe, bronze was still commonly used. This is mainly because the terms Bronze Age and Iron Age are less about the ability to use the metals and more about the role they played in society - in Britain at least the Iron Age didn't start until at least a century after the Bronze Age ended, and in the Athenian Agora in the 5th century BC (iron age) there was a whole street of bronze workers (and in the wall of one of the workshops there was found a lead curse tablet cursing two named bronze workers "and their work and their souls" and a woman too - fascinating!)
> ...


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## Lorna (Jun 27, 2012)

Thanks for the information everybody. 

I guess I wanted my character to wear black iron because it goes with his character and the people in the volcanic realm, many of whom are miners and blacksmiths and are quite different to those in the mountain realm who wear steel and are more refined. 

If I want them to continue wearing iron either they're all built like pro-wrestlers, the armour is an antiquated tradition they hate and have to get out for festival days or else... I make up a new type of iron (it's fantasy!)
Perhaps I could invent a kind of iron ore and a process of extraction based on yet different to the bloom and blast furnaces and based in the elemental magic of my world


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## T.Allen.Smith (Jun 27, 2012)

Lorna said:
			
		

> Thanks for the information everybody.
> 
> I guess I wanted my character to wear black iron because it goes with his character and the people in the volcanic realm, many of whom are miners and blacksmiths and are quite different to those in the mountain realm who wear steel and are more refined.
> 
> ...



There are many types of armor you could use iron for that would serve those purposes & solve the weight problem as well. Ring mail would be one, even scale mail. If you want to go really rustic just stitch iron discs into padded or leather armors. All of these armor types were very common.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Jun 27, 2012)

Lorna said:


> Thanks for the information everybody.
> 
> I guess I wanted my character to wear black iron because it goes with his character and the people in the volcanic realm, many of whom are miners and blacksmiths and are quite different to those in the mountain realm who wear steel and are more refined.
> 
> ...



Fantasy tech development doesn't have to match the real world; it's perfectly fine to have your fantasy civilization be somewhat more advanced in certain areas. Or maybe they just use magic. Or maybe you just sort of hand-wave it away and say, "Yeah, they could make steel armor, and they could dye it any color they wanted," and move on with the story.


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## Ravana (Jun 28, 2012)

Lorna said:


> I guess I wanted my character to wear black iron because it goes with his character and the people in the volcanic realm, many of whom are miners and blacksmiths and are quite different to those in the mountain realm who wear steel and are more refined.



Not that it need affect your story any, but just as a technical detail: volcanic rock is in general a lousy place to look for metal ores. Iron is usually extracted from hematite, limonite or goethite, all of which form in sedimentary rock as a result of weathering of other iron-bearing minerals–the last of these only under those conditions. _Some_ small deposits of hematite and magnetite are occasionally found in association with vulcanism, but in general iron (and any other metal) in igneous rock is thoroughly intermixed in the rock, rather than forming discrete deposits, and is bound in silicate minerals which it can't be extracted from–even modern processes can't do so profitably.

As for blackening, just quench the steel in oil. Or you can use wax–on a somewhat cooler blade, specifically for the color: you don't quench it this way. Apparently, you can even "dye" it with black walnut, from one thing I've read (but haven't sought to corroborate). The color, at least, is not a problem for ya.


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## ThinkerX (Jun 28, 2012)

> There are many types of armor you could use iron for that would serve those purposes & solve the weight problem as well. Ring mail would be one, even scale mail. If you want to go really rustic just stitch iron discs into padded or leather armors. All of these armor types were very common



I would recommend taking a strong look at this.  There is also another advantage here - sizing.  Ye olde plate armor pretty much had to be individually sized for the person wearing it; Iron scale on leather is a different story.  It would still be heavy - make no mistake there - but much more doable.  

Alternatively, maybe they do have a few sets of plate laying around and compete for the right to wear them. 

Either way, though, these guys are going to be very, very strong.


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