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Anders Ämting
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Thanks again. And a few more questions. About the metal quality - it is supposed to be an important factor in the long run, isn't it? Is it really important in a single fight? If I have brand new sharp sword made of shitty steel am I really in disadvantage against a guy with the sword made of superduperawesome steel? Can he really cut through my sword?
Not really, no. Swords cutting through other swords basically never happens.
As far as I can understand, "bad steel" means uneven carbon content. That's probably more a problem for the blacksmith, but if you get a sword out of it, it may be more prone to damage or have a tendency to dull, or both. It could break from an impact if it had a hidden tempering flaw or stress fracture, but that doesn't mean the steel is to blame: Either you simply pushed the blade too hard, or the bladesmith messed up. That said, even good swords can snap in half without warning. It's very rare, but it does happen.
Mind, a sword breaking generally means it was fragile - that is too hard - which is a matter of hardening and tempering. On the other hand, if the heat-treat simply didn't take in some places due deficient carbon content, it's more likely to bend. And while a bent sword is bad, it's not nearly as bad as a broken sword.
At the end of the day, steel is steel. Iron ore doesn't really come in different degrees of quality when you dig it up. What matters the most is how it's processed afterwards, and how skilled the craftsman working it is.
Is the armor penetration decreasing a lot?
I don't think it's a matter of varying degrees of penetration. Rather, if you are trying to drive a very sharp point through a mail, for example, obviously you don't want it to bend or break.
Another question. Any comments about katar? It seems to me like a very nice weapon with a descent hand protection comparing to ordinary dagger but it seems like wasn't popular at all in Europe. Why?
Well, it's a bit of an odd weapon. Not as odd as the pata, but still kinda odd. Odd weapons, more often than not, require unconventional fighting styles. It's likely normal daggers were just easier to use and already easy enough to come by, and the katar design didn't offer enough advantages to have an influence.
As for hand protection, that normally isn't a factor for daggers as they are close combat stabbing weapons. The exceptions are things like the parrying daggers that accompanied the earlier rapier styles, and those often did have elaborate guards.
Anyway, very few oriental weapons actually became popular in Europe. A rare few might have turned out successful, but others never amounted to more than curiosities. Mostly people stuck to what they knew, and what worked best for the type of killing they were most likely to do.
Dear Anders SwordGuy,
In my world, there was an inter-planar war. The invading army was eventually defeated, but they left behind a lot of weapons and equipment made of a stronger metal than the iron typically used by the blacksmiths of Country X.
My questions: How would said blacksmiths learn to work this new metal? Could they do it at all? If so, would the quality drop due to inexperience?
Oh dear, that really depends on a lot of factors.
First of all, how difficult is it to aquire the metal in the first place? If it's the main material for all the weapons in that country it has to be pretty common, but do you simply mine it as ore? Or is it like say aluminium? That is, something that is very abundant chemically speaking but almost impossible to find in the elemental state, meaning you need certain degree of industrial technology to even produce it.
It gets even more complicated if this metal is an alloy. If so, how advanced? They would have to figure out which material component go into the alloy and in exactly what quantities.
Assuming they get that far, is it forged the same way as steel? Or must you cast it like bronze? If you forge it does it require specific forging techniques? Does it need to be heat-treated and if so, does it need to be heat-treated in a specific way?
If we just look at steel, there are a lot of different alloys and many of them require specific heat-treatment to bring out the best qualities of the material. It's entirely possible this metal isn't anything special at all, and the real secret is the method the bladesmiths of Country Z figured out to temper it.
And worst of all: if multiple of these factors are at play, and the people of X fail to figure out just one of them, it's probably not going to work.
So, depending on how different the process is from what the Xians are used to, reproducing the Zian weapon technology could range from fairly simple to practically impossible.
Then again, humans (I assume we're talking about humans) are very industrious and inventive when challenged. If they have a basic idea how this material is made, they can probably figure it out through trial and error, given enough time. It's also possible they find books or documents describing the process.
Heck, if they have enough forsight, they may even make sure to capture a few of Z's craftsmen and force the instructions out of them.
But it's also very possible to simply lose a technology forever. The method for producing the famous damascus/wootz steel was lost in the 18th century and to this day we don't actually know how the stuff was made. There are people who have made decent imitations and proposed theories for how to make wootz steel, but we don't actually know. It's effectively a lost art.
I think this is really up to how you want to play it. Anything that suits your story is probably possible.
If not, what would they likely do with a surplus of alien weaponry?
If they have a lot more weapons than they need or want, they might simply gather them up an sell them to Country Y, which is any wealthy neighbouring country they aren't currently at war with.
At the height of their sword production, it's said the Japanese sold some 100.000 swords to Ming Dynasty China. (Probably not very good ones, but hey, that's still an army's worth of swords.)
If the Blacksmiths of Country X were actually using iron, then these could be nothing more than weapons made from carbon steel. They would have vastly superior qualities in developing and retaining a cutting edge, durability, etc.
Eh. I think I mentioned this before at some point, but it's basically impossible to even get iron with no carbon in it, at least with conventional methods. And even if you could, pure iron is actually softer than aluminium and oxidizes very quickly, so it's not every useful.
What we think of as iron is technically just another type of carbon-iron alloy, just one with relatively little carbon in it. Anyway, as I understand it, people didn't actually switch from iron to steel at one point - rather they gradually found ways to improve their metalurgy and smithing techniques, resulting in gradually better steel weapons.
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