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[4powerd]

Just as the title says, on of my soldiers has a pair of iron gauntlets that the description says is showing some wear, I thought armor couldn't degrade and these gauntlets are newly created

[Cathar]

Armor and weapons degrade when they are used. Iron is pretty solid, so he must have used them either very long or took a bad silver mace blow on his hands

[4powerd]

like I said, those gauntlets are newly created, he just put them on when I checked

[Loci]

Were they stored in an "everything" stockpile?

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5711

[4powerd]

No, they had just been created when he grabbed them, they were still at the forge, few minutes later and it says the gauntlets are showing some wear, a quick check of my other troops confirms he's the only one with "degraded" gauntlets (or any armor for that matter)

[Admiral Obvious]

Did that particular dwarf participate in any sparring, or a brawl?

I'm pretty sure getting hit at all does impart some extremely minor wear to the article.

Or course it gets worse when actually "used" though.

[4powerd]

Update: I now have "mangled" and "showing heavy wear" armor, this is armor that was newly created, moved to armor stockpile In a bin, and then suddenly are worn down

[anewaname]

Metal armor will also degrade while on a Refuse stockpile, and when combined with military uniforms that have "<material> <armor item>" settings, you will see this cycle happen... Dwarf is hauling something to a Refuse pile while a new armor item is created (of better quality than what the dwarf is wearing), dwarf completes the hauling job and while standing on the Refuse stockpile he drops his current armor item, and heads to the forge to claim the newly created item, leaving the other armor item on the Refuse stockpile until the next military dwarf's job ends and he walks to equip it (and it will be damaged by the time he wears it).

[4powerd]

yeah just found out that's what causing it, my general stockpile is near my loom, so it was set to have wool and hair in it

[anewaname]

It will continue to happen so long as you have a refuse pile and military dwarfs are set to haul refuse. There are two solutions I use.

For leather armor (because the metal-wearing military dwarfs all have leather cloaks and start with leather and often start training with leather/bone armors), the leatherworker is locked in a room with a bed, food, booze, workshop, and a large pile of tanned hides, then given an order for 50+ leather cloaks. When you unlock the door, the military swarms in and takes the cloaks.

For metal armors, because my forge room usually cannot be locked up, I do not assign metal armor to a squad until the entire order has been produced. Then they swarm in.

These solutions greatly reduce the armor drops onto refuse stockpiles, not eliminate it.

[C4st1gator]

Shouldn't unused armor go into an armor stockpile instead?
Does it lose durability when it's put into any stockpile, or just a refuse pile?
And most of all, it should be possible to salvage damaged armor by melting it down and forging a new piece. (With some conversion loss.)

[PatrikLundell]

Shouldn't unused armor go into an armor stockpile instead?
Does it lose durability when it's put into any stockpile, or just a refuse pile?
And most of all, it should be possible to salvage damaged armor by melting it down and forging a new piece. (With some conversion loss.)

The armor is not put into the refuse stockpile in this issue. It's dropped where the dorf happens to be when it decides to pick up new gear. If that happens to be in a refuse stockpile, that's where the items land.

Stockpiles stocking any kind of "refuse" degrades items at an increased rate, but no other stockpile kinds do this (with the possible exception for the 'y' corpse one). This means storage of butcherable corpses, wool, bones, and raw hides should not be combined with non refuse types of items (and "real" refuse shouldn't be either, but that's probably less of an issue).

It is possible to melt down damaged metal items, which typically results in a loss. This is not much of an issue with regular gear, but I expect melting down masterworks items results in the standard masterworks loss shock, even if the item was too damaged to be useful.

[Saiko Kila]

Iron (and all other non-adamantine) gauntlets though do give more metal after melting than what was used to produce them. With the caveat that the smelter should be the same for both of them.  And preferably for all other metal melting, though two designated smelters could be necessary for efficient melting in bigger fortresses.