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[Grimlocke]

Under rather mysterious and chaotic circumstances I seem to have made a square of sand, dispite the fact that my fort is build on an utterly sandless glacier.

Behold:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Involved was a muddy constucted up/down staircase, constructed over a natural up/down staircase. There was also a fire imp which wreaked havoc, melting all ice around it, also making that staircase muddy.

I deconstructed the staircase to farm on the muddy square (I accidentally smoothed my other muddy sqaures), but when decontruction was finished I saw there was sand.

Naturally I wonder if I could reproduce this on large scale, without fire imps...

[florian]

Known bug. Building things on the z-level with rock floor and ice walls and later removing them yields soil. Excavate some space, build a paved road. Remove the paved road. You now have soil.

[etgfrog]

well...sand is pretty much crushed rocks...so bug or feature?

[Captain Xenon]

you can also 'create' soil via running water. i find that the type of soil created matches the local biome soil, so a map with no sand still dosent get any sand.

[Derakon]

The sand used for making glass is a specific type of crushed rock, which is high in silica. You won't get usable sand by crushing granite into little bits. So, bug.

[Tenebrais]

The sand used for making glass is a specific type of crushed rock, which is high in silica. You won't get usable sand by crushing granite into little bits. So, bug.

Well, Granite is about three-quarters silica. But then that's not particularly high by rock standards. You'd likely need some filtration beyond the level of DF.

[florian]

I imagine rock crushing in DF to be similar to gem cutting.

Player: Crush this rock!
[Rock crusher grabs rock and begins working]
Rock crusher: I made this mug!
[Player facepalms]

[alway]

Plants growing on underground muddy soil (requires underground river/pool to happen) will also generate a random soil type. A great way of creating sand on otherwise sandless maps!

[Elliott_Thinas]

I think sometimes sand is trapped under grass on the surface. My fort had no sand, but then a pack of immigrants making a line for my booze seemed to trample some red sand out of the dirt.

[Noble Digger]

Building a wall out of Ice and then removing it transforms the ground underneath it into soil. If you do this on top of obsidian, some people have reported that it creates black sand.

[Fossaman]

Theory: The sand was trapped in the glacier. It was released when it melted.

Glaciers do a very good job of pulverizing rock and such as they move along.

[zchris13]

Plausible.  Very plausible. What type of rock are glaciers most likely to pulverize.

[CheaterEater]

Plausible.  Very plausible. What type of rock are glaciers most likely to pulverize.

The kind that get in their way.

Honestly though, it's mostly the soil layers. Bedrock is typically tougher than the ice.

[Derakon]

I'm pretty certain Toady's said this is a bug, regardless of how "plausible" it is. You don't get soil by building and then removing constructions.

[Byakugan01]

Glaciers, however, pretty much carved out the ENTIRE area North of the Appalachians in the U.S.-and even into it, too. That would have created at least SOME sand. Constructions though-yeah, that's a bug.