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[Sean Mirrsen]

Not basic electricity. RAW electricity. Make a golden chamber, build a pair of bridges that lower into it, one made of zinc, another of copper. Fill chamber with the strongest acid the alchemist can make. Voila - dwarven battery/execution chamber!

[lucusLoC]

You could melt steel with hay, if you went though the trouble to set it up right. It is only a question of fule supply, burn rate and oxegen supply.

My freind has his own forge/smelter, it is a hobby for him. His "little cooker" has a 2HP blower on it, and he can get normal wood to melt iron. There are 2 problems with using wood though.

1. You need a second person to feed the fire, cause the wood burns so fast.

2. You need a 3rd person to clear the ash as it is created, least it take up all the room in the pit and block all the airflow.

I have no doubt that we could do the same with hay, we would just need 3 or 4 people with pitchforks to constantly feed the fire (and a rather large pile of hay).

It is only a question of practicality. Coal is the best, because it is the highest energy density, folowed by charcoal, then wood. (I am not familiar with the reason charcoal is more energy dense that wood. Maybe it is not enrrgy density, but rather ease in liberating siad energy?)

Anyhoo, you should be able to burn just about anything, but you would need more of it, and you may need a helper. Powere could also be required for a blower, which would be reqiured for the less ideal fule sourses.

(Incidentaly, in india they realy do burn cow cips for fule. I bet someone also runs a forge off of them, if not a little mini smelter)

[pbheadtemp]

as one digs deeper (far below the current -15 z level current max) there should be some preety epic shizznits... oil, high tempature steam pockets, explosive gas, pressurized magma... a whole lot of crazy... "fun" stuff for your miners... but stuff that might be usefull.

[lucusLoC]

@pbheadtemp's sig

i did that onece on a server here at work. with the admin password. it was "fun."

[LegoLord]

so why can't we have more variety with inefficient and unrealistic energy sources? Dragon-fire, bio-fuels, steam, basic electricity, etc.

Dragon fire I can buy, but with everything else . . . no.  Post 1400s.  Well, okay, wood might fall under bio-fuels.  Also, does the fact that A)Adamantine is magic and could have something special allowing the smith to work it (which I think is the traditional case for it and similar metals), and B)To shape metal it doesn't not need to be molten, merely more malleable from heat.  Working with molten metal is called casting, not forging, and is not always an effective way of making an object.

And again, a mirror furnace would take a lot of metal, ignoring the lack of appropriate technology to make good enough mirrors.  Yes, they used to be made from metal, not glass.  Yes, a mirror furnace would be in the spirit of the mega project, but most mega projects of the necessary size are made of stone and not metal.  Metal is scarcer and you will not find enough on one map.

[Luke_Prowler]

so why can't we have more variety with inefficient and unrealistic energy sources? Dragon-fire, bio-fuels, steam, basic electricity, etc.

Dragon fire I can buy, but with everything else . . . no.  Post 1400s.  Well, okay, wood might fall under bio-fuels.  Also, does the fact that A)Adamantine is magic and could have something special allowing the smith to work it (which I think is the traditional case for it and similar metals), and B)To shape metal it doesn't not need to be molten, merely more malleable from heat.  Working with molten metal is called casting, not forging, and is not always an effective way of making an object.

And again, a mirror furnace would take a lot of metal, ignoring the lack of appropriate technology to make good enough mirrors.  Yes, they used to be made from metal, not glass.  Yes, a mirror furnace would be in the spirit of the mega project, but most mega projects of the necessary size are made of stone and not metal.  Metal is scarcer and you will not find enough on one map.

my 8 z-level tower of steel says otherwise.

[LegoLord]

Not big enough, I don't think.  Think somewhere in the hundreds, along the X or Y axis as well.

Maybe bigger.

[Winterbrass]

Yes, metals tend to be scarce(ish). This is why one sees older mirrors made from glass with a thin layer of reflective metal attached to the back of the glass. Silver, steel, whatever will cast a reflection if polished enough.

[Rowanas]

Mirrors are currently exactly that. We put glass on a perfect backing of foil and it reflects wonderfully. If you stare really hard, you can see the foil in the back as a silvery presence.

[Grendus]

Nothing short of wood charcoal burns hot enough to melt iron or steel. Ignoring how silly magma forges are to begin with, they shouldn't be able to melt iron ore. You need the carbon

Frankly, I don't think there's a single good, workable idea in this whole thread.

Lava can range in temperature from 700-1200 degrees, according to wikipedia (don't knock my source, I'm a cs major not geology). Charcoal burns at 1100. Tapping magma directly out of a volcano would almost certainly be hot enough to work up to bronze, maybe even iron, assuming some non-human technology. Producing steel requires charcoal regardless, it could be assumed producing pig iron and steel is worked like a normal forge.

Aside from that, peat could probably be used to fuel a forge if you processed it like charcoal, as could petrochemicals if they were ever implemented. Certain alcohols might burn hot enough in high concentrations to work softer metals (not booze, we're talking tarlike alcohol unfit for even an elf). Corpses could probably be turned into charcoal if you dried them in a kiln (perhaps this could be a reasonable use for mirror power? Mirror powered kilns for drying non-wood fuel).

There's a reason charcoal has almost always been used for forging though. It's just not easy to get metals hot enough to work without high temperatures that can only be achieved with high carbon fuels or modern technology.

[qwertyuiopas]

For the mirror thing:

Imagine a giant funnel that reached peak temperature mid-day during the sumer.

For this, you would use the base rock as support, and only make a thin layer of highly reflective metal.


Also, you assume the size of tiles.
If it were 2x2m, a 10x10 tile mirror would have 20x20 or 400m² area, well above some high temperature human-made ones. Wikipedia's example was 50m² generating ~800 °C, and that is good enough even if you say that dwarf-tech could only get 1/4 reflectiveness.

As it can be comfortably assumed that DF's tiles are AT LEAST 1x1m, that gives a max. size needed around 25 or 30 square, not hundreds!

[Pilsu]

Lava can range in temperature from 700-1200 degrees, according to wikipedia (don't knock my source, I'm a cs major not geology). Charcoal burns at 1100. Tapping magma directly out of a volcano would almost certainly be hot enough to work up to bronze, maybe even iron, assuming some non-human technology.

I'm interested in how exactly you intend to avoid dying from the convection or for that matter, how you plan to pump the magma without it ruining your equipment. Then there's the poisonous gases. Volcano lairs tend to fall short of OSHA compliance

Then there's the question of whether magma heats up when you pump oxygen into it, allowing it to surpass the melting point of useful metals. As you can see, charcoal falls short of iron melting point by several hundred degrees

I spoke of iron ore I might point out. Steel does require coal but iron ore doesn't for some reason. Carbon is needed to separate the oxygen from the iron oxide, also known as rust

Aside from that, peat could probably be used to fuel a forge if you processed it like charcoal, as could petrochemicals if they were ever implemented.

Cough up a historical precedent. Peat would have certainly seen use if it works, shouldn't be too difficult

[Tlaon]

Cough up a historical precedent. Peat would have certainly seen use if it works, shouldn't be too difficult

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peat

Upon drying, peat can be used as a fuel. It has industrial importance as a fuel in some countries, such as Ireland and Finland, where it is harvested on an industrial scale. In many countries, including Ireland and Scotland, where trees are often scarce, peat is traditionally used for cooking and domestic heating. Stacks of drying peat dug from the bogs can still be seen in some rural areas.

Article also mentions Peat being used in power stations.

[Pilsu]

Doesn't mention smelting. Googling mentions lead and tin but anything can smelt those. A NY Times article mentions them trying to smelt iron ore but that requires a membership to read and is probably out of tech level if they never used it back then

No one's disputing it's use as a general fuel but whether it's any use in metallurgy is another matter

[LegoLord]

At least it's more reasonable than other things, pilsu.  And I think, given that it is a fantasy game and they certainly had magma back in the 1400s, it is not an unreasonable stretch.  Much more so than friction.  If you hate it so much, don't use it.  The other things on the thread, on the other hand, are out-of-time-period, are inconsistent with the flavor of the game, and would be tricky to implement or for that matter even use in-game.  In other words, not really worth it.