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[Thallone]

quote:Originally posted by benoit.hudson:
<STRONG>Everyone is really focused on melting.  No one seems to be noticing that melting often has >> 100% return rate, whereas it's the original *smithing* that wastes metal like you wouldn't believe.</STRONG>

Which, in reality, is fairly accurate of the smithing technologies in question. See:  
MODERN MARVELS: Axes, Swords, and Knives - Sword Making specifically 1:38 thru 2:28 where he's taking fairly raw material and smithing it into a usable billet. Still, it would be nice to see better than 1/3 retained from the original ore.

Now the counter-argument. One could easily say that the original smithing loses 2/3 of the ore material to impurities, oxidation, etc, but the reclaimed materials should be 90%+ recoverable, perhaps leading to the need for 2 kinds of bars, raw bars (the ones we have now) and Ingots, bars of pure metal that can produce far more per unit. a suit of armor, for example, might be produced from 3 bars or 3 ingots, but when melted down would produce 2 1/2 ingots. Precious metals would automatically become Ingots, but 'weapons metals', copper, bronze, iron, steel, bismuth bronze would be Bars first.