Is casting iron swords really a thing?

[gardenofthedogs]

I admit I am not a rl blacksmith. I do have a couple friends who are and one that has his own forge. I have seen him make a knife from a railroad spike and another from a Toyota 4 runner's leaf spring. I am also a fan of the TV show "Forged in Fire". I have never seen anyone cast iron to make a sword. From my understanding of history swords were cast during the bronze age but once the iron age came around people began forging them by heating them and hammering into the desired shape.
I could be wrong about this but that is my understanding.

Thoughts or knowledge my fellow blacksmithing fans?

[gardenofthedogs]

Well I googled up my own answer. Thanks to Brian Madigan

Brian Madigan, own and operate a smithy

"There are many reasons why this is and always has been impractical.

Steel does not cast well in thin sections. Most steel castings are thick walled and require machining to final shape. Sharp angles and corners need to be rounded in castings, otherwise cracks will tend to form at stress risers.
If you tried to pour a thin section like a sword by gravity casting, the steel would not flow into the shape due to chilling. It would cool too quickly to flow into a thin section. Lead and zinc are easy to cast, since they have such low melting points. They flow into molds easily. Lead melts at 600f, steel at 2500+f
Cast steel needs to cool slowly over a long period of time. If cast steel cools too quickly, it will have a very uneven and undesirable grain structure. It will also be likely to crack through and micro-crack all over the surface. Large steel castings are held in a furnace for a few days at normalizing temperature (above ~1500f depending on the alloy) to allow the steel to normalize before reheating and forging into shape.
Until the industrial age, steel could not be made molten and homogenized. It had to be worked down from a high carbon, high silicon ‘bloom’ until it had the right amount of carbon to harden properly into a blade. The other method was by crucible steel, where an ingot or bulat was made by heating iron and alloying elements in a crucible for days until they combined and made a hard steel lump. This lump would be carefully and slowly forged until it became more ‘plastic’ and could be forged to shape. Both methods required days of hammering.
Simple cast steel doesn’t have as good a grain structure as forged. Forging imparts strength if it’s done properly.
A lot of steel worldwide is ‘continuous cast’ on what’s called a casting mill. That means that molten steel is poured continuously into a rolling mill. The molten steel quickly gets a non-molten but still orange hot jacket by contact with the chilled rollers. Water jets control the cooling rate of the steel so that it can be forged by rollers into thinner strips. Some of the steel I use for making swords is continuous cast into 1/4″ or thicker sheets that are sheared to size for me. I have had problems with continuous cast steel though, so I try to find steel that is made by casting a large ingot, soaking it for days and then forging it and rolling into strip. This older method takes more energy, but the steel has less flaws and is more consistent quality."

[Spikur]

No. You don't cast steel (or ferrous alloy) swords. For reasons above, and it will become brittle if you manage to cast it. It is strange that the developers didn't check this out. This information is not hard to find today; There's even a tv-show about it, as mentioned. I am myself a blacksmith and have forged swords. Bronze weapons can be casted. So if you want to keep the casting process, you can cast pommels and guards of brass. You can make crucible steel if you want to have some process in making the material for the blade. But blades are forged. They can be patternwelded (as seem to be the result of the etching process to the blade in the game) or have different steel in the edge. After forging and rough grinding, the blade is hardened by quencing it in oil of brine and the annealed to make it less brittle after the hardening. And then sharpened and polished. And the tang (the part going through the handle) is mostly going through the handle and pommel, and is riveted at the end aginst the pommel. Later medieval blades, like the messer, have a tang equal in shape of the handle with the halves of the handle riveted to the sides. Like many chef knives today.

[Spikur]

Oh, and anouther thing when I'm at it. You don't place your anvil far from your forge, or furnace. You place it so that you don't have to take even a step to get to it. You wan't to be able to get your work at the anvil as quickly as possible, as sometimes you only have seconds before it cools too much.

Here is a link to some medieval anvils as the one in the game is mostly a modern anvil that's been roughed up. The setting of the game looks like rather early medieval, and iron was quite expensive, so having a large anvil was mostly for the big workshops. http://www.larsdatter.com/anvils.htm

And wood is not a useful fuel for a furnace as it contains to much water and will not get hot enough. Its good for lighting the furnace though. Charcoal, and later on coal, was used to heat the forge.

You can add filing and grinding to the process, as I think you ought to focus on the crafting process and get that one right, as you wan't to make a simulator.

[Laonfis]

Hi guys. First of all, thanks for your input and the discussion. The reason is why we wanted to stick with casting molten ore into the mould is basically for the sake of gameplay, some things need simplification so more people can enjoy the blacksmith profession in the game itself, which is obviously very complex and hard craftsmanship.

Also we encourage you to join the discussion on our main steam app, where we can respond to your posts quicker

https://steamcommunity.com/app/978700

Apart from that, we have a discord server:

https://discord.gg/fXc7ZrE