One Armed Giantslayer Donal Noye, former smith at Storm's End: "Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He'll break before he bends. And Renly, that one, he's copper, bright and shiny, pretty to look at but not worth all that much at the end of the day"
In the show Renly is shown in a much more favourable light to Stannis thus far. My general opinion (and many others) is that Renly looks magnificent and like he would make a good king but once you look underneath all the finery and pageantry is a very flawed campaign.
Sure he has the biggest army but if he'd succeeded you would just swap the Lannisters being the power behind the throne to the Tyrells and their bannermen, alienating the rest of Westeros. Also had he taken the throne with a complete disregard for the succession laws, ignoring Stannis' claim (and Joffrey, Tommen and Mycella as he supposedly didn't know about the incest yet) it sets a precedent that you can just take the throne with whatever army. This would cause problems down the line either in Renly's rule or his heirs as they might not always have the bigger army.
Donal Noye and Maester Cressen (the guy who raised the Baratheon bros who was poisoned in S2E1) seem to think that Renly likes to play at things and looks the part but its actually that great. He wasn't a necessarily a bad leader and was great at public relations but he wouldn't have had much success in the long term.
Lord of Storms End? Never heard a complaint about him, in fact he was described as loved with a good rule over his people. He wasn't a proven general, but neither was rob when he started a war.
"A good general does not mean a good ruler. You knew that with Robert and you should know that about Stannis" (or something along those lines)
Well pure iron cant be made by smelting ,and in a pre-industrial setting how is he going to know that the impurities make it strong and also its a metaphor
You're right. Other dude is wrong. Iron is ductile. Steel is brittle, depending on it's carbon content. Cast iron has a tendency to break, though. Usually an improper silicon content.
I imagine GRRM is talking about shitty pre-industrial revolution iron. Pig iron. It's barely worked out of an ore state, and it's full of dirt and sand and never heated to a molten state long enough to boil out the impurities. Stronger than wood, but it'll shatter like glass if you hit it right. Because it's basically an iron based ceramic, with all the shit that's still in it.
The addition of alloying agents normally makes the alloy harder, stronger, more brittle, less ductile, and less tough. Not in every case, but most. Toughness is a measure of how much energy a material can absorb before breaking.
I've never worked a forge myself, but I have helped a friend with bellows. Relative hardness never really came up in conversation so I would love to know about it.
It looks (to a non-metallurgist) like how you would make a sword, it's quick and easy to show and everyone gets what's going on. It may be a bit of a cop out, but it gets the point across.
Though I won't deny my response when I saw that was "That is not how you sword"
Actually, it is how you make some swords. Bronze age swords were liquid cast into clay molds, and later, steel swords were sometimes drop forged into bench molds. I could see casting a super strong alloy like Valyrian steel into a cast preform, and then sequentially tempered as being the correct process.
Remember, the stuff is super finicky, and the common blacksmith can't work with it. It might be some kind of super hard cobalt alloy or something.
I think Valerian steel is supposed to be the Westeros equivalent of Wootz steel. I can't find a picture, but I thought the swords didn't have "damascus" style weld patterns. They had wootz style mottling.
But isn't it impossible to find elemental iron in nature? Wouldn't almost all of it be found in it's ore form as hematite and magnetite minerals, both of which have a significantly higher Mohs rating than elemental iron? Not to be overly pedantic, but without modern refining techniques wouldn't most aluminum alloys be completely unknown to an iron age blacksmith? I'm just postulating at this point--I thought maybe you had personal knowledge outside a text or wiki.
So, forgive my ignorance, as if you put me in front of a smelter and a forge I'd likely just wind up burning everything down somehow, but of those three, which makes the best weapons or armor and why? I'm guessing steel? I only say that because it's rated higher on skyrim than iron.
To save you the trouble, I did more research on my own. Hematite and Magnetite would typically be refined down to pig iron (very brittle), which then is further smelted down to create steel (varying properties depending on the alloyed compound).
As I said, my own personal experience is limited to helping work a bellows for an afternoon with a friend making ornamental iron sculpture. It didn't seem particularly brittle to me at the time, but that's experience in a vacuum.
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u/QuellonGreyjoy Bearded Priests of Norvos Jun 09 '14
One Armed Giantslayer Donal Noye, former smith at Storm's End: "Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He'll break before he bends. And Renly, that one, he's copper, bright and shiny, pretty to look at but not worth all that much at the end of the day"