Quote from: Vas on February 23, 2015, 12:38:44 AMQuote from: Igabod on February 16, 2015, 04:33:08 PMI'm not sure I like the idea of having to smelt iron and coal to make steel unless you are also able to build things out of iron.The idea was exactly this sorta. You make things out of iron, but those stronger type things like guns, need to be made from steel or better. Iron is a weak metal so things made of iron will also be weakish. Steel would be sort of optional for many things, an iron bed or a steel bed. Obviously the steel bed would last longer in a fire or under attack or whatever, but yea.
Actually, Iron isn't *that* much weaker than steel. It would be more akin to the difference between stone types than anything else.
Regarding Firearms; remember that for a few hundred years, cannons were made of bronze and brass - including the ridiculously big ones, such as the Basilica Cannon of 1453.
QuoteDuring the autumn of 1452, Orban set to work at Edirne, casting one of the largest cannons ever built, while Mehmed stockpiled substantial quantities of materials for guns and gunpowder: copper and tin, saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal. Workers excavated an enormous casting pit and melted scrap bronze in the brick-lined furnaces, superheating it with bellows and pouring it into the mold.
What finally emerged from Orban's foundry once the molds had been knocked off was "a horrifying and extraordinary monster." It was 27 feet long. The barrel, walled with 8 inches of solid bronze to absorb the force of the blast, had a diameter of 30 inches, enough for a man to enter on his hands and knees and designed to accommodate a stone shot weighing something over half a ton. In January 1453, Mehmed ordered a test firing of the gun outside his royal palace. The mighty bombard was hauled into position near the gate and primed with powder. Laborers lugged a giant stone ball to the mouth of the barrel and rolled it back to sit snugly against the gunpowder chamber. A lighted taper was put to the touchhole. With a shattering roar and a cloud of smoke, the mighty projectile hurled across the countryside for a mile before burying itself six feet into the soft earth.
I'd be fine with them degrading more quickly.