Harnuth
Member
This technical note could be more important to the Simfilm project than Exploring the Lord of the Rings, but I'm guessing this might be a good spot to post one of my pet peeves. It's something they kind of got right in LOTRO, and completely wrong in the films.
In both The Lord of the Rings films and the Game of Thrones series, they show swords being formed by pouring hot metal into a mold. I'd assume these are sand-casting molds, but perhaps they discovered some other clever way of assuring that the cool metal will release from the mold. (Maybe lots and lots of borax.)
Those scenes are smokey, colorful, fiery, dramatic... and absolutely wrong.
A sword blade cast in that matter would have a random grain pattern, the weakest possible method of creating a solid chunk of metal. It would shatter on impact with a hard surface, such as armor, a boss on a shield, or another weapon.
Real swords are forged--beaten from a single blob of metal that has been heated until it is plastic. The smith forms the metal into the shape of the blade and in the process, he causes the grain of the metal to run longitudinally through the length of the sword, urging it closer and closer to a single crystal.
Even in modern swords, the metal is forged, albeit by gigantic rollers in a foundry instead banging with a blacksmith's hammer. After heat-treating to lock in the grain, these swords are the strongest and most formidable edged weapons ever made.
Now... in a similar vein, in the scene in the film where an elven smith created Andúril from the shards of Narsil by banging away at the joints, we can only guess that maybe some unidentified elvish magic was at work so that the whole thing wasn't entirely absurd.
In both The Lord of the Rings films and the Game of Thrones series, they show swords being formed by pouring hot metal into a mold. I'd assume these are sand-casting molds, but perhaps they discovered some other clever way of assuring that the cool metal will release from the mold. (Maybe lots and lots of borax.)
Those scenes are smokey, colorful, fiery, dramatic... and absolutely wrong.
A sword blade cast in that matter would have a random grain pattern, the weakest possible method of creating a solid chunk of metal. It would shatter on impact with a hard surface, such as armor, a boss on a shield, or another weapon.
Real swords are forged--beaten from a single blob of metal that has been heated until it is plastic. The smith forms the metal into the shape of the blade and in the process, he causes the grain of the metal to run longitudinally through the length of the sword, urging it closer and closer to a single crystal.
Even in modern swords, the metal is forged, albeit by gigantic rollers in a foundry instead banging with a blacksmith's hammer. After heat-treating to lock in the grain, these swords are the strongest and most formidable edged weapons ever made.
Now... in a similar vein, in the scene in the film where an elven smith created Andúril from the shards of Narsil by banging away at the joints, we can only guess that maybe some unidentified elvish magic was at work so that the whole thing wasn't entirely absurd.