@wearebinder @wearemage @we-are-blacksmith
Hereâs the metallurgy behind swords with blood: Itâs almost entirely made of water and it tends to go rancid pretty quickly. If you intend to harvest blood for the iron content, itâs a good idea to boil away the water in a broad shallow pan. If possible, separate the blood plasma using a centrifuge and discard it, as it contains none of the iron-bearing red part.Â
The goal is to reduce the organic material down to iron sand. The dried blood should be mostly organic hemoglobin protein, which can be burned away to leave inorganic components like carbon and iron. I would advise grinding the burned blood and separating the relatively heavy iron by swirling it in a pan under running water. A magnet, such as naturally-occurring lodestone, could also collect and separate the iron sand.Â
To smelt your blood iron, preheat a bloomery furnace and add a 1-to-1 ratio of charcoal and iron sand (by weight, not volume). Itâs important to avoid adding large amount of iron and fuel, as this can cause the temperature to fluctuate. Keep feeding the furnace for several hours, and possibly days, using constant air supply from a waterwheel fan or manual bellows, considering the apparent supply of disposable slave labor.Â
The result should be a large lump of spongy iron and silica slag. While itâs still hot, break this âbloomâ into manageable chunks. If the furnace isnât hot enough, the result is low-carbon iron, which canât be hardened. If itâs too hot, the result is brittle, high-carbon cast iron, which shatters too easily to be forged. If you have a water-driven grinding wheel, you can use the sparks to judge the carbon content. If not, youâre forced to guess based on the brittleness.Â
Although you can add or remove carbon, by carburizing and decarburizing, thatâs even more work and it can be complicated. Itâs generally a better idea to sort the broken bloom into grades of steel and iron, then forge the chunks to remove the slag inclusions and homogenize the carbon content. The result should be several billets of steel with assorted amounts of carbon, to be forged and welded into a blade.Â
As an additional note, the exsanguinated blood donor corpses should not be completely cremated. Incomplete burning, or pyrolysis, is needed to convert organic material to purified carbon fuel, and it only occurs when the supply of oxygen is cut off.Â
Blood is not used to âtemperâ anything, in fact, no fluid is ever used. Tempering is the process of slightly reheating steel to lower hardness and brittleness. Youâre thinking of âquenchingâ, which actually does the opposite. The extremely rapid cooling is used to harden steel.Â
Unfortunately, blood is a viscous, non-Newtonian fluid. It clings to the hot steel and cooks, which doesnât absorb heat fast enough to quench the blade correctly. Ironically, this may actually result in a haphazard tempering!
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