Would a lava forge even be useful for anything?

Would a lava forge even be useful for anything?

Outside of looking cool, that is.

They aren't even that good at looking cool, IMO. They're better at looking Hot.

How the fuck is anyone in that room even alive?

I rarely use them.

Unless I embark on a volcano by the time I've reached the magma sea my Fortress tends to already be impregnable.

Fantasy world HVAC technicians and equipment are the highest tier of wizardry.
You can have a solid stone tower, zero windows, that goes half a mile tall and is filled with orcs. And not a single one will have any trouble breathing nor will anyone have a single complaint about the temperature. By all rights there should be zero airflow and the place should be a deathtrap, but fantasy HVAC makes it just fucking work.
Underground cave isolated from all sources of fresh air? Nice pleasant breeze circling around, plenty of O2 for the trogs. JUST FUCKING WORKS.
Eternally burning temple to the gods of fire? Not a whiff of CO to be found outside the decorative smoke plumes.
JUST.
FUCKING.
WORKS.

I'm sure it's hot but.... is it that hot in there?

>fantasy HVAC wizards are actually the richest wizards in the land

It's not the heat you need to worry about, it's the fumes. Molten rock gives out extremely toxic fumes that'll kill you pretty damn fast.

For some things. Lava ranges in temperature from 700 to 1200 degrees Celsius. That's too cold for carbon steel, but actually enough for stainless steel and titanium to reach forging temperatures. If we assume that dwarves have much better metallurgy than the rest of their medieval setting does, as is usually the case, it's not implausible that they could use lava forges.

I was thinking if you have circulating lava in a chamber you could force air through it for pre-heating, you could use it in a hot-blast furnace.

You might also be able to use it to heat a coking oven. (Again, assuming it's circulating and doesn't just solidify).

So you'd be able to make coke without consuming additional fuel and use it in a far more efficient furnace for smelting ores. So it might let you produce higher quality steel with far less fuel, and therefore less labor than anyone else.

With, if you're up against people who are trying to produce large quantities of steel with only trees, could be pretty devastatingly useful,

>Veeky Forums - Metallurgy

Damm, now I want to play as a dungeon HVAC technician.

>No, No, No you can't place your arcane sanctum there, the way the airflow is going there we'll have a green mold growing within days!

user please, we both know the better option is binding lightning Elementals to some power rods and make an Electric Arc Furnace.

But what then when the rods get so hot they melt?

Make them out of diamond, the hardest metal known to man.

Actually just use Adamantine.

Why not fire elementals?
Just tell them "heat this much metal to this temperature" and then you are done.

Not unless you're immune to heat, otherwise convection will fuck you up. I could see fire giants or something using them though.

Lightning produces higher temperatures with less slag.

1200C won't melt carbon steel, but it should be more than enough for hot forging (as in go that high and you've fucked up). Probably enough for forge welding too?

>So you'd be able to make coke without consuming additional fuel and use it in a far more efficient furnace for smelting ores.

Just make damn sure your sulphur cleaning is up to snuff if you want anything but cast iron.

How to make adamantine rods if you don't have a forge with which to make them?

A. Wish
B. Buy them from dwarves
C. Be a cleric of the Forge God and pray for intervention.

The furnace type you use for bulk production doesn't have to be your only method of metalworking. Hell, it probably shouldn't, a furnace for smelting ore into metal and the forge where you hot work that metal are two rather different things, trying to do both with one will end in utter and complete failure, much like if you tried to bake bread in the dishwasher.

>Electric Arc Furnace

Do you know how hard it is to train an air elemental to get the gas mix right? Not to mention what can go wrong when you finally do train those flaky bastards to blow the right oxygen mix particularly if you're using fire elementals elsewhere in the facility.

No, that magic stuff is more trouble than they're worth. We're just going to use the good old mundane lava that never solidifies and can be easily channeled as part of an industrial process! Like sensible people.

"Okay, so that's replacing the air filter, patching the condenser coil, smoke test for leaks, gassing kobolds, and killing 2 miniature gelatinous cubes, here's the invoice, standard two ten net thirty, and I'm throwing in the thermostat adjustment for free"

Engineers, no sense of right and wrong

I get your point, although i think that last bit fell a bit on itself.

You CAN actually cook in a dishwasher.
It's a thing.

Remind me again why we're blowing air into the electric arc furnace? We're trying to reduce shit, not oxidise it, and we get the heat from the lightning, so no oxygen needed to burn any fuel.

We have a very well developed sense of right and wrong, it's just that what we consider the right way of dealing with whatever shit makes the machinery not work may be a bit more severe than yours.

I was under the impression that oxygen injection was used to control the specific carbon content even in electric arc steel-making. Say if you're starting from pig iron you need oxygen to lower the carbon content. I'm hardly an expert though and may have things confused.

>Would a lava forge even be useful for anything?

Yes user, for drowning your enemies.

It's really hard to drown in Lava, shits dense.

Not if you pour it on top of the poor victim.

>1200C won't melt carbon steel, but it should be more than enough for hot forging (as in go that high and you've fucked up). Probably enough for forge welding too?
The charts I have say that optimal forging temperature for carbon steel is 1230 C. Forge welding temperature is 1260. So not much hotter than the hottest lava, but small gradiations in heat matter in forging.

Tungsten shoes.

Sauron pls ded and stay ded

Laughed way too hard at this