forgle

  1. Forge
  2. Grind
  3. Harden
  4. Temper
  5. Test

Today's commission

Practise

How to play

Every day there's a new commission: a sword, its steel and its size. Forge it, grind it, harden it and temper it, then it's tested.

Forge

  1. The billet starts as a plain bar, wider and shorter than the blade. Hammer each section down to the dashed outline; the steel you squeeze out of its width makes it longer.
  2. Pick a section by tapping it or its box below (or ← → and 1–8), then strike (Space). Strike when the marker crosses the centre of the anvil: a centred blow moves the most steel, an off-centre one less, and a glancing one stresses it. Each blow also moves the sections either side a little.
  3. Watch the colour. Hot steel moves easily; as it cools it moves less, which is how you make small corrections. The commission shows the colour not to hammer below: cold blows hardly move it and build cracks you won't see until the quench. Heat it in the fire (F) to heat it up, and take it out before it reaches the burning colour, where it throws sparks and scale eats it away.
  4. The boxes show how far each section is from its width: green is within 1%, a minus means you've hammered it too thin, and there's no making it wider again.
  5. You have 90 seconds. Widths are drawn taller than life so you can see them.

Grind

  1. Drag the blade around the belt grinder (or move it with the arrow keys). Hold it upright: drag up and down to run it along the belt, and towards the belt to push the edge in. Wherever the edge touches the belt, the bevel climbs into the blade. Push it in harder and it grinds faster; ease off to grind slowly. Let go to lift it off. Once an edge reaches the line it grinds much more slowly, so there's time to stop.
  2. Grind every part of the edge up to the dashed line. The ground steel shows how thick the edge is there: pale while it's still thick, green once it's right, amber past that, and red once it's thin enough to crack in the quench. Never cross the red dotted line. Ground steel can't be put back.
  3. Double-edged blades have two edges to grind: turn it over (F) for the other one. You have 75 seconds.

Harden

  1. Heat the blade (F) in the heat-treat forge to just past its critical temperature, where steel stops being magnetic. It's hard to tell by colour, so use the magnet (M): it sticks until the steel's hot enough. Testing takes the blade out of the fire, and it cools while it's out. Leave it in too long and it overheats.
  2. Quench it in water, brine or oil (1, 2, 3). The steel's note on the commission says what it wants. The wrong one can crack it or leave it soft.
  3. The quench boils and rocks the blade. Drag sideways (or ← →) to keep its tip on the line. Any lean warps it.
  4. Then you find out whether it cracked. Cold blows in the forge, burnt steel, edges ground too thin, quenching too hot and the wrong quench all add strain.
  5. You have 35 seconds to get it into the quench, or it cools in the air.

Temper

  1. Quenched steel is hard but brittle. Press and hold on the blade to play the torch on its spine, and drag along it. The heat soaks down to the edge a moment later, and keeps going after you move on.
  2. The steel colours as it heats and keeps the colour of the hottest it got. The edge's colour sets its hardness: the chart shows what each colour gives this blade. Get every section's edge into the commission's hardness (green). Too hard chips; too soft rolls.
  3. A spine taken to purple or blue makes the blade tough, which helps in the bend test.
  4. You have 45 seconds.

Test

The blade is measured, then cuts paper, chops a hardwood post, cuts a coil of rope and is bent. How it does follows from how you made it.