Warborn BladesFor schoolmasters, instructors and forge masters
The Classroom Path
The Warborn March is a painted world with a second road running through it: seven Forge Workings that do not open because something was struck down, but because the craft was done correctly. The angle, the heat, the order, the fuel. Get it wrong and the world tells you plainly why, and you may try again as many times as you like — a Working corrects, it never punishes.
It is free, it needs no account, it downloads nothing, and it asks for no coin. Open a browser and walk in.
Read this before you teach from it
- This is a teaching of reasoning, not a licence to work hot steel. Forging, quenching and grinding carry real risk of burns, fire, eye injury and inhalation harm. Nothing here substitutes for supervised shop training and proper protective equipment.
- The March contains stylised medieval combat. It is bloodless and reverent, never gory. All motion obeys the house Still Air safeguard: no light loops faster than 3 Hz, and a full freeze is available.
- Warborn Blades sells real edged steel. Browsing is open to all; no purchase of steel is possible without age and identity verification, always, without exception — the reason is written here. A classroom can use the whole March and never come near the armory.
- Nothing is collected from a learner to play the walking path. No sign-in is required and progress is kept on the learner's own machine.
One forty-five minute session
0–5 min
Open /march/world. No account, no download, no coin. Arrows or WASD to walk, SPACE to speak, J for the journal.
Everyone is inside the same world within a minute; nothing is bought and nothing is signed.
5–12 min
The Collier's Pit — the Working of the Charcoal.
Fuel first. Nothing else in the craft is possible until the fire is understood: pyrolysis, smoke colour, and why sulphur ruins hot steel.
12–20 min
The Bloomery Stack — the Working of the Bloom.
Solid-state reduction. Learners see that iron is starved out of rock, not melted from it, and that slag is the whole labour.
20–30 min
The Quench Tank, then the Tempering Oven.
The core lesson: hardness and toughness are traded against one another, and the trade is made deliberately by temperature.
30–38 min
The Whetstone Bench and the Hafting Block.
Geometry and joinery — the two places finished tools actually fail.
38–45 min
The Oiling Table, then take the kept blade into one fight.
Consequence. Steel that was hardened, tempered, sharpened and oiled correctly measurably outfights steel that was not.
What a learner can do afterwards
- Explain why a blade is normalised before it is hardened, and tempered immediately after.
- Name the temperature band a plain carbon steel is austenitised at, and the shop signal that stands in for it.
- Justify an edge angle from the intended cutting task rather than from habit.
- Read a charcoal burn from the colour of its smoke.
- Describe bloomery smelting as reduction, not melting, and account for the slag.
- Identify the true structural member of an axe haft and of a sword hilt.
- State the correct order of cleaning, drying and oiling steel, and say why the order matters.
Craft is progress; craft is never treasure. A Working pays no Marks and touches no price, no mercy and no ledger. Marks — the house's own tender — are earned only by fighting with steel. The knowing you gain at the bench is spent in the field, where better-kept steel measurably bites harder.
Sealed 30 August 2026
The Craft Truth Audit
The March may teach nothing it cannot cite. Every teaching claim inside a Working is set down below with the Part it belongs to, the verdict of the audit, and the sources a forge master may check. Figures are written as bands, never as single magic numbers, and where a claim has been narrowed for teaching the narrowing is said aloud.
18 claims · 15 stand true · 3 narrowed and declared · 9 sources
The Working of the Stone
Part VII — Edge and Upkeep
Stones run coarse → medium → fine → strop, because each abrasive must remove the scratch pattern of the one before it; the strop aligns and polishes, it does not set geometry.
Stands true
- — Wayne Goddard, The Wonder of Knifemaking, and Larrin Thomas, Knife Engineering (2020)
A cutting sword's edge is held near 18–25° per side; a kitchen knife may go nearer 15°, an axe 25–30°.
Narrowed for teaching
Bands, not law. Edge angle is chosen against steel hardness, edge thickness behind the bevel, and intended target. A hard, fine-grained steel tolerates a thinner angle than a soft one.
- — Wayne Goddard, The Wonder of Knifemaking, and Larrin Thomas, Knife Engineering (2020)
- — John D. Verhoeven, Metallurgy of Steel for Bladesmiths & Others Who Heat Treat and Forge Steel (Iowa State University, 2005)
A burr raised along the full length is the only reliable proof that the two bevels have met; shine, paper-cutting and stroke-counting are not.
Stands true
- — Wayne Goddard, The Wonder of Knifemaking, and Larrin Thomas, Knife Engineering (2020)
The Working of the Quench
Part IV — Heat Treatment
1084 is austenitised near 790–830°C, a little past the point where it stops answering a magnet (the Curie point, ~770°C).
Stands true
The Curie point is not itself the transformation temperature — it is a close, convenient shop signal that sits just below it.
- — ASM International, Heat Treater's Guide: Practices and Procedures for Irons and Steels, 2nd ed.
- — John D. Verhoeven, Metallurgy of Steel for Bladesmiths & Others Who Heat Treat and Forge Steel (Iowa State University, 2005)
1084, a shallow-hardening plain carbon steel in thin section, is quenched in warmed fast oil (~50°C); water and brine risk cracking a thin blade.
Stands true
- — ASM Handbook, Vol. 4: Heat Treating
- — John D. Verhoeven, Metallurgy of Steel for Bladesmiths & Others Who Heat Treat and Forge Steel (Iowa State University, 2005)
Normalising precedes hardening and refines forging-coarsened grain; tempering should follow the quench promptly, as an untempered blade may crack at rest.
Stands true
- — John D. Verhoeven, Metallurgy of Steel for Bladesmiths & Others Who Heat Treat and Forge Steel (Iowa State University, 2005)
- — ASM Handbook, Vol. 4: Heat Treating
The Working of the Temper
Part IV — Heat Treatment
A sword that must bend and return is tempered near 200–235°C, in two cycles of about an hour with a cool between.
Narrowed for teaching
Alloy-dependent. The band shown is right for simple carbon steels such as 1084/1075; air-hardening and alloy tool steels temper on entirely different schedules, some far higher.
- — ASM International, Heat Treater's Guide: Practices and Procedures for Irons and Steels, 2nd ed.
- — John D. Verhoeven, Metallurgy of Steel for Bladesmiths & Others Who Heat Treat and Forge Steel (Iowa State University, 2005)
Oxide colours on clean, bright steel run light straw (~205°C) to bronze (~245°C) to blue (~300°C), and are a cross-check on an oven, never a replacement for one.
Stands true
- — ASM International, Heat Treater's Guide: Practices and Procedures for Irons and Steels, 2nd ed.
The Working of the Charcoal
Part III — Fuel and Fire
Charcoal is wood pyrolysed with restricted air; a covered mound is sealed before lighting, and smoke reads white (water) → yellow (tars) → blue (carbon burning), the signal to close the vents.
Stands true
- — FAO Forestry Paper 63, Industrial Charcoal Making (1985)
- — R. F. Tylecote, A History of Metallurgy, 2nd ed. (Institute of Materials, 1992)
Raw coal is avoided at the forge chiefly because its sulphur migrates into hot steel and causes hot-shortness (red-shortness); coke and charcoal have the sulphur and volatiles driven off.
Stands true
Coke retains some sulphur depending on the parent coal; low-sulphur smithing coal is workable in practice, which is why the claim is framed as a risk rather than an absolute.
- — R. F. Tylecote, A History of Metallurgy, 2nd ed. (Institute of Materials, 1992)
- — John D. Verhoeven, Metallurgy of Steel for Bladesmiths & Others Who Heat Treat and Forge Steel (Iowa State University, 2005)
The Working of the Bloom
Part II — Ore and Iron
A bloomery reduces iron oxide in the solid state by carbon monoxide; it does not melt iron. Roasted oxide ores (bog ore, limonite) reduce; sulphide ores such as pyrite poison the bloom.
Stands true
- — Lee Sauder & Skip Williams, 'A Practical Treatise on the Smelting and Smithing of Bloomery Iron' (Historical Metallurgy, 2002)
- — R. F. Tylecote, A History of Metallurgy, 2nd ed. (Institute of Materials, 1992)
A workable charge runs about 1.5–2.5 parts charcoal to one part ore by weight, alternating charges with steady air.
Narrowed for teaching
Experimental smelts vary widely with stack height, ore grade and blast rate; roughly 1:1 to 2:1 is the reported working range. The band taught is a teaching median, not a formula.
- — Lee Sauder & Skip Williams, 'A Practical Treatise on the Smelting and Smithing of Bloomery Iron' (Historical Metallurgy, 2002)
The bloom emerges as iron mixed with slag and is consolidated by hot hammering, which expels the slag; slag is tapped during the burn to keep the tuyere clear.
Stands true
- — Lee Sauder & Skip Williams, 'A Practical Treatise on the Smelting and Smithing of Bloomery Iron' (Historical Metallurgy, 2002)
- — Alan Williams, The Sword and the Crucible: A History of the Metallurgy of European Swords (Brill, 2012)
The Working of the Haft
Part VI — Hafts, Hilts and Fittings
Axe hafts are cut from straight-grained hickory or ash with the grain running the length of the haft and the rings in line with the cut; cross-grain hafts fail on a mis-hit.
Stands true
- — USDA Forest Service, An Ax to Grind: A Practical Ax Manual (9923-2823-MTDC, 1999)
An axe head is fitted dry and seated before wedging: kerf, drive home, wooden wedge, then the steel cross-wedge, then trim and oil. Swelling a loose head with water is a false repair.
Stands true
- — USDA Forest Service, An Ax to Grind: A Practical Ax Manual (9923-2823-MTDC, 1999)
A sword hilt is held together structurally by a full tang peened over the pommel, compressing guard, grip and pommel into one body; adhesive and wrap are not the structure.
Stands true
Historically some hilts were held by a threaded pommel nut rather than a hot peen; both are structural. A rat-tail tang glued into a handle is the failure mode the Working warns of.
- — Alan Williams, The Sword and the Crucible: A History of the Metallurgy of European Swords (Brill, 2012)
The Working of the Upkeep
Part VIII — Care, Rust and Storage
A blade is cleaned, dried completely, then oiled — in that order. Oil laid over moisture seals the water against the steel.
Stands true
- — Wayne Goddard, The Wonder of Knifemaking, and Larrin Thomas, Knife Engineering (2020)
Long-term storage in a leather scabbard corrodes steel: vegetable-tanned leather holds moisture and residual tanning acids and salts against the blade.
Stands true
- — Alan Williams, The Sword and the Crucible: A History of the Metallurgy of European Swords (Brill, 2012)
- — Wayne Goddard, The Wonder of Knifemaking, and Larrin Thomas, Knife Engineering (2020)
The whole roll of sources
- — John D. Verhoeven, Metallurgy of Steel for Bladesmiths & Others Who Heat Treat and Forge Steel (Iowa State University, 2005)
- — ASM International, Heat Treater's Guide: Practices and Procedures for Irons and Steels, 2nd ed.
- — ASM Handbook, Vol. 4: Heat Treating
- — Alan Williams, The Sword and the Crucible: A History of the Metallurgy of European Swords (Brill, 2012)
- — Lee Sauder & Skip Williams, 'A Practical Treatise on the Smelting and Smithing of Bloomery Iron' (Historical Metallurgy, 2002)
- — R. F. Tylecote, A History of Metallurgy, 2nd ed. (Institute of Materials, 1992)
- — USDA Forest Service, An Ax to Grind: A Practical Ax Manual (9923-2823-MTDC, 1999)
- — FAO Forestry Paper 63, Industrial Charcoal Making (1985)
- — Wayne Goddard, The Wonder of Knifemaking, and Larrin Thomas, Knife Engineering (2020)
Found a claim you can fault? The house would rather be corrected than admired. Write to steward@warbornblades.com and name the Working and the line; a fault proven is mended in the same week and the audit re-sealed.