Today, Damascus steel makers tend to be more interested in creating visually striking patterns in the metal than creating great blades. Rather than blister steel and iron, steels of strongly contrasting color are often used. A hearth or furnace used to heat iron and steel. While some modern heretics use propane fueled insulated ovens as forges, the traditional forge is essentially a hearth or wide pot in which a pile of coal or charcoal is set aflame and fed by a controlled blast of air. The inner core of a properly built fire is coke, and burns hot enough to incinerate steel.
Insulation is provided by the green coal packed around the core.
To render a given piece of steel to its hardest possible condition. Greek god of smithing and craftsmanship. His mother was Hera, queen of the gods. She was hoping for a great child to distract her adulterous husband Zeus from his beautiful, illegitimate offspring. When Hephaestos was born plain-looking and with an annoying cry, Hera flung him off Mount Olympus, permanently laming him.