Brittle tempering

[NoviceSmith15]

He accidentally kills an assailant in a pure act of self defense. That assailant so happens to be the right hand man of the antagonist, the earl of the city. At the scene, he flees in panic and manages to escape to a forest nearby. He survives alone in the woods, hunted by the law, until eventually he is captured and taken, defeated, to the city dungeon. While in the prison cell he experiences an epiphany about the character flaw he has been acting in that is keeping him from defeating the antagonist, and he also learns about his past. With these two things motivating him to rise up again, he begins closely examining the cell bars, and finds his trade mark on one of the bars. By this, he knows the bars aren't good ones. With the help of a fellow prisoner, he begins breaking the bars until they are able to slip out and escape.

[Rich Hale]

Rust does not cause steel to get brittle....You will need a lot of research to write a plausable story.

[Frosty]

Okay, how about this. The master smith sees the bars are not waxed and quickly puts a coat on. Being as the bars aren't warm enough the layer is thicker than usual but covers the imperfections of muck bar and hopefully protects the smithy's reputation.

 

Then the protagonist gets tossed in the cell. He recognizes the bars and knowing they're not double or triple wrought knows there are lots of silicate layers. In a moment of inspiration he takes a piece of twine, string, leather thong, etc. warms it in his hands and impregnates it with wax and silicate grit he's worked loose with a pebble. With this he saws through enough bars he and his cell mate are able to escape. The muck bar bars aren't as strong as double/triple wrought and will bend more easily. Of course the line will wear through pretty regularly so he'll have to find/make new ones. Unravel his clothes, twist straw or grass, spin his own hair.

 

Except for the wrought iron part, this stuff has been done more than once. It's more than plausible, it's history.

 

Hmmmmm?

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[Rich Hale]

Film at eleven!

[ThomasPowers]

OK; you would ***NEVER*** waste very valuable beeswax on iron bars for a prison.  Why would they be coated with ANYTHING????   Real wrought iron bars seem to have done very well on their own for centuries in the castles I have visited in Europe.  (Remember that beekeeping was rough on the bees back then and petroleum waxes like paraffin didn't exist; even candles were mainly tallow and not wax!)

 

Note too that people didn't spend a lot of time in prison in medieval times, only till the trial.  Punishments were more of the death, mutilation, flogging, or paying a fine.  Putting people into prison as a sentence is a fairly modern concept.

 

My take on this:  The "lord's bailiff" was such a tightwad that he paid only for the cheapest nastiest iron bars, the apprentice knew this and searched them for where there was a flaw in one and then broke it and slipped out.

 

No higher carbon tempered bars---THEY JUST WERE NOT USED back then.  Guards were a bigger factor, bars were to just slow down the felons long enough for the guards to become aware of their activities.

[John B]

IMHO Getting to sound more like a Hollywood scriptwriters take on the situation, why let the truth get in the way of a good story.

 

Temper on medieaval tooling and materials was a different thing/process to tempering on todays carbon steels, and Thomas seemsto be on the right track re the performance of WI

[NoviceSmith15]

I agree! So then that is possible, TP? To have iron of such bad quality that it could break like that? I think your suggestion makes much more sense--and JB, I agree with you--I've always been of the opinion that sometimes a good story needs a bit of dramatic license--or a lot, depending on where the story is. :)

Thanks everyone for your help!

[ThomasPowers]

Having made bloomery iron I can say that yes you can get a bad inclusion and have a bar fall apart when forging it.  Cold it could be kicked or battered with a bench.  The big part of the scene is the close examination of the bars hunting for one that has a bad inclusion...

 

Medieval blacksmithing is my area of interest for over 30 years touring a lot of places in Europe and researching the craft as best I can by reading, attending academic conferences and by experimental archaeology.   When I suggested "The Burnished Blade" it was because I thought it had the best fictional description of medieval smithing I had ever read.in it and perhaps some parallels to your story!

[Chinobi]

would there actually be a bench in the cell though? 

 

what if you went the other way and had the bars be too ductile instead of too brittle and have him use some kind of improvised cordage to bend a large enough gap to slip through?

[Frosty]

Right you are Thomas. I was thinking the smith would want to hide substandard iron but a cell of that pweiod would be pretty high rent if it had a window at all, let alone expensive bars.

 

A bench would be pretty high rent too, not something the sherrif would wast on a non-noble prisoner.

 

Okay low quality bars so maybe the protagonist is wearing something made with raw hide he can soak in the mud carpeting the cell then he wraps several turns around the bars and it bends the weak one as it dries. Plausible?

 

Indeed this is turing into a brainstorming session. I LOVE brainstorming. sure lots of not most of the ideas tossed out get tossed back but you never know when some idea wrong for project A won't be perfect for projects D, H and W down the road.

 

Frosty the Lucky

[ThomasPowers]

Too ductile means they were EXTREMELY high grade wrought iron, very expensive!  As too a bench in the cells it varied, both with the purpose of the cell and as mentioned the socio economic level of the intended prisioners.  IIRC I have seen a woodcut of prisoners on a bench in one of the Criminal Justice Museum, Rothenburg ODT, Germany books.  Unfortunately my new job is over 200 miles from my library and so it would be a while before I get a chance to look it up.

 

Note too than many "prisons" were actually store rooms converted when the need arose.  (often a bit dank to dry rawhide well---but that was a great idea!)  Remember that life was quite different back then---if you escaped where would you go?  Everyone in a small town would know you, in a large town who would provide aid?

[Frosty]

Okay so not more malleable just weaker.The thing that's becoming the hardest part to justify is why the protagonist would rate a cell let alone one with bars on a window. Most likely he'd just get a knife in the ribs or maybe clubbed. Were he to justify a cell I'm thinking the oubliette would be more likely, just drop him in a smooth walled hole till you're ready for whatever you had planned.

 

So maybe he could make crampons and pitons from the previous occupant's bones and climb out?

 

Where's the auther? We need some reason why the protagonist even gets a cell, what makes him so valuable?

 

Frosty the Lucky

[NoviceSmith15]

He's Robin Hood--a=the icon and champion of the serfs. He gets thrown into a very temporary cell for one night to get hung the next morning before the entire city.

[Frosty]

THE legend Robin Hood or a character based on him? Robin was an outlawed noble returned from the crusades to find his land and titles stolen. Or so one tale goes.

 

One night isn't much time and seeing as he's such a wiley devil they'd keep armed gaurds on him all night. I think it'll take guile, wile, treachery or bribery. Maybe Little John will just head slam the guard and rip the bars out, maybe with the Sheriffs own horse.

 

Frosty the Lucky

[NoviceSmith15]

All good legends deserve variation. My Robin Hood is actually a young, compassionate teenager, and so is not suspected of treachery of any sort, especially by the utter despair he exhibits when he is finally caught and imprisoned. It really breaks him. The prison itself is unguarded, because there is no way out of the area--no windows or back doors--but the guards patrol it once every two hours. Robin has an incredibly strong friend with him in the cell. The two of them escape the cell and generally nip the guards in the bud with cunning, speed and strength. They make it out of the prison and steal two horses. From there it's no hard matter to escape the city, as most of the city walls are still under construction, and there is no gate yet (A job that is busying Robin's master, the smith). They hack their way through soldiers with some help from the townspeople, who are inspired by Robin's returned strength. Sorry, no giant Little Johns in my story--mine is about Robin's age and considerably more agile and quick, thus giving his brother reason to tease him with the term 'Little'.

[Frosty]

So, this is a pre crusades Robin. He'd be a noble and of the landed gentry. If his family was just with the peonage he'd have allies he could count on for some help. Being a teenager would be the norm for the times. Like the american west the average age of crusaders was the early-mid teens. For example an unmarried woman of 17 was an old maid.

 

Life was hard and generally short, a 30 year old was getting pretty long in the tooth, 50 was pretty unusual.

 

Escaping the cell, probably a store room that can be bolted to prevent pilferage might be a trick for even a very strong man. Being as Robin's family is well liked among the commoners someone just might unship the bolt when the guards weren't looking. EVEN if they had to drop off a skin of wine and maybe Marian doing a little distracting with a roast duck or some such.

 

The legend of Robin is he was very popular, even before he was outlawed. Common help would be expected, and the Earl (or whatever) wouldn't likely waste a high dollar cell on someone he wanted discredited and killed. He became a popular hero.

 

Frosty The Lucky.

[NoviceSmith15]

Yeah, I'm not sure about everything yet--the story is in its very early stages, so nothing is set in stone--my choices for the setting are either a: before the third crusade. b:during or shortly after the third crusade, or c: during the major civil wars, upheavals and such that were going on in England during King John's reign. :)

[ThomasPowers]

Read "The Burnished Blade"!!!!!!!!!!