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[Dante]

Ha. Yeah, I was thinking in terms of human anvils, maybe dwarves use ones scaled down to their size.

But still, that's a lot of decoration for one ring. If it actually fits on a finger, there's no way you'd be able to see any individual picture or decoration on it. It'd just look.... fuzzy.

[Draco18s]

Ha. Yeah, I was thinking in terms of human anvils

How do you figure a 1 foot cube of metal is 50% bigger than a dwarf?

[Dante]

1 cube foot? You're thinking of something more like a jeweller's anvil. Also, modern anvils are smaller than older ones, which tended to be lumps of metal, and the more malleable the metal, the larger the anvil needs to be to compensate (so iron ones would be larger than steel, which is commonly used now).

But yeah, conceded, maybe "dwarf-sized" would be more accurate.

However! A different example would in fact better frame the idea: you can get three giant axe blades for the equivalent amount of metal, which together would surely be at least 50% bigger than a dwarf. Or, you can get a metal sarcophagus or table, either of which would be slightly bigger than a dwarf... or a metal cage big enough to fit a dragon.

So it's fairly moot, especially in the hilarious light of the idea

that the dwarves are only marginally less wasteful of metal than they are of wood. The moody dwarf's selecting only the best 5% of each bar of metal, and eats the rest to sustain him as he works on the artifact.

  "Urist McMoodyDwarf has been extremely heavy lately. He was quite pleased to make an artifact lately."

[Draco18s]

1 cube foot? You're thinking of something more like a jeweller's anvil. Also, modern anvils are smaller than older ones, which tended to be lumps of metal, and the more malleable the metal, the larger the anvil needs to be to compensate (so iron ones would be larger than steel, which is commonly used now).

That may be all true, however...

1 foot cube of metal is your 1400s sized anvil.  Sure, it's longer than 1 foot in its longest dimension, but its also narrower than 1 foot in its smallest.

1 cubic foot of metal is enough to make an anvil and then some.

[Dante]

Well, maybe. Like I was implying (by the fact that I think the moody dwarf snacking on the excess metal is a much more satisfying idea), I wasn't going for a serious calculation at all. The whole 'anvil' thing was to emphasise for dramatic effect the size of a ring made from sixty bars of metal... and it could easily have been hundreds, or thousands, of bars. Not trying to make an "accurate/logical/canon" claim that such an artifact would be the exact equivalent of however many anvils.

So yeah, not intending to get into an anvil argument at all - by the sounds of it, you might be more knowledgeable than me in the area, in which case I graciously concede. If I did want to fight pedantry with pedantry, though, there's the better example of
 [ three bars of metal -> cage large enough to hold at least a dozen dragons, so maybe twenty cubic feet of metal or more ].
Really, just saying that, in the light of the possibility that all that mass of metal goes into the artifact, that would be a very large ring. Nothing else.

[Lord Dakoth]

Quantum science explains everything, but only when you're not when you're looking.

[Draco18s]

I wasn't going for a serious calculation at all. The whole 'anvil' thing was to emphasise for dramatic effect the size of a ring made from sixty bars of metal.

I understood what you were getting at, but at least start with a reasonable size comparison first.

Otherwise you end up with an, "I wish for a mountain of money" kind of deal (and you get an anthill of pennies).

Quantum science explains everything, but only when you're not when you're looking.

As soon as you do look the waveform collapses.

[GoldenH]

well, there is a reason i posted that last pic, that showed that despite all the metal used, it only weighed seven units ;p

[Dante]

Hah, yeah. I wish we knew exactly how much a dwarf unit was though.

Warning: tongue-in-cheek "calculation" to follow.

Given a rock mug is 13 units, and double that for other stone craft goods, I'd imagine its about a hundred grams, maybe a bit more, depending on how clunky these dwarf steins are meant to be.
Which sort of works, since a rock would then be 80 kg +.

So by that sort of reasoning, the ring would be 700 grams +, which is pretty heavy to wear on a finger. And with ~70 items in its construction, that means each provided about 10 grams (or 0.1 dwarf units, of course).

Metal bars seem to vary from 10 units for the light metals to 150 for the heavy ones.
Gusilgutid seems to have a bunch of silver, nickel and pig iron, so if we said an average of 50 dwarf units a bar, only about 1/5 of each bar is being used in its construction.

Alternatively, if we look at its weight compared to other, plain tin rings, which also weigh 7 dwarf units, then it would seem that all those other metals are electroplated on in quantities too small to detect.
Perhaps there are some properties of fish leather, turtle shell and zircon, known only to moody dwarves, that can be used to produce an electrolyte fluid and generate an electric charge.

Either way, if we assume an average 50 dwarf units per bar, and only 0.1 units of each is used, then the moody dwarf must have partaken of an astonishing ~ 60*(50-0.1)*0.1  =  299.4 kg of metal in the course of making the artifact. 

[Draco18s]

Just had this happen to me, dwarf went moody during a siege and my only craft shop was outside, but because I modded my dwarves to have [SPEED:10] instead of their usual default 1000, he's run past a whole squad of goblin wrestlers a dozen times now carrying various stones (including some tetrahedrite, which I thought was an ore--checked, it's not set to be allowed for economic use).

This is hilarious though.  He moves so fast that the goblins can't interrupt him for very long, and certainly not long enough to hurt him.

Edit:
Oops.  Was going to check on what his mood was going to produce and the other materials (to make sure I had them) when I noticed that the dwarf was exhausted, so I refreshed him....and crashed DF.

Shame.  He'd collected over 450 stones (mostly magnetite) with a rough raw value of over 11000.

[Quietust]

(including some tetrahedrite, which I thought was an ore--checked, it's not set to be allowed for economic use)

Moody dwarves completely and utterly ignore Economic Stone settings - the only way to stop them from using a particular rock is to (f)orbid it.

[Draco18s]

(including some tetrahedrite, which I thought was an ore--checked, it's not set to be allowed for economic use)

Moody dwarves completely and utterly ignore Economic Stone settings - the only way to stop them from using a particular rock is to (f)orbid it.

I'd never had a moody dwarf go after ore as "stone" though.  I mean, I'm not surprised, I'd just never seen it.

Also: upon reloading the fort I had a WEAPONSMITH go fey, made him collect every single bar of metal in my fort and run out of coal/coke producing more, tried to see if he'd collect the next material, but he doesn't, he only infinitely collects the base material, which I modified to stone for now just so I could have the most ridiculous sword ever produced--it's worth over 11,000,000.

[The Architect]

*wonders out loud what a dwarf could produce with 500 adamantine wafers* (roughly the contents of a moderately-sized HFS deposit).

IF dwarves could use metal cloth, imagine an item with a metal cloth base! Masterfully wovern cloth from Masterfully dyed strands costs 25200, so... modded to be a "Plant Fiber Cloth", you could have a shirt worth... infinity? Does the Wealth scale go high enough? The modifier for artifacts averages between 400 and 550; I haven't been able to pin it down quite yet. So, if you forced your dwarves to only produce masterful components (through painstaking savescumming) you could have an artifact worth over 500*25200*400=5,040,000,000dwarfbucks. Or with wafers, 500*1500*400=300,000,000dwarfbucks. Imagine a 300million+ sword... You'd lock that sucker in the world's tightest, most impenetrable vault. I'd probably construct it in the bottom of the magma vent and set 5,000,000 traps between it and the surface, both normal traps and those of a complex nature, and then allow the magma to seal the entrance!

Or give it to a dwarf and put him up against as many enemies as I could in an arena, causing it to become a cursed weapon so that any dwarf who wields it in battle dies.

[Draco18s]

The modifier for artifacts averages between 400 and 550; I haven't been able to pin it down quite yet.

120.

[The Architect]

Please don't just quote the wiki at me. It's highly incorrect.