How does the "dragonglass+steel=dragonsteel" theory work?

[falcotron]

There's a good chance this is already answered somewhere, but I can't find it; if so, I'd appreciate a pointer to the thread.

One of the theories for dragonsteel is that it's some sort of steel made with dragonglass, usually combined with a theory that dragonsteel is closely connected to Lightbringer (e.g., it's the first dragonsteel sword). I can see why you'd doubt dragonsteel=Valyrian steel.* And most of the arguments work for me.** So, I don't want to create yet another thread on those issues.

The one question is: How do you make steel with dragonglass? 

Every version I've seen here or elsewhere that answers that question just says "You could use obsidian as the source of carbon for making steel". But that makes no sense. First, obsidian is not made of carbon, it's glass—silicon dioxide. Sure, it has small amounts of trace impurities, some of which are molecules with carbon in them, but that's true for almost anything; there's more carbon in seawater. And from a storytelling point of view, making dragonsteel use a mineral instead of living matter like real-world steel seems to make it less fantastic rather than more—why not the face of a weirwood, or the genitals of a eunuch?***

The only alternative I've heard is that it's about strengthening dragonglass with iron rather than vice versa. But that makes even less sense. You can't forge obsidian and work it like an iron alloy.

So, does anyone have an explanation somewhere for how you'd use dragonglass as a carbon source, or some different explanation for how dragonglass could be part of the process of dragonsteel? The rest of the theory is so interesting that I'd hate to just dismiss is because nobody's answered this gap (or, worse, because someone did, but I'm too stupid to find it in a search).

---

*  When else has GRRM ever given us a mystery and then had someone guess the answer in the next line and be right?

** I can see why a weapon with all the advantages of a steel sword (which was ahead of its time in the late bronze age) but also all the magical properties of obsidian weapons and other obsidian tools like glass candles would be useful in the Battle for the Dawn. And how it fits the Lightbringer story. And why it makes sense that the Last Hero's quest for the Children could lead to them giving him the secret of this magic/technology. And how you could give someone steel forging knowledge without the whole iron age technology complex (as long as they had meteoric iron to work with—and Dawn implies that isn't implausible). And so on.

*** Or, if you like "Lightbringer is the first dragonsteel sword", Nissa Nissa's heart—using it at the start of the process as the source of carbon, instead of at the end, to quench the sword, which the legend then changes for poetic reasons.

[Romaine3]

@falcotron Please don't take what I'm going to suggest the wrong way. Your logic is clear and in our world makes complete sense. However, in the world of asoiaf, they have an element that we lack. Simply put, we lack the element of Magic. Whereas they have it.

I don't know who possesses the Magic to bind dragonglass and steel. The most simple explanation that I can conjure is: someone who can use magic and forge the two substances together through the use of an actual Dragon's fire.

Right now, that is the best explanation that I can imagine. I may be wrong, but I am interested to see what ideas other posters can come up with!

[SiSt]

You could possibly just crush/powder the obsidian and mix it into the molten steel. 

Being mostly silicon dioxide, which melts at about 1710°C, while stainless steel melts at about 1510°C (carbon steel 1425-1540) meaning there's enough overlap in temperature to amalgamate the two. Don't know how the surface bonding would be, but if the percentage of obsidian is low and the particles are small, it would not really matter. 

Considering the effect of stabbing others with obsidian, this should at least make for an effective weapon, with the risk of it being a single use weapon due to the extreme cold of the others. This would beg the question of why one would bother making it rather than using just obsidian, and the answer is obviously magic. 

There's simply not enough info on this point to get it very far, I think. The cotf should not have knowledge of making valyrian steel, so that points to something else, and we know a lot of the old knowledge is garbled, ie like the story of how they supposedly helped build Storm's End, know stuff they supposedly don't, have their own agenda and practice blood magic through sacrifice etc etc. 

I like to think that Dawn is important, and may very well have been the sword of the last hero, though it could also just be a red herring for subverting the "magic sword" trope. We may just as likely never know anything definitive about Dawn, Lightbringer, dragon steel, nor the way to make valyrian steel. 

[Curled Finger]

Sam finds a passage in a book that refers to dragonsteel.   Jon wonders if it's Valyrian Steel.  The term dragonsteel only appears in this conversation between Sam and Jon.    It's no where else in the main series or ancessory books. 

Well falcotron you gave me a good 20 minutes of search and study.   When I originally joined this community I was positive Valyrian Steel was made of steel and obsidian, spells and dragon fire.    For the life of me I cannot find any text to back up the obsidian.  We recently had an interesting conversation in @Lady Blizzardborn's latest crackpot topic, which ended up failing pretty badly at crackpottery.   @40 Thousand Skeletons gave me a really nice lesson on molecular structures of metal and bone.    I believe we discussed diamonds and maybe glass--either way, in his/her impressive knowledge base of real world stuff, an edge has to be held by metal.    End of story--it's got to be metal. 

Now then, I can't remember where I even became aware of obsidian being a constituent of VS, but in my search earlier tonight I was able to confirm that VS is steel forged in dragon flame and bound with spells and is at least once referred to as "spell-forged".   Now i conducted this little study with dragonglass as well.   We know dragonglass is frozen fire.  It's edge is wicked sharp, but the obsidian material itself is very brittle.   

I became exasperated by the futility of my search because I didn't know enough about Valyrian Steel to just pull obsidian out of the sky to include it as a constituent when near the end of my search on dragonglass I happened upon a reminder of Valyrian building methods.  Dragon fire is hot enough to melt rock as is seen in the fuzed black rock peculiar to Valyrian architecture, monuments and roads.  I'm back to thinking obsidian really is an ingredient of Valyrian Steel, certainly of dragonsteel.   I don't know if that did more harm than help, but thanks for inspiring a frenzied search.   That was fun.   

[falcotron]

23 minutes ago, Romaine3 said:

@falcotron Please don't take what I'm going to suggest the wrong way. Your logic is clear and in our world makes complete sense. However, in the world of asoiaf, they have an element that we lack. Simply put, we lack the element of Magic. Whereas they have it.

I don't know who possesses the Magic to bind dragonglass and steel. The most simple explanation that I can conjure is: someone who can use magic and forge the two substances together through the use of an actual Dragon's fire.

I'm not at all offended. I just want to know what the "standard fandom answer" for this theory is.

Anyway, it seems redundant for the "dragon" in "dragonsteel" to mean both dragonglass and dragon's fire. There are four simpler possibilities:

1. The "dragon" in "dragonsteel" refers to dragonglass used as a carbon source. This is the theory I've seen around, but without any details or explanation, and I was asking about because it makes the least sense to me but seems popular anyway.
2. The "dragon" in "dragonsteel" refers to dragonglass used for some other purpose. This one is interesting to me; see below.
3. The "dragon" in "dragonsteel" refers to something else used as a carbon source. Like a dragon's heart, say.
4. The "dragon" in "dragonsteel" refers to something else used for some other purpose. Like using a dragon's flame in place of a furnace.

My own thought (which I didn't want to bring up until I'd asked the question, because it'll probably reduce the chance of someone pointing me to existing answers) goes something like this:

If you look at early iron age cultures, they obviously don't know that the charcoal or plant mash or whatever they're using is a source of elemental carbon that can form different intermediate ferrites whose borders can anneal into nanotubes and carbide nanolayers. So, what do they actually think they're doing? They sometimes talk poetically about trapping the fire in the steel. For processes like Wootz that rely on a special carbon source, it's the special fire of the avaram plant or whatever, but for processes like crucible steel that rely on a special kind of furnace process, it's the fire of the furnace.

So, if the "dragon" part of "dragonsteel" means dragonglass, I don't think it has anything to do with the carbon source. Maybe the interior of the furnace is made of dragonglass, and burns like a glass candle.

Look at what we're told about glass candles—the fire is so bright it's unpleasant, it never waves or goes out, it allows you to see the hidden, etc.—and that sounds like exactly the kind of fire you'd want to trap in your sword to fight the Others. Even better than dragon fire. And then imagine using Beric's blood ritual to ignite the glass-candle fire trapped in your sword, and it's even better. That's why #1 or #2 is more interesting to me than #3 or #4.

And meanwhile, a furnace burning like a glass candle makes a lot more sense than consuming glass candles in the fire (which isn't even supposed to be possible) to use as a carbon source (which it wouldn't work as), which is why #2 seems better to me than #1.

[Romaine3]

39 minutes ago, SiSt said:

I like to think that Dawn is important, and may very well have been the sword of the last hero, though it could also just be a red herring for subverting the "magic sword" trope. We may just as likely never know anything definitive about Dawn, Lightbringer, dragon steel, nor the way to make valyrian steel. 

In another recent thread (Jon Snow is Azor Ahai but Daenerys is tptwp) I came to the same conclusion about Dawn being a likely candidate for Lightbringer. I am probably not the first to come up with this idea either. The fact that Dawn meets the one of a kind, been around long enough to have been involved during the last Long Night criteria, leads one to believe that if Lightbringer still exists, then the sword goes by another name (Dawn).

There is more detailed background information on Dawn to be found than there is on the ancestral custodians of the sword, the House Dayne. That being said, I doubt that Dawn is a red herring. Even if Dawn isn't Lightbringer, the sword will at least play a role in the events that have yet to unfold. Even if the Dayne's themselves remain irrelevant, Dawn is eventually going to be in capable hands.

Finally, if there is any knowledge to be had on how dragonsteel is forged, I suspect that the methods most likely reside in the Citadel. Hopefully Sam will do some snooping around and discover the techniques necessary to forge dragonsteel!

 

[Romaine3]

5 minutes ago, falcotron said:

If you look at early iron age cultures, they obviously don't know that the charcoal or plant mash or whatever they're using is a source of elemental carbon that can form different intermediate ferrites whose borders can anneal into nanotubes and carbide nanolayers

You obviously know the science behind the actual weapon forging processes. So you are aware that some ancient cultures (I think Vikings are one of them) possessed forging techniques that we cannot replicate today (because the information was lost).

So, somewhere along the line in Westeros, the process was either forgotten because they were never written down, or the written instructions were gathered up and hidden from future generations.

I do like the idea of a dragonglass forge! But I think it needs to at least be lit by a dragons fire. Then the dragon can go on about its business.

[falcotron]

20 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

Sam finds a passage in a book that refers to dragonsteel.   Jon wonders if it's Valyrian Steel.  The term dragonsteel only appears in this conversation between Sam and Jon.    It's no where else in the main series or ancessory books. 

Yes, that's what I meant by "When else has GRRM ever given us a mystery and then had someone guess the answer in the next line and be right?"

Of course this may not be meant as a mystery at all—but if not, "dragonsteel" probably doesn't even mean anything, or at least not anything we're ever going to find out about.

20 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

 @40 Thousand Skeletons gave me a really nice lesson on molecular structures of metal and bone.    I believe we discussed diamonds and maybe glass--either way, in his/her impressive knowledge base of real world stuff, an edge has to be held by metal.    End of story--it's got to be metal. 

Yes, unless you want an edge that only works once.

But, unless someone has an answer to why dragonglass could be a carbon source, I don't think we have to get too deep into metallurgy or materials science here.

20 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

Now then, I can't remember where I even became aware of obsidian being a constituent of VS, but in my search earlier tonight I was able to confirm that VS is steel forged in dragon flame and bound with spells and is at least once referred to as "spell-forged".   Now i conducted this little study with dragonglass as well.   We know dragonglass is frozen fire.  It's edge is wicked sharp, but the obsidian material itself is very brittle.   

I became exasperated by the futility of my search because I didn't know enough about Valyrian Steel to just pull obsidian out of the sky to include it as a constituent when near the end of my search on dragonglass I happened upon a reminder of Valyrian building methods.  Dragon fire is hot enough to melt rock as is seen in the fuzed black rock peculiar to Valyrian architecture, monuments and roads.  I'm back to thinking obsidian really is an ingredient of Valyrian Steel, certainly of dragonsteel.   I don't know if that did more harm than help, but thanks for inspiring a frenzied search.   That was fun.   

I don't get how you connect from dragon fire being used in Valyrian steel to obsidian being an ingredient of either Valyrian steel or dragonsteel.

The idea that obsidian is "frozen fire"—sure, but it seems to me that you'd want to release that dragon fire by lighting it like a glass candle and then use the dragon fire, not by merging the solid obsidian into the steel somehow.

Think about it this way: Even ancient people knew that copper salts burn with pretty green or blue colors, and also that when you mix one of those copper salts with something else the result doesn't burn with that color anymore. There's no reason to expect obsidian mixed into something else to still burn the same special way as obsidian on its own, any more than you'd expect that burning a dragon's tongue would produce the same special flame a dragon breathes.

[falcotron]

4 minutes ago, Romaine3 said:

So you are aware that some ancient cultures (I think Vikings are one of them) possessed forging techniques that we cannot replicate today (because the information was lost).

So, somewhere along the line in Westeros, the process was either forgotten because they were never written down, or the written instructions were gathered up and hidden from future generations.

Viking forges, we don't know exactly what they did, but reproducing or outdoing their results is easy, so it's not all that interesting. You're probably thinking of Damascus steel—which I'm pretty sure was the inspiration behind GRRM's Valyrian steel.

Damascus steel swords go back to around the 3rd century, and outperformed anything we could make until the mid 20th century or so. We're only very recently starting to understand well enough for any of the theories about it to be sensible. There are actually two different parts of the process that are "lost"—one of them was never actually lost so much as just out of contact with the west for a long time, but the other really was apparently lost for good in the 18th century. And, because Europeans could only import (or capture) it in small amounts from the mysterious East, for most of that 14-15 centuries, everyone was pretty sure there must be some magic spells involved.

With Valyrian steel, though, there really is magic involved. And there may be live dragon fire involved too. So it may not be a matter of just lost technique, so much as no means to apply it. Which you'd think would lead to the technique being lost anyway, but we've seen that the red priests have preserved their rituals well enough over thousands of years that they're able to perform them now that their magic works again, so maybe if Tobho Mott could get hold of the right sorcerer and one of Dany's dragons he could follow some process that he learned as an apprentice that's never worked before, but now it would work? We probably won't see either way in the books, but it's fun to think about.

4 minutes ago, Romaine3 said:

I do like the idea of a dragonglass forge! But I think it needs to at least be lit by a dragons fire. Then the dragon can go on about its business.

I think you'd probably need a dragon's fire just to build the forge in the first place, unless maybe you carved it out of a huge dragonglass deposit in the side of a volcano or something.

[Romaine3]

Yes, you are spot on about the Damascus steel example. I used Vikings as an example because they traded far and wide and shouldn't have been able to produce the level of steel that they could with the materials that they could source locally. But because of their exposure to different cultures (most likely Middle Eastern ones in this case), they were able to gain the knowledge of how to create better steel.

Be that as it may, it is canon that when Dany hatched her baby dragons, Magic was amplified throughout the world. People who once resorted to sleight of hand/cheap tricks, are now able to amaze crowds with actual magic. Red Priests/Priestesses who could use a little magic, are now basically wizards.

So if Dragons amplify magic, I reason that their fire most likely contains it.

[falcotron]

37 minutes ago, Romaine3 said:

In another recent thread (I'll edit in the exact name of it when I'm finished) I came to the same conclusion about Dawn being a likely candidate for Lightbringer. I am probably not the first to come up with this idea either. The fact that Dawn meets the one of a kind, been around long enough to have been involved during the last Long Night criteria, leads one to believe that if Lightbringer still exists, then the sword goes by another name (Dawn).

I think Dawn is probably getting off-topic here, but people always want to bring it up, so here's something that might be relevant.

Most fantasy fans don't seem to know why meteoric iron is so important in so many fantasy worlds. Of course in hack fantasy works it's just important because it's become a standard trope, but the reason it originally became a standard trope is that it's important in multiple real-world legends, and the reason it's important in real-world legends is that it was important in the actual bronze age. And I think GRRM knows that.

Most people think bronze age cultures had no iron because of the name "bronze age". But they actually did mine iron ore and make iron tools, they just didn't make weapons out of it, because, until you develop proper smelting and forging, iron weapons suck. Except for meteoric iron (and telluric iron, but most cultures don't have access to that)—you can make weapons out of that that are superior to bronze, with basic heat-treating techniques well within reach of bronze age cultures. The problem is that there aren't too many iron meteorites around, so only the great kings and heroes get them. Meanwhile, one of the theories (not the prevailing theory, but not a crackpot) on what drove people to learn smelting is that they were trying to reproduce meteoric iron.

Anyway, Age of Heroes Westeros is one of the few bronze age cultures that gets this right. There are family names going back that far that have the word "iron" in them, and we're even told the Iron Islands were settled for, and named after, their convenient iron mines. And his star-iron sword, Dawn, is said to go back to before the iron age.

Maybe GRRM just made sure to get this right because he's annoyed by other fantasy writers getting it wrong, and it doesn't mean anything. But maybe there is a clue here.

Assuming LH=AA, maybe what the Last Hero learned from the Children was the basic idea of how to smelt iron and forge steel, but with an appropriate fantasy-magic slant. He wanted to know how to make another sword like the fabled Dawn without needing a meteorite, and they taught him how to make not just the first steel sword, but the first dragonsteel sword, Lightbringer. (How would the Children know how to make steel? Well, they can see the future, right?) That was a one-time deal, and there was no more steel in Westeros until the Andals came, and no more dragonsteel until even later, but Lightbringer was enough to win the Battle for the Dawn, so, good enough.

Hey, I told you it was probably off-topic.

 

[SiSt]

17 minutes ago, falcotron said:

Hey, I told you it was probably off-topic.

 

Let's not forget that dragon and meteorite are closely linked in myth, per LML's mythical astronomy, breaking of the moon, thousands of dragons/meteorites pouring forth. Hence, meteoric steel may very well = dragonsteel, and Dawn is completely relevant. 

[Romaine3]

18 minutes ago, falcotron said:

 

1 hour ago, Romaine3 said:

In another recent thread (I'll edit in the exact name of it when I'm finished) I came to the same conclusion about Dawn being a likely candidate for Lightbringer. I am probably not the first to come up with this idea either. The fact that Dawn meets the one of a kind, been around long enough to have been involved during the last Long Night criteria, leads one to believe that if Lightbringer still exists, then the sword goes by another name (Dawn).

I think Dawn is probably getting off-topic here, but people always want to bring it up, so here's something that might be relevant.

Most fantasy fans don't seem to know why meteoric iron is so important in so many fantasy worlds. Of course in hack fantasy works it's just important because it's become a standard trope, but the reason it originally became a standard trope is that it's important in multiple real-world legends, and the reason it's important in real-world legends is that it was important in the actual bronze age. And I think GRRM knows that.

Most people think bronze age cultures had no iron because of the name "bronze age". But they actually did mine iron ore and make iron tools, they just didn't make weapons out of it, because, until you develop proper smelting and forging, iron weapons suck. Except for meteoric iron (and telluric iron, but most cultures don't have access to that)—you can make weapons out of that that are superior to bronze, with basic heat-treating techniques well within reach of bronze age cultures. The problem is that there aren't too many iron meteorites around, so only the great kings and heroes get them. Meanwhile, one of the theories (not the prevailing theory, but not a crackpot) on what drove people to learn smelting is that they were trying to reproduce meteoric iron.

Anyway, Age of Heroes Westeros is one of the few bronze age cultures that gets this right. There are family names going back that far that have the word "iron" in them, and we're even told the Iron Islands were settled for, and named after, their convenient iron mines. And his star-iron sword, Dawn, is said to go back to before the iron age.

Maybe GRRM just made sure to get this right because he's annoyed by other fantasy writers getting it wrong, and it doesn't mean anything. But maybe there is a clue here.

Assuming LH=AA, maybe what the Last Hero learned from the Children was the basic idea of how to smelt iron and forge steel, but with an appropriate fantasy-magic slant. He wanted to know how to make another sword like the fabled Dawn without needing a meteorite, and they taught him how to make not just the first steel sword, but the first dragonsteel sword, Lightbringer. (How would the Children know how to make steel? Well, they can see the future, right?) That was a one-time deal, and there was no more steel in Westeros until the Andals came, and no more dragonsteel until even later, but Lightbringer was enough to win the Battle for the Dawn, so, good enough.

Hey, I told you it was probably off-topic.

 

 

No I don't think it is off topic at all. The Children wouldn't be in the story if they didn't have a role to play in deciding the fate of the living. One of the theories I have about them is that they have tunnel systems that connect each weirwood tree to one another. Who is to say that the forges that you proposed don't already exist down in the tunnel network?

The only problem is getting a dragon down there to light the forge... Any idea if there is a weirwood tree at or near Dragonstone?

[Ser Petyr Parker]

As far as I can tell, obsidian in steel makes no sense. When you smelt iron, your leftover rubbish is called slag. Slag is made of various things, including silicon dioxide. The whole point is to get rid of that crap - you don't put it back in again.

I never even considered that making "dragonsteel" involved dragonglass. I thought the "dragon" in "dragonsteel" comes from the fact that more or "special" heat was used to make it, from dragonfire or perhaps from the Fourteen Flames.

[falcotron]

21 minutes ago, Romaine3 said:

No I don't think it is off topic at all. The Children wouldn't be in the story if they didn't have a role to play in deciding the fate of the living.

Well, yeah, but we already have lots of Children connections out in the open—the Last Hero's quest for the Children, the greenseeing abilities they apparently gave humanity, the hinted connections between the Children and the Others, and more recent things like Bloodraven and Bran—so we don't really need them to be behind dragonsteel and/or Lightbringer as well. It's a neat idea, but I don't really have any textual evidence for it.

And, more to the point, I think we probably won't need the answer to "how, if at all, are the Children connected to dragonsteel" to find out what dragonsteel is.

But I could well be wrong. And, even if I'm right, throwing out fun theories to discuss is never totally useless; at least it's fun. Otherwise I wouldn't have posted it.

21 minutes ago, Romaine3 said:

One of the theories I have about them is that they have tunnel systems that connect each weirwood tree to one another. Who is to say that the forges that you proposed don't already exist down in the tunnel network?

That's an interesting idea. The weirwood trees are obviously magically connected, and tunnels like that do seem like a good way to set that up in the first place.

Are you imagining root tendrils crawling through those tunnels, or just the tunnels?

Meanwhile, do you think there were tunnels across the Arm of Dorne and all the way out to the Ifequevron's forest full of carved trees before the Hammer of the Waters? 

21 minutes ago, Romaine3 said:

The only problem is getting a dragon down there to light the forge... Any idea if there is a weirwood tree at or near Dragonstone?

I don't think we've heard of one. And we know the Children didn't go to the Iron Islands or the islands off the coast of Dorne, so I'd guess no—but I don't think we can do much more than guess.

9 minutes ago, SiSt said:

Let's not forget that dragon and meteorite are closely linked in myth, per LML's mythical astronomy, breaking of the moon, thousands of dragons/meteorites pouring forth. Hence, meteoric steel may very well = dragonsteel, and Dawn is completely relevant. 

They're closely linked in LmL's mythology, but I think most of LmL's mythology is not particularly relevant to GRRM's mythology.

[Romaine3]

@falcotron My idea about the Children and there tunnel network evolved from when Jon and Ygritte were down in those caves getting frisky. There is also evidence of the hot springs beneath Winterfell, which could mean there is an underground river, which could possibly mean a tunnel/cavern network. Then there is Bran, Meera, Hodor (is Jojen alive or dead, I can't remember) north of the wall hanging out underground with the Children and BR. So the cave/tunnel network connecting the weirwoods is plausible.

Initially, I thought that the system existed only in the North. Maybe the Northern houses even used it to exchange supplies with one another during severe winters ages ago. Then for some reason they forgot about it. There was a possible example of a cave or something somewhere in the south in ADWD, but my mind is tired right now so details are blurry. I'll look through some of the text tomorrow and see if I can find what it was that led me to believe this. Plus, when the Children inhabited the south, I don't think that they were paranoid yet, so they roamed above ground. But like ManBearPig, the tunnel system is real!

Either way, the secret of forging dragonsteel all seems to tie in with the Magic of the Children and the Magic/Magic amplification from the Dragons.

[Romaine3]

@falcotron was looking through older threads and currently on page 4 is the thread @Curled Finger mentioned in an earlier post in this thread by @Lady Blizzardborn entitled Advanced Crackpottery 5 - Dragonsteel. I haven't finished reading it all the way through yet, but coincidentally, they have some of the same type of ideas that we do. Lady Blizzardborn has a different idea about what dragonsteel is than we do, but it is still food for thought.

I'm going to do my due diligence and read the rest of the thread to see if there is anything that gives me an idea(s) on what the exact nature of dragonsteel is and how to properly make it.

[Romaine3]

Ok, after reading through that thread, on page 2, @Jon Ice-Eyes wrote a post that introduced a similar train of thought to what we have developed on our own in this thread. Additionally, later posts scratched the surface of a topic that might be in our best interests to develop further. The topic of Ice Dragons.

Combined with the fire of Daenerys' dragons, do you think that an Ice Dragons *fire (for lack of a better word) can alter the properties of the materials enough to forge and temper into a combination that properly welds together?

Let's explore Ice Dragons and see what we can uncover.

[aryagonnakill#2]

As I have pointed out for years, there really is no basis for the theory, people have just inexplicably latched onto it.  We are given all the info we need.

Valyrian steal is steal, forged in dragon flame, spell bound, and tempered with, or with a sacrifice mixed in somewhere.

The maesters say that there are dragon skeletons all over the world, so just because dragonsteal would not be the same as valyrian steal, does not mean it is not similarly dragon forged and tempered with a sacrifice.

[falcotron]

12 minutes ago, aryagonnakill#2 said:

As I have pointed out for years, there really is no basis for the theory, people have just inexplicably latched onto it.  We are given all the info we need.

Valyrian steal is steal, forged in dragon flame, spell bound, and tempered with, or with a sacrifice mixed in somewhere.

The maesters say that there are dragon skeletons all over the world, so just because dragonsteal would not be the same as valyrian steal, does not mean it is not similarly dragon forged and tempered with a sacrifice.

Well, there are reasons to look for a mystery here, and it's not just because Westeros didn't have dragons yet. The bigger issue is that Westeros definitely didn't have steel, and probably nobody did, so if dragonsteel is Valyrian steel or any other kind of steel… how? (And of course that connects up with the more interesting mystery of Lightbringer, which people already associated with the Long Night, and which is clearly a story about forging a steel sword, not bronze or meteoric iron or anything else, even though, again, it's before anyone knew how to do that.)

That being said, there's almost nothing to go on here, and if "it must be steel using dragonglass as a carbon source" was just one fan's wild guess as you seem to be implying, it doesn't actually solve the problem and just introduces a new one, so I'm not sure why people latched onto that answer. (But I'd still like a link back to the thread or site where that answer came from, to see for myself, if anyone knows where to find it.)