Terry Pratchett may write a mean fantasy novel, but he also forges one heckuva sword. In honor of being knighted last year, Sir Pratchett dug up 175 pounds of iron ore, sprinkled in some meteorites, and made himself a proper weapon.
Pratchett gathered the iron ore deposits himself from a field near his town, and worked with a friend who is an "expert on ancient metal-making techniques" to smelt it in a makeshift kiln in his own home. He then took it to a blacksmith, who made the blade.
Now that's how you be a knight. Ball's in your court, Sir Patrick Stewart. [News.au via Geekosystem; Image credit: Discworld News]
Sumit316 on October 10th, 2017 at 16:44 UTC »
"Sir Terry was just as big of a nerd as his fans. The Luggage, a memorable Discworld character (if a sentient trunk counts as a character), was created during a game of Dungeons & Dragons in his youth. He enjoyed video games like Thief, Half Life 2, and Doom.
He painted Warhammer miniatures and expressed a desire to one day write a book set in that universe. Sir Terry also loved technology and embraced new advances. In the 1990s he was even active on a Usenet group about his books."
"He became an early adopter of voice recognition software, once typing out his books became too difficult.
“It really isn’t a problem,” he said in a 2013 NPR interview, “I’m a bit of a techie anyway, so talking to the computer is no big deal. Sooner or later, everybody talks to their computers — they say, ‘You bastard!’”
This guy was a classic nerd.
Challengeaccepted3 on October 10th, 2017 at 16:10 UTC »
SPACE SWORD!
TooShiftyForYou on October 10th, 2017 at 15:19 UTC »
"At the end of last year I made my own sword. I dug out the iron ore from a field about 10 miles away - I was helped by interested friends. We lugged 80 kilos of iron ore, used clay from the garden and straw to make a kiln, and lit the kiln with wildfire by making it with a bow."
Colin Smythe, his long-term friend and agent, donated some pieces of meteoric iron - "thunderbolt iron has a special place in magic and we put that in the smelt, and I remember when we sawed the iron apart it looked like silver. Everything about it I touched, handled and so forth ... And everything was as it should have been, it seemed to me.
That's doing it proper.