Cordage and gambeson alternatives are stuff that should be in the vanilla game. Well done.

@Maquin, yeah I can probably do that for the bucket. Make it like an optional recipe for people who don't have much twine.

@Teagan I did a shitload of research recently into pre-modern steel making techniques and ho-buddy, this crap gets crazy cool crazy quick. I am absolutely full to bursting of ideas for implementing a full system for this kind of thing. Unfortunately I simply lack modding skill.

I would like to eventually make a new mod. 

Something like Steel Spectrum: where every ferrous item and ore has its exact carbon percentage tracked so that you can dynamically transition a piece of iron through every phase of steel. Along with methods of carburization including bloomery steel (which was primarily produced by accident for a very long time and largely just considered a weirdly strong iron, whilst it was actually Mild Steel), crucible steel, finery forges, and puddling furnaces with all the intricacies and prerequisites each of those have.

The steel produced by the cementation furnace in the game is what I'm already assuming to be relatively common "medium" steel or at least something mechanically similar. Better than the wrought iron in the game (which behaves a lot like Mild Steel imo) but less useful than High Carbon Steel which would require a much more intensive process. Especially considering Crucible methods of making steel were extremely well known for their add-in materials which could probably make an even better alloy of steel similar to modern spring steel which would be astonishingly durable, sharp, and pliable.

Also, the only reason I excluded Ilmenite and Bauxite and Olivine for the refractory bricks is because refractory bricks do not contain those minerals. So it didn't make much sense. I do not doubt they'd make some fine steel though.

I absolutely am happy you and I share the same braincell for metallurgy tho, and I look forward to the future of vintage story and modding so that we both can hopefully see this stuff someday. :)

I mainly got this because it didn't make sense to me that you couldn't make cordage and rope out of grass, something that you can very much do IRL. So thanks for adding that in.

Speaking of rope, it also really doesn't make sense that buckets need twine to make. The model even has a rope handle. It's not such a problem when in vanilla you only might need one to three buckets, but when using a mod like Culinary Artillery/Expanded Cooking it takes a lot of buckets to farm resin with, and I don't have a huge flax farm set up yet and the turnaround time for growing flax is massive, so every single piece of flax twine that I get is precious. Using it for bucket handles is silly.

I am all for a better and more realistic/immersive process to steel production, however jumping from iron to steel isn't very realistic either. The first steel was probably produced by accident and was brittle. It took time to develop high carbon steel. Olivine is used as a substitute for dolomite aka flux in steel works. Bauxite is aluminum. Ilmenite ore is used as a flux by steelmakers to line blast furnace hearth refractory. This is why the devs chose this path of progression. If you are willing to make production more realistic and immersive, I would suggest creating a new steel for each of the cementation furnaces or better yet add a blast furnace as the next tier for high carbon steel and make us have to use Coke to fire it and Ilmenite to make it. Olivine should still be used along with Coke imo. 

Edit: thinking on this more, I think the cementation furnace tiers should still make better steel each upgrade and the blast furnace should be the upgrade for the bloomery which allows us to make bulk cast iron. Would love to see a piping system that moves molten iron to metal molds to make pig iron which is used with charcoal in the cementation furnace to make weak steel. Pig iron in a cementation furnace along with charcoal and crushed olivine makes normal steel.  Pig iron along with crushed olivine and coke makes black steel (top tier). I would do this if i was good at making models lol

www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/tfc-casting-with-channels

A stick plow that uses a stick and piece of firewood wouldn't need grass. which would be useful if you use the underground mines mod, and don't bring a lit torch, or are in a more arctic environment or anywhere that doesn't have grass growing. The idea being you have a lowest grade firestarter, the hand plow, that only needs sticks and firewood, it's easy to get and so long as you have firewood you can make it, as you can carve firewood to make sticks. Then the next step up is the standard spindle, needs sticks and straw, plus the firewood to burn. And then above that is the bow spindle, needs either an actual bow, or a small hand bow that would need something like cordage, and is then faster and more consistent, or even uses less energy. 

The main point was giving options. Hell there are more if you want to, one is wrapping a rope around a peice of firewood and pulling the rope back and forth till it catchs fire. You could have any of the Iron containing rocks be struck with a peice of flint to make a primative flint and steel, with an option to refine it, knaping the flint and forging steel to get more consistent results. There's even potential for the quarts. If you rub quarts crystals together they spark and glow, strike them hard enough and you get a spark. You can even scrape quarts, or porceline, along a peice of bamboo and get enough heat to start fire that way. you could various versions of this, quarts on quarts, quarts on bamboo, quarts on iron rich rocks. there's lots of cool way's to make primative firestarters and I would love to have cool options like this. 

hraabepex  The current firestarter is a fire plow as modeled but the sound is from a hand drill style firestarter. Also how would a firestarter that uses firewood be easier to get than the current sticks and straw?

Unfortunately both of these requests are beyond my current skill level. However, with new modding resources being provided with the next game update, I might be able to learn how to do that. But I wouldn't get too hopeful for it, I am a very lazy modder. :/

I was a little on the fence, but your explination was convincing, at least enough to try it. and most of the other more minor changes were quite nice sounding, happy to give a try. if you do add a way to harvest tree bark for cordage, I would request that you don't have it simply be holding right click with a knife, as another favorite mod has that for scratching it and making it drip resin. There are other mods, like primative tools, that have an adze for harvesting bark. You could take that bark and have it processed with a knife to get cordage. Or if you want it to be more realistic, as not every tree can make cordage, then do the knife thing but only for the relavant trees, that way it doesn't conflict. 

Silly suggestion if you want to take it. Alternate fire starting methods. We have the standard spindle, but what about a bow spindle that works faster or more consistently. Or a stick plow that uses a stick and a piece of fireword, and takes longer but the resources are easier to get. Or, and this is less realistic, use a piece of clear quartz as a lens, and it requires standing in sunlight, or the firepit being in sunlight. 

and as to "YourCreator" below, I would recommend toolworks. it splits the tools into handle, head, and binding. so when one part breaks you replace just that part and reassemble it to get the rest of the component durrability. 

I'm really not entirely sure what your complaint is, but if you're talking about the damage to the hammer from crushing quartz or chopping firewood, then those are mechanics that already exist in the vanilla game that I just sort of applied to the crushed quartz recipe using the hammer as well. If it seems too severe of a durability cost, then I will be happy to take that under consideration. I'm not entirely sure where diamonds come into this, as this mod does not affect any minerals other than Quartz at this moment.

shitty mechanics - tool damage. Where parts of tools that need to repair? Also hardness is not durability and crush diamond possible with less hardened stone.