the fact that hes in a fuckin forge and weapons even have a qualitative difference between them at all means its next to impossible for there to be no knowledge of tempering metal. otherwise, what is there even to be proud of? its all shit potmetal otherwise, dwarves might as well give up and let morons make weapons. it'd all me the same, outside of balance.
its almost as bad as that time in RoTHE where the protag invented concrete by randomly mixing "the correct proportions" of clay, sand and limestone, /untreated./ if it were that god damn easy every ancient civilization on earth would be full of fuckin concrete interstates. you know the publisher pressure to release chapters for those chinese webnovels must be crazy high when you dont even have time to look up what a calcinator is over a 20+ chapter background arc... rip chinese writer-sans