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What metals are dwarves capable of refining and producing?

I'm working on a setting where the players have a lot of meta knowledge (Computers and nukes in a pre-industrial world anyone?¹) and need to know almost exactly what metals/alloys dwarves have access to normally in a medieval setting to avoid giving them too much/too little when the game starts.

This can assume a earthlike geography and metal concentrations, as I can adjust from there myself.

The technology level of the dwarves, in my world, is around that of the early industrial age. They have access to steam engines, and can manipulate metal using simple driven machines. The ores they have access to is really going to be highly varied, as i'm waving my hand at moderate speed to give them access to most ores. (Less uranium this time, to avoid them destroying BOTH continents, and causing me a lot of pain. Gods are radioactive enough as it is.)

Other races in the world are far behind the dwarves in this regard, giving them a monopoly over military weaponry, at least in the forts that have access to it.

¹ For reference, they already turned the other continent into a nuclear wasteland. They're starting over from scratch, as they successfully killed themselves in the process.

• Bronze


• Steel


• Gold


• Silver


• Brass


• Lead


• Zinc


• Mercury


• Copper


• Tin


• Iron


• Billon


• Bismuth


• Nickel


• Electrum


• Antimony


• Platinum

So - standard medieval metals could include;

• Copper


• Tin


• Brass


• Bronze


• Lead


• Iron/Steel*


• Gold/Silver/Platinum

*The exact grade of steel/iron and what they can make out of it depends on the Dwarves exact tech level, resources and economics. Interesting read here over at the History StackExchange

As you mentioned Aluminium requires modern process in order to refine, so only small nuggets of native aluminium would have been available. Titanium is even worse, as it wasn't even discovered till fairly late, and only really started being refined and used in the 20th century.

If you're wanting to give it a fantastic spin, go with something like:

• Star Metal


• Mithril (commonly associated with dwarves)


• Thunder Iron


• Blue Steel

For extra world building points, name the metal after a dwarf community. ie. Baldwin Hills -> Ballard Iron.

To base it on something believable find a known metal and its modern uses and allow those dwarves to have figured it out - while the rest of the world is using an inferior metal for the job; i.e the dwarves have figured out bronze, while everyone else is just using copper. Steel to iron, titanium to steel.

Don't forget that the metal alone is only half the issue, how it is refined, forged, and cooled can have a drastic effect on the metals strength. Compare Japanese Katanna to a knights long sword. Both are essentially forged from very similar metals. The process of refining and folding the katana metal however makes them superior in terms of function.