Yeah. Bujold says in the preface that it’s a real thing, which is why I’d like to learn more about it. In the book, they start by using more conventional techniques to cast a piece of metal in the approximate right shape, then they freeze water onto a known-good piece to make the die (which is very thick, and something like twice as massive as the workpiece), and then they use a bunch of explosives to ram the piece into the ice die, which destroys the die but reshapes the workpiece. And it’s definitely a work of engineering: Supposedly, they needed nanometer precision on the final piece.
Could be, but my reaction is that Bujold misunderstood something and has got hold of the wrong end of the stick. For one thing, you wouldn’t expect a precision die like that to be cast on the actual shape – you have to allow for relaxation and cooling. I think ice has been used to create precision dies, but it still seems unlikely as the material of a precision die unless you are talking about some soft, temperature sensitive steam-formed material. Like a high-precision prototype bread loaf.
One of the advantages of ice used in model making, to make models for molds, to make molds for dies, to make dies for metal-forming, is that ice was sometimes easier to work with than wood, or metal, or wax
But what do I know? We only paid metal workers to make dies. Nothing flash.
Here’s a brief mention at the Bujold mailing list.
You could drop her a line I suppose
Somebody needs to write to Bujold and point out that Elli Quinn is still single. That will get her to write another book in the series so she can find Quinn a husband.
Googling “Ice die” + “explosive forming” and variations on that gets me some results, but they don’t want to open on my computer and are either research papers or appear to be from the Department of Defense. I’m actually a little nervous about poking at that too much.
But the snippets I see refer to it being used to explosively form large components.
Bujold is pretty responsive on Goodreads.
That might well work. One thing that bothers me about Bujold is that she has a bad case of Everybody Must Get Partnered.
It’ll be a good book if she does write it, though.
She does tend to get a bit snippy (for Minnesota values of snippy) about the “you should write [this specific thing]” posts, though. Understandably so, since she must get a whole lot more of those requests than any person could write in a lifetime.
What I’ve always wished was that Bujold would go back in time in her series. Write a book about Piotr and his campaigns against the Cetegandans, for example. It would be interesting to see him as a protagonist in his prime rather than as a cranky old semi-antagonist. Plus it would be interesting to see Barrayar before it got modernized.
She has said IIRC that she’s no longer in the mood to wrote the kind of sad and gruesome book that would be needed for such times in Barrayar.
I got five hits, four of which were references to the book, and the other a German magazine which just happens to have those three words in a row – ICE as part of the name of a rock group, and die as the female definite article.
I’m pretty sure there was a comment at one point along the lines of, “We’ll know the Cetagandans have figured it out when they stop trying to kill Admiral Naismith, and start complaining in the Galactic Press about Barrayaran interference in their activities.”
I recall that.
Bet they were peeved that they figured it out after he retired the persona. Their little dig at him was IMHO typical Cetagandan one-upmanship to cover the embarrassment of the fact that they’d discovered the truth too late for it to matter.
It may be heresy, but Archive Of Our Own has some REALLY good fan-fic in the Vorkosiverse. [and some really bad, and some raunchy…] A Bit Too Much Good Work is a pitch-perfect complement to Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance
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But she does such gloriously unexpected things with former partners, instead of just throwing them away, or using them as evil foils.
New Penric! Amazon.com: Darksight Dare (Penric & Desdemona) eBook : Bujold, Lois McMaster: Kindle Store
Written by a Doper, too, I hear 
Now, if only I could work up that sort of writing mojo for something actually salable…
Well, she sort of kind of did. She’s become the baby-mamma for Ethan and for a significant fraction of Athos.
One of her insights as a science-fiction author was that, in a society with uterine replicators, “who I have sex with”, “who I want to blend my genes with”, and “who I want to raise my children” can be three different people.
Thanks for that!!
Thanks for the suggestion, I’m only a couple of chapters in, but I’m enjoying it immensely.