I have krong'd my crude iron sword. So it have some nice extra stats. I would like to smith it into rough iron sword. Can I keep those stats if I do so?
I can confirm this behavior. I had a kronged Fine Steel Sword, I then used it to make a Katana. Regrettably the extra stats were lost in the smithing. So it seems to 'remember' the base item that the artifact was based on for smithing new items.