Learn French: Faute d'acier, il ne peut plus le façonner, mais il en rêve encore. - For lack of steel, he can no longer shape it, but he still dreams of it.

After the phrase faute de (for lack of), we typically drop the partitive or definite article before the noun, just like we do with beaucoup de or besoin de. So we say faute d'acier rather than faute de l'acier.

The lesson says faute de can also be followed by an infinitive. How would that work here?

If you wanted to express an action instead of a noun, you would follow faute de directly with an infinitive. For example, Faute d'avoir de l'acier... means For lack of having steel...

In il en rêve encore, why do we use the pronoun en instead of le?

The verb rêver (to dream) requires the preposition de when talking about dreaming of something (rêver de quelque chose). The pronoun en is used to replace phrases that start with de, so here it stands in for the idea of the steel or shaping it.

Why is the object pronoun le placed before façonner instead of before peut?