# Metals Other Than Steel.



## Rojack79 (May 29, 2016)

Hey folks. Simple question. Can iridium be used to forge a higher quality weapon when alloyed with iron? I ask because ive read up on how meterite ore was use to forge weapons in the past and said weapons were stronger as a result of the iridium. Is this true?


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## afk4life (May 29, 2016)

I don't know, but if you can make it believably so then sure.


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## TJ1985 (May 29, 2016)

I make knives and forge them from steel in my home forge so this is a tailor-made question for me. I'm speaking mostly in theory since iridium is one of the rarest elements on this planet, less that five tons mined worldwide per year. 

It's a very hard metal. In knife and bladesmithing that's an incredibly good thing, to a point, but too hard= too brittle. Hence the reason nobody is making plate glass swords. You slash your foe and the other end of your blade lands five feet behind your foe. BUT, you could carefully alloy it and balance the amount to add to find out how much makes steel stronger, better edge, malleability, etc. On it's own, I suspect more than 4% content is going to make any good steel go too brittle. It may serve the purpose of carbon in normal steel if added to lousy steel (which might bring a medieval steel to near modern metallurgical levels) in giving the steel some hardness. 

So, yeah, it may well be true. I personally struggle to believe it because of the logistic problems in doing it but it's a cool story that would be difficult to refute in factual statements. It is worth pointing out that there's no way even a wizard could take a piece of ore of unknown quality, put a chunk with a piece of known quality stock, whack it three times, and make an awesome sword. You'd have to first figure out how to process raw iridium to find out whether it was viable, then you'd have to source a pretty big amount for experimentation purposes. Learning the way a stock acts, what you can do with it, where the limits are with it, there's only one way to do it and it's seat time. In my forge I've only had two stocks of unknown quality that I "figured out" pretty quick and I've been reading blacksmithing literature from the 1500s to today. I'm not sure it'd be possible in a medieval setting or even in a poor modern setting... I seriously question whether it's legitimate because there are a dozen obvious problems that would make it incredibly if not impossibly difficult. 

If you're thinking of adding this concept to a story, I can give you a little insight into old-school smitty mentalities. If it's my job and I have a piece of so-so steel, not great, not lousy, and I've got a finite amount of stuff like high carbon steel, iridium, or any other hard metal, my first idea is going to be to find out if I can forge weld two small pieces of them. If I cannot, I'm a sick bird from the start because I'll never find the "crucible recipe" to add just enough iridium to make lousy steel good steel. If I can weld 'em, I'm thinking I'd shape my knife/sword blank, I'd then mirror that edge shape in the iridium, and then forge weld the iridium on. Create just the edge out of the iridium. 

Truly, with the hardness and brittle nature of it... I might be tempted to go the other way it. Not try to use iridium to make steel better, but use a small amount of steel to make iridium worse. Alloy poor steel into my iridium edge stock to make it less brittle, more ductile, more malleable, more durable. It'd probably be easier this way because you're adding a known element. This lousy stock, it's really malleable even in cold state, it's ductile, it's the stuff you make forks and spoons out of. I could source twenty-five tons for the cost of sourcing 25% of an ounce of iridium. Trying to make a whole blade that's an allow mix of the two would take so much of the rare stock, you might use tons of the stuff to find out the amounts you need. So, creating an edge of the good stuff, welding it on, pinning it on, that's what I'd think of first. 

I hope I helped.


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## Rojack79 (May 29, 2016)

TJ1985 said:


> I make knives and forge them from steel in my home forge so this is a tailor-made question for me. I'm speaking mostly in theory since iridium is one of the rarest elements on this planet, less that five tons mined worldwide per year.
> 
> It's a very hard metal. In knife and bladesmithing that's an incredibly good thing, to a point, but too hard= too brittle. Hence the reason nobody is making plate glass swords. You slash your foe and the other end of your blade lands five feet behind your foe. BUT, you could carefully alloy it and balance the amount to add to find out how much makes steel stronger, better edge, malleability, etc. On it's own, I suspect more than 4% content is going to make any good steel go too brittle. It may serve the purpose of carbon in normal steel if added to lousy steel (which might bring a medieval steel to near modern metallurgical levels) in giving the steel some hardness.
> 
> ...



Wow. I thought i knew a thing or two about blacksmithing. Well thank you for your wisdom. I will definetly call upon your exsperiance in the future. So as a blackmith you would have to test stuff out to see if it worked. 

Ok. Huh man now i have an awsome idea for the story. Well the only other thing i can ask off the top of my head is this, are there any real life metals that can replicate the property's of fantasy metals like Mythril, Adamant, Orichalciam, and so forth?


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## TJ1985 (May 29, 2016)

As nearly as I know, there are some that come close. I'm not really familiar with the fantasy metals you mentioned but I did search Mythril. Stronger than steel but lighter, silvery color... That might be a good description of titanium. Though, metallurgists in South Korea may have come up with a steel that's "better" than titanium, it's not rock solid yet. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/news/a13919/new-steel-alloy-titanium/ 

The thing to keep in mind is that, in terms of any rare earth element, iridium, scandium, even titanium, there's a lot we know about them but due to sourcing, we don't know everything. The guy with a big biceps and hammer, he might learn things in two sessions on the anvil that catapult him five years ahead of the competition, ahead of current technology. 

BTW, you might like to look up Damascus Steel if you haven't already. It has been lost to science, nobody knows how to make the genuine article. A few folks, myself included, have a few theories but it's all conjecture. All modern blades that have the Damascus look are pattern welded. Legitimate Damascus was, by all accounts, a super metal. Cutting through a rifle barrel, etc. It was of mythical proportion and many don't believe it ever truly existed but... there are museum pieces made in DS that are indeed real. It's as close to a "supersteel" as I can imagine and unless someone figures out exactly how it was done, there won't be anything to match it in my mind. Superplastic (flexible) but also super hard. That alone makes it a special kind of creature in the metalworking landscape. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel


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## K.S. Crooks (Jun 3, 2016)

Osmium is the densest metal on earth. Making an alloy using this metal and something else that provides some flexibility such as nickel or copper could conceivably make a stronger and more durable weapon for your story.


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## Rojack79 (Jun 5, 2016)

K.S. Crooks said:


> Osmium is the densest metal on earth. Making an alloy using this metal and something else that provides some flexibility such as nickel or copper could conceivably make a stronger and more durable weapon for your story.


I will have to look into how one can forge Osmium. That sounds like a tough project.


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