Silver weaponry- effectiveness and drawbacks

Does it have to be a solid? Sliver Nitrate, silver alloys etc. Many countries still use sliver for their coins. I remember that in the movie "Dog Soldiers", the werewolf family didn't have anything silver in their house. The photos were all framed IIRC. That one Mario Van Peeples Z-grade werewolf film had him killing the Big Bad with a Sliver Nitrate solution.

All night at the computer, cuz people ain't that great. I keep to myself so I won't be on The First 48

And to add to the above, is it still possible to kill them via other methods? Say you trap one in an incinerator. Unless its rate of regeneration is wicked fast, continuous, full-blast burning should be able to get around that pesky regen.

Allow me to cast some necromancy on the issue.

As mentioned, silver plating is probably the best method. There's another potential method of creating a silver blade with a great deal of resilience, though. Before blast forging became the preferred method of producing high-quality swords and other implements in the Middle Ages, there was a technique called "pattern welding". It was based on bundling strips of iron and carbon together, then twisting them when they were heated. When they were twisted enough, the resulting strip of metal was shaped into the blade. Often, this piece of steel was then acid-etched to produce wavy, serpentine patterns in the steel from the various natural patterns of iron and steel of various levels of carbon content.

The goal of this was the spread carbon as evenly as possible throughout the blade. The more you twisted the steel, the more evenly carbon was distributed. To this day, there's no superior method of producing a good sword. There are faster method of producing good or even excellent swords, but the pinnacle of the craft begins and ends with pattern welding.

Now, imagine that you did this with silver as well as carbon and iron. You could distribute the silver evenly within the structure of the blade and plate the result, producing a strong weapon with a relatively high silver content. For added reliability, tungsten could be added to strengthen the blade further and even out the silver content.

Just an idea, anyway.

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch

What difference would adding wolfram to it make? Not entirely sure about its properties other than being resilient in some way, and having a very high melting point. And it's very, very rare.

Pattern welding, as far as I know, isn't necessary with modern steel. You already have an even distribution of carbon.

Also of interest: [1], [2].

The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.

I'm not sure about wolfram, either.

In any case, pattern-welded steel is known to be extremely resilient. You've heard of Damascus steel, yes? The thing is, Damascus steel wasn't that notable — both Europeans and the Japanese used pattern-welding methods to produce pretty awesome swords, and the Damascus steel is just pattern-welded steel using Wootz ores from India. Except India also exported its Wootz ores to Europe amongst other places.

We don't know the exact properties of Wootz steel, but we do know that tungsten was a naturally occurring element in it — thus my suggestion. Too much tungsten will make a blade too weighty, but used sparingly, it can strengthen a blade greatly while retaining excellent balance. Pattern-welded swords, especially of Wootz steel, were not known to break easily at all, which is especially relevant given their often excellent flexibility.

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch

A note, first. I use the word wolfram for tungsten, since for me, tungsten is the same as scheelite. As far as I know, both words are used in English, but since I don't actually speak English myself, I can't say if it's true or not.

Well, the link is a try to replicate Damascus steel, more or less. The exact technique is unknown, though. I find weapons of that time interesting, both about designs and how they were used. The thing about swords of the time, they were all of fairly similar quality, to the point where quality was less important than the actual design and balance of the blades. Though naturally, skill with using swords were far more important. Also, reputation also far outweighed the actual properties (which is taken even further with Japanese blades, but that's getting too off-topic).

Adding some wolfram to the metal might help. No idea how much, but considering the poor propreties of silver itself, it might just be a good idea. A heavy weapon is better than a weak weapon if you use it to fight with. If you're just using it to finish the opponents off, durability is less of an issue.

With that in mind, it could be an idea to just lay on a beatdown first, and then use a silver dagger to kill them.

The Internet misuses, abuses, and overuses everything.

Hm, tricky. Silver wouldn't necessarily strengthen the blade and the limited silver content would reduce effectiveness. The silver might fail to mix with the carbon, the iron, or both. Failing to mix with the steel properly would result in faults in the weapon where the silver and steel meet. Extensive smelting can reduce these faults but it still leads to a weaker blade.

If you're talking about effectiveness against magical entities here, iron has the same basic properties in folklore. But if cost is not an issue, as mentioned above, one could simply create some sort of alloy of the two and pattern-weld the results into a sword.

edited 21st Apr '12 11:39:14 AM by JHM

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

^ Problem is, silver is soft as far as metals are concerned (and iron is brittle when faced with high stresses).

Pattern-smithing might overcome some of the obstacles but chemically an iron-silver alloy is going to be weaker than straight copper or bronze under some scenarios. (The only reason it won't be in all scenarios is iron is the Unobtanium compared to copper/bronze stuff. Even alloyed with silver the iron will possess more strength than typical copper will under most circumstances. Chemically however straight iron is stronger than iron-silver alloy and bronze/copper.)

Silver can also be applied galvanically, but despite some discoveries in the Middle East, it's not the tech level that would be seen in a Standard Fantasy Setting.

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

Necessity is the mother of invention: I'd suggest in this environment, finding ways to use silver, like that galvanising, would be a priority by some enterprising groups of blacksmiths across the board. Almost constantly, in fact.

So, tech in that area might be quite surprisingly advanced in a way that wouldn't beggar belief, even considering the odd use of No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup.

The thing is that we know the precise technique that was used to produce such weapons, it's just that we don't know the recipe for the particular kind of steel used in Damascus weapons. Today, if you can front the cash, you can buy pattern-welded steel swords, which uses the physical Damascus method (which, as noted, wasn't unique to Damascus) but with standard steel. Still excellent swords, though, if they're balanced properly.

For the record, I study medieval and European martial fencing techniques in my free time. I'm no expert, but it's in my interest to study this kind of thing in as much depth as possible. That said, most of my attention is focused on the actual use of the weapons rather than their construction, but I still know a thing or two about steel.

Thus the addition of carbon and tungsten.

edited 21st Apr '12 4:16:49 PM by MadassAlex

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch

If you can get any of it molybdenum added to steel makes for an insanely powerful metal - strong enough and tough enough that it is an option for tank armors. If you made a sword out of molybdenum-steel, you would probably never break it short of trying to cut through solid rock. Even then, it might not break before you were too tired to swing it any more and it WOULD cut through a softer rock. This would still ruin the edge and possibly bend the blade, but hey, you just cut through solid rock with a sword.

This would be a very rare and expensive metal, because it is difficult to refine. Pretty much, you'd have to crush the rare ore of it, heat it to 700 degrees C to oxidize it, mix that with ammonia, run hydrogen sulfide (a very toxic gas) through the solution to remove the copper impurities, drain this solution into a suitable container to dry it, add iron and aluminum*

and then burn it in an aluminothermic reaction.

This gives you a melt of molybdenum-iron with aluminum oxide on top of it. You would then scrape the aluminum oxide off the top, add your other materials, and then make it into ingots. You could then melt it - at its like 2200 C melting temperature - and add whatever you wanted.

Actually, you couldn't add some things because they'd boil off the top of the melt before they could mix.

Add tungsten and carbon and you have a high quality, nigh-indestructible steel. It would also be worth more than its weight in gold.

edited 21st Apr '12 6:19:50 PM by Vehudur

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

What about the weight, though? For instance, you can only use so much tungsten in a steel blade because it'll otherwise get too heavy to be used effectively.

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch

The high strength might allow you to use thinner (and thus lighter) pieces of metal. I'm not sure, because I can't say what the exact properties of a molybdenum-tungsten-silver-steel would be.

The game changer that isn't there in our world due to advanced production techniques would be impurities, such as phosphorus, which greatly weaken metals. If you could eliminate these, such as through magical means, you're in business. If not, you're better off using just normal steel and silver plating it. This is why you never saw advanced alloys intentionally made - they couldn't keep everything pure enough. Even if they didn't know exactly what was going into it, people like to (or accidentally) experiment with trying new things, metals included.

Calling it a steel at all is funny, because at this point it'd be something like:

40% molybdenum (and this is low for molybdenum-steels, it's usually like 60%) 10% tungsten 45% iron 3% carbon 2% silver

If it needs more silver then that, you're going to be getting a softer and weaker metal as you add more.

edited 21st Apr '12 6:31:39 PM by Vehudur

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Depends. Swords need a certain amount of softness, but what that level is changes depending on what swordsman you ask.

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch

The problem is, adding something like silver the strength is going to drop very fast, I'm not sure about how quick the hardness would drop. I know a bit about metallurgy, but not enough to say that for sure.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The softness is needed at the core or back of the blade. The idea is that the hardened steel is mostly a thin layer on the outside to pierce armor while the soft inner core absorbs the impacts.

But the silver has to be on the outside for the intended effect...

How about typical mild steel as a core with this alloy on the outside? It should at LEAST be harder then mild steel.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Swords don't pierce armour very well, no matter how you make them. But having a softer kind of steel along the edge can be beneficial as it makes edge-to-edge impact more forgiving on the blade, opening up the use of certain single-time techniques.

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch

Unfortunately, the outside and inside layers need to be perfectly fused as one contiguous piece. Tempering a sword involves hardening only the outside of a blade without affecting the core.

Hardening the outside also makes it more resistant to deforming.

And more prone to flat-out breaking.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, and just as many different sword constructions. For instance, katanas trend towards being harder and therefore more brittle, but hold better edges; European swords tended to be softer and more flexible, making them more resilient against impact but without holding the same quality of edge. It's about what you need, since kenjutsu teaches its students not to make edge-to-edge contact whereas European methods of combat do, which clarifies the reason behind different sword constructions.

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch