Strength does not equal hardness. Glass is harder than steel, but which would you make a sword out of?
Ok I’ve done extensive research on swords so I think I can answer most of the questions.
- Diamond blades would be really brittle, they would shatter completey after on minimal contact with other blades. They would be very sharp however. But still not practical.
** Biohazard ** they are called buckyballs (carbon 60 I think) and nanotubes. Buckyballs are hard, nanotubes are tough and flexible. Buckyballs would made an incredibly sharp edge. They would have the same fracturing problem as diamonds but since it would be so sharp it would probably cut straight through other blades so contact wouldn’t be much of a problem. Nanotubes wouldn’t hold an edge very well but would take a lot of abuse. So the idea setup is nanotube backing with a buckyball edge, so just like a samurai sword except with carbon instead of iron. It would also be quite a bit lighter (1/5 the weight of a steel sword IIRC). - Lightsabres aren’t plasuable right now. Even if we could make a contained photon blade you wouldn’t be able to fight with them, they would go through eachother. And a straight blade wouldn’t work, you would have to bend the photons into a 8 so it would loop into itself. Plus it would be far to easy to take off and arm or a leg.
- Titanium IIRC doesn’t hold a edge well. A titanium steel alloy would work in theory, but steel is cheaper by itself and would work just as well.
- Vibrating swords would need a constant power supply (extra bulk) and make noise. While it would in theory cut better I don’t think people would want to carry around batteries or wear earplugs.
- A sword that heats up would be neat, but would have no practical value. Once again you’d need an energy supply. A hot blade would dent and bend more easily then a cold one and the only advantage would be that you can carterize the wound after you cut someone. But if your cutting them why would you want to sterilze the cut? So its just not practical.
- Really thin blades would be really sharp. Kind of obivous isn’t it? So you’ve got a great cutting edge but you can’t really fight with it. So if you want to lob off some heads its a good idea, but for people who want to duel (BMalion;)) its not a good choice.
So IMHO the best thing to make a sword out of would be nanotubes and buckballs. Then you get something that resembles a modern blade while being lighter, harder and sharper. And you’ll still be able to fight with it, in a sporting situation of course…
ARRRRGGHH… I forgot about the Aztek obsidian-flake sword! (and I own an obsidian-blade knife too! :smack: ) I think it would be better than no sword at all but as those flakes fall out and shatter in combat the wooden part of the sword had better be able to continue to take punishment. I always thought of these as more of a club/mace. Has any one out there made one of these? How did they get the flakes inserted? How well did they hold up? Where they really even used in actual combat? (Maybe I should start a thread on sword-fight re-enactment/recreation?)
Wearia Good points! One question, your buckyball/nanotube sword… what kind of sheath would you use for it 
perhaps a magnetic-field thingee? Also, what kind of research have you done? We may be kindred spirits.
What is your basis for saying that titanium doesn’t hold an edge well? I mean - do you have a reference for that, and what alloys were they considering? Are you only thinking of pure titanium, perhaps? I mean, it’s not really fair to compare unalloyed titanium with something like 440C.
One very important thing to keep in mind is that the word “steel” encompasses literally tens of thousands of alloys, heat treatments, carburizing and nitriding schemes, coatings, forgings and extrudings, etc. What really does “stronger than steel” mean when one hears it - 1020 general purpose cheap-ass bar stock, or 316 food-grade stainless austenitic, or chrome-vanadium-molybdenum-nickel superalloys.
I have actually worked with titanium, for armor and weapons on competition combat robots. Although it can be sharpened, it doesn’t hold an edge anywhere near as well as a good hard steel. 6AL-4V (military grade titanium alloy) is better than pure titanium, but a decent tool steel is better yet. Titanium does have the advantage of being much more elastic than steel.
“KILL MAGNUS… KILL MAG-(karate chop! ) SQUEEEEE…!”
Well, yes and no…we get into the “what is steel” issue again. IIRC, steel and aluminium are the only two metals that have an “infinite” fatigue life, so it kinda depends on what is meant by elasticity. And I’ve never seen titanium springs preferred over steel, except where weight was the absolute limiting factor.
I’m not being argumentative, nor am I challenging you, but why in the case you speak of does it not hold an edge better? Is it simply a matter of the surface hardness, or the fundamental properties of the alloy?
That’s just plain Talc. Here’s a quick-n-handy (designed for K-12 education) Moh’s hardness scale for future reference.
Ok, while I might not have anything going here… I will put it up anyways.
My commeet goes to the ‘Light Sabre’ idea.
While it might be possable in the future, my idea comes from my own thoughts.
How would one go about ‘halting’ the length of the laser?
How would one make it so that the swords didn’t go thru each other?
How exactly would the power source work?
How heavy is the Power Source when in the sowrd (Overall Weight)?
How long would this power source last?
And after you give me all the answers, I’ll go a patent it (Sarcasm mind you, but you get the picture. If anyone could figure this out, we’d have Laser Swords, Knives, and whatever else)
Ok, now to the next idea that popped out.
That ‘Heat Blade’
You have a massive heat going, well, then you must have a highly advanced Combat Suit as well then, one that can make it so you feel nothing of this heat yourself and your suit doesn’t melt. Something that hot would, to me, seem like more of a threat to your health then your enemys.
Diamond Weapons
Ok, as seeing how it would suck to make a ‘Completely’ Diamond Blade, how about this. You take like steel or something kewl, and for the actual ‘Cutting’ part insert a thin (Extremely so) fragment of Diamond for the actual blade. The Steel would be able to take the beating, and the Diamond would cut quite nicely. Not sure if any of this will work or be a good arguement. I’m extremely unknowledgable in such areas. So, for me, this is all just blunt questions.
Alright, now, in closing, my question would be this. In an advancing Era of Guns, who would actully use a Sword? By the time we have kewl new toys (i.e. Plasma Gun, Laser Rifle, ect.) such things as a Sword will still be completely useless. But its good to think on interesting ideas such as this.
On a side note, that ‘Chainsaw Blade’ idea sounded pretty kewl.
BMallion
… and I own an obsidian-blade knife too!
Minerals maybe shouldn’t be rejected just yet. What about jade? That’s seriously tough, given appropriate design. The Maori war club or mere (there’s a picture of one on this page) was essentially a stone machete.
I think it’s simply a matter of the surface hardness of the material. Titanium, in my experience, is not as hard as a good hard steel. It’s strong and lightweight, but actually a softer metal than steel. I don’t fully comprehend the physics of the metallurgy; I’m speaking from experience of playing around with scraps of metal in the welding shop. Titanium can be sharpened to a fine point, but that point won’t hold as well under actual use as a tool steel blade.
There is a difference between hard and brittle. Diamonds are hard (not easily scratched) but they are brittle (easily cracked). Often they are inversely correlated. Think about a caramel candy; When it’s soft it isn’t brittle but if you stick it in the freezer it becomes hard AND brittle.
Actually I meant hardness and “brittleness” would be correlated.
AndrewL
Thinking further on jade. Jade gets its toughness (it’s considerably tougher than diamond) from being a natural fibre composite. Rather than thinking in terms of “single-crystal artificial diamonds”, if you had the technology to make diamonds to whatever microstructure you wanted, you could get better toughness from a composite (i.e. a diamond matrix with single diamond fibres embedded) so that there would be none of the cleavage planes that embrittle a single crystal).
For anyone interested this guy has built the mother of all pages devoted to lightsabre’s . Lots of cool speculation.
Isn’t this what I said?
I LOVE that buckyball/nanotube sword the best! Add a molecular chainsaw to it and watch out!
The old computer RPG Bard’s Tale had weapons and armor made from Mithral steel, Adamant steel, and Diamond. It was a descriptive way of saying “you find really powerful equipment.” “Diamond sword” sounds a lot better than “sword +5.”
I’ve read a fantasy book where the main character (brought over from our world) transforms a sword into a diamond blade with a monofilament edge. The weapon is strong enough to cut into stone.
So while diamond is the hardest known mineral, its brittleness restricts its usefulness to enchanted weaponry.
If you wanted a steel sword with a diamond tip, you could make it today. But I don’t think it would do what you think. Diamond tipped cutting wheels and also hollow core drills (essentially open cylinders) have been made for decades (and Corning used to buy them by the gross) by either an electroplating process or a sintering process. And before high speed dental drills appeared around 1960, dentists used diamond tipped drills (with high speed drills they became unnecessary and drilled too fast for good control). But in all cases they were used to abrade things not cut through them, for which I do not think the particular properties of diamond are especially appropriate. And of course, the diamonds did fracture and after a high percentage of the particles had fractured, the tool became useless. The diamonds were in the form of not quite microscopic dust that cost about $5 a caret (.2 gram, I think) back in the 50s. Now if you made a mini chain saw with diamond tipped blades that’s quite another matter.
Ok I’m back,
BMalion, never thought of a shealth… Magnets would be a good idea but heavy. Heh, you’ve got this amazingly strong sharp sword that can cut through anything, not what are you going to hold it in? I bet the old swordmakers never saw that one coming. IMHO what’d you’d need is shealth that holds the back of the blade and a buckyball guard that covers the edge, but it would need to be really secure because if it falls out it’ll go right through the guard, and you. As for research, a lot of browsing around the internet. I have a rather extensive collection of pointy things and I’ve made a number of swords myself. I’ve read books and talked to people which is probably the best way to learn about anything ;).
I can’t find links right now about Titanium but I’ve heard many people comment on how Titanium isn’t good for holding an edge. I think it may have something to do with that steel can be honed to a fine edge before becoming to heavy to support itself, however titaniums breaking point is lower so you can’t sharpen it as much. Something like that. I’ve heard of people going to titanium thinking lighter and stronger =better and end up going back to steel.
How would one go about ‘halting’ the length of the laser?
You bend the photons into a figure 8 so it loops into itself.
How would one make it so that the swords didn’t go thru each other?
Magnetic fields
How exactly would the power source work?
My WAG, the same way as batteries. You just put em in, turn it on and let the machinery do the work of converting it into light.
How heavy is the Power Source when in the sowrd (Overall Weight)?
No idea. It could need a car battery or some D cells. According to some reading I’ve done the original Jedi’s had belts with batteries on to power the sabres. So since we don’t know the amount of energy you need anything I tell you will just be a guess.
How long would this power source last?
Same as above, no way to know yet.
As for who would use a sword, swords are cool. Guns are more effective yes, but swords require some skill and are a sort of art form. Also just specualtion, in the game Deus Ex Hong Kong has created a type of sensor that picks up the sound of any gun fire and reports it to the authorities. To prevent being caught the gangs started using swords in order to prevent detection.
Jade is tough but won’t hold an edge (believe me I’ve tried).
raygirvan the enhanced diamonds you are talking about are exactly what buckyballs are. It is a more complex isotope and the atoms form to create something similar to a geodesic dome. Think of it like this, coal and diamonds are just carbon. But coal is much weaker. So coal is to diamonds what diamonds are to buckyballs.
As for diamond edged steel swords you run into the same problems as with diamond swords. You have a really sharp blade but as soon as you hit something it shatters. So then you have a normal steel sword with jagged diamond bits in it. It would be high (and expensive) maintainence since the edge would always have to be replaced. Hari Seldon is right however, a diamond edged sword is possible with modern tech.
Wearia
raygirvan: the enhanced diamonds you are talking about are exactly what buckyballs are. It is a more complex isotope and the atoms form to create something similar to a geodesic dome. Think of it like this, coal and diamonds are just carbon. But coal is much weaker. So coal is to diamonds what diamonds are to buckyballs.
Firstly, the word you mean is “allotrope”, not “isotope”. Secondly, there’s no reason why buckyballs should have better mechanical properties in aggregate than diamond. Diamond is certainly stronger than graphite, because graphite has weakly bonded planes, and diamond is a massive monolithic covalent structure. Buckyballs, however, are a small-scale carbon molecule; so far no-one knows what their properties in aggregate are. Probably it’s not so great, since they’re just little carbon balls with all the carbon-carbon bonds linking internally within the buckyball structure, so each ball is not likely to bond strongly with its neighbours.