Just curious. Is there any high tech material that would do better than steel in a real (ie your life depends on it) one on one sword fight?
Uh duh - Mithril Silver.
[Sorry, I couldn’t help it.]
Do you mean is there a material that is stronger and holds an edge better than steel? I don’t know if there is a material that a sword could be made from that will help you win a sword fight. I don’t know how frequently swords broke in fights, so I don’t know if there is a better material. That said, there are certainly swordmaking techniques that result in a superior sword such as differential quenching. The simplest implementation of that technique that I ever heard was to carve a squash or something like it into a shape which followed the curve of the blade. The knife was then heated evenly and the edge was stuck into the squash. The edge would cool rapidly and become very hard whereas the back of the blade would cool more slowly and be softer and springier and consequently more resistant to breakage.
My wife’s uncle tells me that he can bring a titanium knife through the metal detector at the courthouse where he is a judge, so if you and your adversary have to pass through security, make sure you can take a titanium sword. 
FWIW,
Rob
I’ve heard many judges are used to bringing titanium weaponry into their courtrooms. Is this true?
Fully ceramic knives will also pass through metal detectors, but would quickly break if used to parry.
Titanium could be added to steel, but that way, and by itself, it’s very stiff. This could be bad, possibly causing injury to the wielder’s hand. I couldn’t find information on exactly how well it holds an edge.
I heard somewhere that Samorai swords where made with folded metal… I think that it had overlapping cross grained steel… That would make it pretty stiff…
Someone here probably knows much more about that than I do.
Far from being stiffer, unalloyed titanium is actually more elastic than steel, with a Young’s Modulus of E[sub]Ti[/sub]=116 GPa versus E[sub]steel[/sub]=200 GPa. I can’t envision how the difference in stiffness either way would “caus[e] injury to the wielder’s hand”, but there you go. There do exist a few titanium alloy knives, promoted primarily for their corrosion resistance, but they’re really novelty items which have an edge-holding ability comperable only to the softest of knife steels, even after much heat treatment. Titainum is sometimes used in tools that are used in a sparkless environment (like blasting cap crimpers), but is primarily used for its corrosion resistance in reactive environments and ability to retain material strength at elevated temperatures. There are no production firearms made of titanium owing to the cost of it, and while a titanium weapon might pass though a detector that relies on ferrous content to display magnetic properties it won’t pass through airport scanners and the like.
Back to the OPs question, I don’t think any material is superior at doing what steel does best. A runner up might be bronze, an alloy of copper and tin (and was in fact what weapons were made of before the smelting and alloying of iron (to produce weapon-strength steel) became common. (The production of steel was actually independently reproduced by three separate cultures.) There are materials that are harder (like ceramics) but that don’t display adequate toughness, and there are tough materials but the lack the ability to retain an edge. There may be some exotic nickel/copper/chromium/tungsten alloys or something like depleted uranium that, given the approrpriate heat treatment, might be both stronger and tougher than steel, but between the exotic content resulting in unavailability and the weight, I doubt they’d be practical as a melee weapon material.
Stranger
Should’ve known I’d be beaten to it by this crowd. That was my joke!!!
Generally speaking, at this time and technology level steel alloys are the best choice for sword blades for a wide array of reasons. Don’t sell steel short; a look through a couple of good engineering books can find some incredible alloys with very nice properties, and forming methods (such as folding) can really improve the properties quite a bit.
I do not think you are correct, but that depends on how you define “made of”. Most of this gun is titanium, but not all of it. Then again, you’d be hard-pressed to find many guns made of a single material of any type…
I stand manifestly corrected.
Stranger
It wouldn’t have been on my mind at all, except now that Kansas passed concealed carry this week, I’m looking for light firepower…
Slightly off-topic, but is that why depleted uranium is used in tank shells?
It’s hard, dense and pyrophoric.
Well, Adamantium seems to be popular as well, but more for armor than swords.
Can we do better with a composite structure, e.g. CFRP blade bonded to a ceramic edge?
As long as we’re getting in to exotic materials, what if the entire blade were a single carbon compound?
Just make sure you don’t get suckered into buying a lesser-quality knockoff.
…'cause, y’know, that’d be a carbon copy.
Why did I laugh so hard at this?
As for why a stiff blade would hurt…wielding a sword hurts. You get used to it after a while, but a completely inflexible blade would tranfer a lot of vibration right into your hand when it hits something, like another sword.
Unenchanted diamond would not make a good blade because diamonds can cleave in half if struck at the right place. Many jewelry warranties do not cover this. I suspect many other carbon compounds have similar limitations.
Possibly, though I think you’d be more likely to go with a metal matrix composite than carbon fiber or somesuch. Part of the problem with carbon fiber is that it is so stiff (compared to the binder matrix) that it tends to undergo fracture with any tensile or impact loading. For some types of structures this isn’t a major problem, but I suspect that for a sword being used to parry or deflect blows that it might not be sufficiently robust. And your ceramic edge may be prone to chipping, so you’d want to make it replaceable.
Diamond is very hard, but surprisingly not too strong; it’ll cleave readily if struck the proper way (hence, gemstones) and so isn’t really an ideal material for large impact structures. Steel has the very nice property of developing a grain which can be modified or directed both by heat treatment/annealing and the inclusion of different alloying elements to delivery a good balance of hardness and toughness (which are not the same thing) as well as excellent tensile strength and elasticity. And unlike more exotic materials, it’s pretty easy to work with.
I’m a mechanical engineer, not a material scientist by training, and there may be some existing or near-term material that could be superior to steel–maybe some kind of high strength polymer-ceramic hybrid or some non-ferrous high atomic number element alloy–but it’s not going to be as common or easy to work as steel.
Well, except for that Puppeteer hull material…I understand that stuff is pretty stout. 
Stranger