That right there is what we call bad assed.
Only one of the two swords was steel.
Softer alloys used for “decoration purposes” (according to the wikipedia article) also cannot cut through steel.
The alloy I witnessed was definitely not for decoration purposes.
Well according to the article, it was.
Let me put it this way, you could have had a sword made of diamond. It still won’t cut through a steel sword in what would be considered normal use. ok?
Article? I’ve never seen any articles about the sword I saw.
So a diamond sword is theoretically the best possible sword?
The article is about the mokune-gane gold-laminates linked to by crowmanyclouds.
No, but diamond is the hardest material, and will hold an edge better than anything else. If your secret golden alloy was harder than diamond, it would be worth billions as an abrasive and for use in cutting tools and high speed bearings.
It’s irrelevant anyway. If a sword was infinitely strong and infinitely sharp, you still couldn’t cut through a proper katana with it. Once your infinitely sharp blade has cut an infinitely-narrow nick into the katana, the rest of your infinitely strong blade is acting as wedge trying to force the nick open. The strength of the material or sharpness of the blade doesn’t matter at that point - only the properties of the katana itself.
It’s quite possible to make a sword from a high-carbon steel all the way through, quench it to maximum hardness and give it a minimal temper, just enough to take out the quenching stresses. Polished up and sharpened, it’ll be beautiful, hard as hell, sharp enough to shave with, seriously damaging to anyone you swing it at, and will snap clean through if you hit it against a hard edge. I suspect that’s what you were sold.
A true katana is made from at least five different steels with different carbon contents. The high carbon steel is used for the blade edge, but medium-carbon steels are used for the “cheeks” of the blade and the core is low-carbon steel. This makes the blade tough so it won’t snap when used in anger - the softer steels can’t hold nearly as good an edge, but they can absorb punishment. You can bend a paperclip into a U and straighten it again a few times. Bend a razor blade a fraction and it goes ping.
[QUOTE=matt]
The article is about the mokune-gane gold-laminates linked to by crowmanyclouds.
So what?
reference?
I don’t know if it was harder, I do know that it cut through a steel sword. Is it impossible to cut through diamond with metal?
So it’s impossible to cut through steel? You’ll pardon my if I’m just a little skeptical.
It’s not possible to cut through swords. This did not happen historically, it does not happen now, the laws physics say it will NOT happen ever.
Can a blade snap after a serious failure due to stress/metal fatigue. Hecks yeah. Vould it happen just as it makes contact with another blade/piece of armor/cutting material, sure, I’ve seen it happen myself.
Would I describe such events as “cutting through the steel sword” uhm, no. Not at all. It wouldn’t make sense to.
This is the same type of nonsense I hear from people and usually the Katana. They say it was used to cut through gun barrels in WWII, and that it can cut through engine blocks.
Its nonsense, no Katana, no sword in general can defy the laws of physics, they are tools made of metal, and not magical in any way 
I have a pair of bolt cutters in my basement that I bought for $20 at Home Depot. Would you care to let me have a go at your best steel sword with them? What if I had industrial grade cutters? So much for the “laws physics.”
So nothing. Kinthalis mentioned an article he’d read about gold alloys, and I inferred from your reply that you were confused about what he was talking about. My mistake.
It’s impossible to cut diamond with a metal edge, yes. You cannot scratch, pierce or scrape diamond with a metal edge, however sharp it is - the edge will collapse first. You can cause diamond to cleave, i.e. crack, with metal. In much the same way that you cannot cut glass with a sharpened bit of rubber, but you can break it with the same if you hit it.
Of course it’s not impossible. You can snip through soft steel with hardened shearing blades such wirecutters and bolt cutters, you can saw through harder steel with hardened saw blades, you can abrade through very hard steel with a grinding disc. What you can’t do is cut, as in slice, through a tough steel sword by hand-swinging another sword into it, however strong or sharp that sword is. You may be able to break a brittle steel sword in that way, but not slice through it.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any problem with two swords meeting and one of them ending up in two pieces - there’s a number of ways that could happen, the simplest being that the separated sword was through-hardened and brittle.
I do have a problem with it happening just because one of the swords was super-sharp and super-strong, one sword slicing through the other as if it were paper. Unless your super-sword is no thicker anywhere than its sharp edge, it’s not going to become magically easy to cut through another sword.
So nothing. Kinthalis mentioned an article he’d read about gold alloys, and I inferred from your reply that you were confused about what he was talking about. My mistake.
It’s impossible to cut diamond with a metal edge, yes. You cannot scratch, pierce or scrape diamond with a metal edge, however sharp it is - the edge will collapse first. You can cause diamond to cleave, i.e. crack, with metal. In much the same way that you cannot cut glass with a sharpened bit of rubber, but you can break it with the same if you hit it.
Of course it’s not impossible. You can snip through soft steel with hardened shearing blades such wirecutters and bolt cutters, you can saw through harder steel with hardened saw blades, you can abrade through very hard steel with a grinding disc. What you can’t do is cut, as in slice, through a tough steel sword by hand-swinging another sword into it, however strong or sharp that sword is. You may be able to break a brittle steel sword in that way, but not slice through it.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any problem with two swords meeting and one of them ending up in two pieces - there’s a number of ways that could happen, the simplest being that the separated sword was through-hardened and brittle.
I do have a problem with it happening just because one of the swords was super-sharp and super-strong, one sword slicing through the other as if it were paper. Unless your super-sword is no thicker anywhere than its sharp edge, it’s not going to become magically easy to cut through another sword.
I don’t think you are grasping the difference between cutting through and snapping a sword in half.
Oops, yeah, what Matt said.
Well, you don’t quite need the entire sword to be edge-thin. In principle, one could make a wedge shape with enough mechanical advantage that a human arm swinging it could in fact cut through an arbitrary target. But the mechanical advantage required would be ludicrous, and would in fact result in a sword ridiculously thin at the widest part of the blade (although still slightly thicker than the edge). At a rough estimate, assuming a very strong man and a low tensile-strength steel for the target, the cutting sword could be a maximum of 1/32 of an inch thick or so at its thickest part. Assuming a normal-strength human and a higher tensile strength steel, that estimate could decrease to, say, 1/200 of an inch. So I think it’s reasonably safe to say that whatever you saw, it wasn’t one sword actually cutting through the other.
I don’t think you could hope to have a better material than a sword made from 58-59 hardness on the rockwell scale. Of course the knowledge of how to use one efficiently would be the deciding factor on your life depends on it.
I don’t think you could hope to have a better material than a sword made from 58-59 hardness on the rockwell scale. Of course the knowledge of how to use one efficiently would be the deciding factor on your life depends on it. Steel that is.
Look closely at your bolt cutters. Move the handles open and shut, and watch how the mechanism operates. See how the movement of the mechanism increases the force applied on the (bolt, whatever) you are trying to cut through. This will help explain why bolt cutters can cut through things a sword swung by a human being would not.
[hijack]My watch is made out of titanium, as is my wedding band, and I have no problem with leaving either on while going through airport metal detectors. How do airport detectors differ, in what they detect, from ones you might find at, say, a courthouse?[/hijack]
Why did wolfram metal get the works? That’s nobody’s business but the Turks.