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Knife with silver or iron melding?

K

karenvideoeditor

Joined
Dec 24, 2013
Messages
4
Hey everyone! I'm a writer working on an urban fantasy series, and my main character's daughter has a knife collection. Some knives would need to be specially, hypothetically created for my universe, since there are nonhuman species in existence. I'm looking to figure out how the forging process would be different for a knife that has silver and/or iron on/in the blade. This is because werewolves have a weakness against silver and fae have a weakness against iron. Could anyone give me some info on this? Thanks!
 
Well, would you need pure silver and iron, or are alloys OK too?

You can have pure iron (wrought or cast) in or on a blade, and silver wire embedded via inlay process, if that's you're goal. heck, you can make a blade from iron, just not that strong overall.

Maybe a good steel blade with a ridge on the top of wrought iron and a silver wire or two inlayed on the blade or in the iron. But silver is very active and would oxidize and need replacing periodically.

There's some food for thought.

Larry
Tinkerer
 
Sorry, if this sounds like I'm being a smart-you-know-what.... (I mean it in good fun.)

I was asked a while ago to describe a tactical scenario involving a tac team, meth lab and interaction of some volatile chemicals therein with some zombie creatures this local writer had cooked up. He wanted to know scenarios where gasses and vapors could interact with zombie mutations to create a super zombie..... (my eyes glassed over about right there...)

Sorry, monsters that don't exist aren't my business, real monsters are... So my take on it is this: If you are making up a world, creatures, etc... then make up the science too. Like the whole 'Blade' trilogy with their pseudoscience based weapons of the vampire killing variety. Say this 'mystical blade was crafted from a metal compound iron/steel/silver/whatever alloy forged under extreme pressure and heat near the earth's pure iron core and exuded from the bowels of the earth through a deep fissure along the mid-atlantic ridge at the southern tip of modern Iceland.'

Hey, if they're into vampires, they'd probably go for that one too...
 
tinkerer said:
Well, would you need pure silver and iron, or are alloys OK too?

You can have pure iron (wrought or cast) in or on a blade, and silver wire embedded via inlay process, if that's you're goal. heck, you can make a blade from iron, just not that strong overall.

Maybe a good steel blade with a ridge on the top of wrought iron and a silver wire or two inlayed on the blade or in the iron. But silver is very active and would oxidize and need replacing periodically.

There's some food for thought.

Larry
Tinkerer
Click to expand...

That's a great start for me, thanks! Would there be a certain technique of maintaining the blade to reduce the oxidization of the silver? A certain way to clean it, maybe? And if not, any idea of how long it would be before you'd want to bring it back to the forger to replace it?
 
Hope that didn't sound mean... I really did mean it in good fun... I write as well, but dry stuff... no fun vampires and such.

Look a few threads back and there is actually a topic about incorporating silver. Don't know if that was you, but there were some cool things in that.

Just to clarify though, a forger is someone who counterfeits things... a bladesmith/swordsmith/blacksmith forges steel into things.

Cheers.
 
Iron is the major component of steel, so I'd call that covered


You can silver solder a strip of silver on the spine
or inlay it into the blade as the examples you see here

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...What-ways-can-a-knifemaker-incorporate-silver

inquisitor_coop1_500_homepage.JPG


The cross is silver inlay
 
Silver does not ordinarily oxidize away. We have many, many silver objects that are many hundreds of years old. Many of those objects were at one time everyday use items. A light coating of almost any wax would keep the silver shiny and oxidation free.
 
This is great stuff, thanks guys! And no problem, Lucy! :) I know I've got impossible things like vampires and werewolves, but the things that already exist, like the multi-faceted knife industry, I want to get accurate as much as possible. Not to mention, it's easier to figure out and research if it really exists! :P
 
Get your science right ! Silver normally doesn't oxidize , it forms a sulfide !The black stuff . There are cloths that you can wrap the silver in to prevent this. There is a special sterling silver alloy [your silverware and other 'silver items are normally sterling silver] that is highly resistant to forming sulphide.Argentium [?]
 
Karen - Feel free to email or PM and member you wish to discuss your book research, but Shop Talk is not the place for this. I will move it to the Community Center.
 
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