Thread: Boker with real silver to "improve the cutting capability"

This is a very complex subject. Every metal has certain characteristics and the finished product needs to match the job. You can have a strong metal that takes certain stresses very well but will easily fail other types of stresses. Either way the metal can be strong but in different ways. I would think adding copper to aluminum would give it the ability to accept stresses where flexibility is needed. Aluminum though strong is brittle and doesn't take stress well and is so alloyed for the job. I realize some alloys give some substances totally different characteristics but is that the rule or more the exception. I don't know.

Maybe our resident expert here Mike Blue will chime in with an opinion.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Maybe our resident expert here Mike Blue will chime in with an opinion.

this is what I am hoping!

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

This is a very complex subject. ... I realize some alloys give some substances totally different characteristics but is that the rule or more the exception. I don't know.

Maybe our resident expert here Mike Blue will chime in with an opinion.

I'm trying to figure out what happened to my circadian rhythm last night. I'm hardly an expert, perhaps more an aggressive learner though...

The short version: There really was an alloy called silver steel. An 1852 Handbook of Chemistry by Henry Watts describes an alloy called "carbide of silver and iron" where 500 parts of steel were fused with 1 part of silver. He cites Michael Faraday's work in 1820 with regard to his researches into making a steel that would not rust. It's interesting reading in that these fellows were pretty much the first to experiment with what I call the minor alloying elements. They really paved the way for modern metallurgy despite being handicapped by the lack of our modern methods.

I'll have to ask some of my smithing friends that I know obtain spectrographic analysis of their steels from the mills. I suppose that silver could be present in a 100K lb melt. I've seen papers with californium and other exotics present in very small amounts. It's likely to be more of an interesting contaminant likely left over from the last run of scrap steels that went into 50 tonnes of rebar.

Truly, the minor alloying elements are important for performance. But, a modern manufacturer would have no need to return to an ancient alloy when really superior steels are pretty much "off the shelf" today. Leave it to the market hype and the halls of history.

Still, I have a crucible furnace and irons and steels and silver....could be interesting...