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[khearn]

"Is that a silk spike in your greaves, or are you just happy to see me?" - Mae McWest

[wierd]

"Is that a silk spike in your greaves, or are you just happy to see me?" - Mae McWest

Neither ma'am. It's a plump helmet roast.

[saurio]

The speed and length at which threads are derailed in this forum amazes me.

What is truly outraging is that platinum gauntlets don't contribute to power of punches.

What was the topic again?

[dukea42]

Personally I'm surprised at the lack of robocop references with the Hammerer wearing the platinum greaves.

[Loud Whispers]

What is truly outraging is that platinum gauntlets don't contribute to power of punches.

Gauntlets do not contribute to the power of punches, they just protect your hands when you do, and make it more likely your target will cave in (as opposed to your hand).

[saurio]

Gauntlets do not contribute to the power of punches, they just protect your hands when you do, and make it more likely your target will cave in (as opposed to your hand).

I just wanted heavier gauntlets to result in more powerful punches, but doesn't seem the case.

[coolio678]

The palace guard is an excellent place to assign all your stupid artifact clothing and armor.  You can get some excellent storytelling from these; in my last fortress before 2012, I had a female captain of the guard wearing an artifact silk dress and wielding an artifact cane wooden blowgun. She had one other guardsdwarf in the squad, nicknamed "gimp", who was wearing nothing but an artifact leather loincloth and a leather hood.

Lets just say beatings were probably being issued without any crimes being committed.

That made my day much better.

[Niyazov]

I recall an interesting story about spanish cannons being made with platinum ore.

Iirc, the resulting alloy could withstand far greater bore pressures without fatigue than normal iron/steel/brass cannon.

When it was discovered that they were alloyed with some 30% platinum, they were yanked from the mesoamerican fortress they were installed in, melted, ad reprocessed to recover the platinum.

This is only a story I heard though. I habe no reliable sources.

It's a myth; it was some sort of scam from the '80s similar to the kind of scam where you get sold "damaged money" that just needs to get exposed to a special chemical to turn into real money. The idea was that the cannons were found in a spanish shipwreck and that some sort of low-energy nuclear transmutation had converted radioactive elements in the cannon into platinum or something, and that you could buy bits of this metal and separate out the platinum at home for fun and profit. It was all bunk of course. Platinum is not a radioactive decay product and I believe that it can only be formed by stellar nucleosynthesis.

As for intentionally making cannons out of platinum alloys: the mesoamericans did have some native platinum artifacts but they were tiny and they were all made using cold hammering since platinum has an extremely high melting point. 16th and 17th spanish steel making techniques couldn't have been used to create any kind of usable platinum alloy.

The mining techniques that the Spanish used in the new world for silver, gold and copper were heavily reliant on mercury extraction; mercury forms amalgams with just about every metal and can majorly increase yields from precious metal ores. Mercury will not amalgamate with platinum or mercury, so if the cannons were brass or bronze they can't have contained platinum since there wouldn't have been any in the copper used to make them. Interestingly, mercury will not amalgamate with platinum or iron.

The Spanish sucked at making cannons in general but they were especially bad at making steel cannons. I'm not aware of any substantial iron mining or any iron/steel cannon foundries in New Spain. Platinum is also 3 times denser than iron, so an iron or steel cannon that was 30% platinum would be about twice as heavy as a regular cannon of the same size-, not something that you would want to put on a ship.

[wierd]

These weren't on a ship, iirc.  It was only one fort from the story I heard as well.

The cannons were installed as a fortress battery, so the added weight wasn't a concern.

As for nonsense about transmuting iron cannon into platinum? That's news to me. Pure bullshit there. The radiative flux required would be more than is found in the heart of our sun.

The story I heard was that the fortress had ordered cannon, but were unable to get a shipment. They were having problems in pirates and natives not liking them, so they pooled local talents to produce cannon. They used native mineral ores, and in the smelting process, used "clay" that was really a platinum ore as the smelting crucibles. The iron has a lower melting point than platinum, but the iron also has 3 oxidative states, while platinum has far fewer. The result was that the molten iron acted as a flux and chemically extracted platinum into the melt.

[Girlinhat]

Sounds like sci-fi channel metallurgy.  "We just reverse the polarity and now IRON is a FLUX STONE!"

[KodKod]

Sounds like sci-fi channel metallurgy.  "We just reverse the polarity and now IRON is a FLUX STONE!"

Pff. Sci-Fi channel's got nothing. The History Channel is where all the real science be at. 

"We now know that the platinum alloys couldn’t possibly have been made by the Spanish OR the Mesoamericans. So where could these cannons have come from? Startling new evidence suggests that we won't find the answers by looking to our past, but to the stars."

[wierd]

In many metalurgical and ceramic reactions, IT IS.

For instance, pure silicon dioxide has a melting temp of over 5000F. Adding iron oxide will reduce the melting point by over 2000F!

Essentially, the molten iron destroyed the silicon substrates of the "clay", creating lots of nasty slag. As the clay melted and was chemically altered by the iron, free platinum was released slowly as the crucible broke down.

[Loud Whispers]

Sounds like sci-fi channel metallurgy.  "We just reverse the polarity and now IRON is a FLUX STONE!"

Pff. Sci-Fi channel's got nothing. The History Channel is where all the real science be at. 

"We now know that the platinum alloys couldn’t possibly have been made by the Spanish OR the Mesoamericans. So where could these cannons have come from? Startling new evidence suggests that we won't find the answers by looking to our past, but to the stars."

"We found no evidence suggesting it wasn't aliens."

[wierd]

Don't get me started on their "ancient aliens!! AILENS!!!" Hogwash.

This was just an idle story I heard. I'm not going to defend it too hard.

Just pointing out that iron is "teh.ENEMY!" In ceramics.  It can turn what would normally be high temp refractory, into nasty amorphous black goop in your smelter.

[KodKod]

"We found no evidence suggesting it wasn't aliens."

Careful, Mister Whispers. I think that the government is onto you.

They've already started involving google in their media-blackout operation:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)