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[Double A]

I love how we went from gold weapons to the hardness of gold to the conductivity of gold.

[Lord Shonus]

Silver is no harder than gold, and is just as unsuitable as a weapon.

Silver actually is harder than gold, but not by enough that it would be effective, really.

Copper is a better conductor than gold, and infinitely cheaper. The reason, really, is that gold electronics are a Veblen good. They're luxury items and owning them is perceived as being a status symbol, despite their inferior performance to cheaper alternatives.

It's because gold doesn't oxidize. It's inert. Copper oxidizes, and this will (in all real situations) limit its effectiveness. There's a reason gold is used for connectors, where the metal is exposed more to air.

Of course, tin is used for connectors instead of copper anyway (when gold isn't). At any rate, this doesn't mean that gold is necessary; it can help in some cases, but often just doesn't matter enough to justify the extra cost. But yeah, there is a reason aside from luxury.

Silver doesn't oxidize either (silver tarnish is a sulfide), is the best thermal and electric conductor in the periodic table, and the tarnish of copper only affects its surface conductivity and only when exposed to air. It wouldn't affect its bulk conductivity, and if the wires were shielded it wouldn't matter at all.

Any surface coating, be it an oxidation or a sulfide, will impair conductivity between connectors, which is why cartridge based game consoles required constant cleaning. Of the metals that don't react, gold has extremely good conductivity, so it's a preferred metal for exposed connectors, like in a USB cable. Making the entire cable out of gold is completely pointless, but connectors have an extremely good reason to use it.

[Double A]

Wouldn't it be cheaper to coat it in a copper/gold alloy, so it doesn't oxidize and is still somewhat inexpensive?

[G-Flex]

Silver is no harder than gold, and is just as unsuitable as a weapon.

Silver actually is harder than gold, but not by enough that it would be effective, really.

Copper is a better conductor than gold, and infinitely cheaper. The reason, really, is that gold electronics are a Veblen good. They're luxury items and owning them is perceived as being a status symbol, despite their inferior performance to cheaper alternatives.

It's because gold doesn't oxidize. It's inert. Copper oxidizes, and this will (in all real situations) limit its effectiveness. There's a reason gold is used for connectors, where the metal is exposed more to air.

Of course, tin is used for connectors instead of copper anyway (when gold isn't). At any rate, this doesn't mean that gold is necessary; it can help in some cases, but often just doesn't matter enough to justify the extra cost. But yeah, there is a reason aside from luxury.

Silver doesn't oxidize either (silver tarnish is a sulfide), is the best thermal and electric conductor in the periodic table, and the tarnish of copper only affects its surface conductivity and only when exposed to air. It wouldn't affect its bulk conductivity, and if the wires were shielded it wouldn't matter at all.

Any surface coating, be it an oxidation or a sulfide, will impair conductivity between connectors, which is why cartridge based game consoles required constant cleaning. Of the metals that don't react, gold has extremely good conductivity, so it's a preferred metal for exposed connectors, like in a USB cable. Making the entire cable out of gold is completely pointless, but connectors have an extremely good reason to use it.

Silver sulfide is still the product of a redox reaction; the silver itself is oxidized. "Oxidation" does not mean "reaction with oxygen", nor does it necessitate it.

Otherwise, you're perfectly right.

Wouldn't it be cheaper to coat it in a copper/gold alloy, so it doesn't oxidize and is still somewhat inexpensive?

I'm not sure what the properties of that alloy (which would be similar to, say, gold you find in jewelry) would be, but you can't always correctly guess the properties of an alloy just by gauging the properties of the components.

Of course, if I could actually find statistics for 14/18k gold, I'd be able to say something more concrete.

[Solace]

Actually gold/other dense metals would make a really good warhammer regardless of how soft or brittle they where, just plate them in steel or whatever so they don't take surface damage.

[culwin]

Silver weapons should give you an advantage against undead.  Or maybe they already do?  I dunno.

[Lord Shonus]

Actually gold/other dense metals would make a really good warhammer regardless of how soft or brittle they where, just plate them in steel or whatever so they don't take surface damage.

It's much more complicated than that.

[LordSlowpoke]

Actually gold/other dense metals would make a really good warhammer regardless of how soft or brittle they where, just plate them in steel or whatever so they don't take surface damage.

It's much more complicated than that.

...Actually, no. A steel warhammer filled with lead would be more powerful than a regular steel warhammer, simply due to the density of the lead. Of course, that's implying the warhammer dosen't break in some sort of ways.

[Lord Shonus]

Not necessarily true. If you replaced enough material for the weight difference to be significant, you might not have thick enough steel for structural integrity. If the bond between the metals is not solid enough, you'll lose energy. There's a lot of variables.

[LordSlowpoke]

I'm basically implying that there's a hollow space directly in the middle of the warhammer's head, in which a capsule of lead is placed. Sure, I agree that it has to be done carefully to retain the properties of a fully steel warhammer, but I also say that there is no need for a "bond" of sorts - the capsule is just inserted and you go on with crafting the rest. Or make a place where the capsule is supposed to be and pour molten lead there, I'm not skilled in blacksmithing and thusly cannot speak like an expert here.

[Lord Shonus]

The problem is that, if you simply pour lead in, there's a high chance of cooling leaving gaps between the lead and the steel (the hot lead will heat up the steel as well, and they cool at different rates. Unlike a mold, the cavity in the hammer will not be large enough to dissipate the heat away easily). Those gaps, properly known as "voids" will lead to energy dissipation when you strike a target, and possibly lead to rapid deformation of the hammerhead. 

If you use a seperately cast lead core, you have to design some way of getting it into the hammerhead. It's likely to loosed in combat, and could even fly out.

[Psieye]

So to summarise, if you had a MAGICALLY crafted FANTASY-HUGESIZE warhammer where the outside was thick steel and the inside was lead (or why not depleted uranium) and the boundary between the outside and inside was MAGICALLY welded to have no defect and equal strength to regular intra-alloy bonds of steel... IF you had such a weapon then it would be superior to a Pure Steel (of same alloy properties as before) warhammer of the exact same size. IF you had the strength to wield it.

The devil has always been in the details.

[G-Flex]

Wouldn't that weapon still have poor properties, seeing as how it has a really soft, inelastic interior? Sounds fragile to me.

[Werdna]

Wouldn't that weapon still have poor properties, seeing as how it has a really soft, inelastic interior? Sounds fragile to me.

Not to mention lead is a poor conductor.  But at least it is resistant to corrosion.  So there's that.

[Solace]

Well warhammers don't have, you know, edges or whatnot. It's not a fragile design. It's a hunk of metal you smash things with. Heck, I've heard of lead hammers, and that's pretty soft. It doesn't have to stand up to hitting something a thousand times, just as many times as something will tend to be hit during combat. Then you take your slightly odd-shaped hunk of metal and hammer it back into a more aesthetically-pleasing hunk of metal.