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[Musashi]

Nope. Lead sucks. Only good for bins containing valuables on abandon/reclaim.

As well as mugs, barrels and toys for trading.

[Savolainen5]

Use the copper to make zillions of cage traps, smelt or sell the iron goblinite, equip with steel,
{snip snip snip, editing scissors}
lose anyway.

--Scumbag DwarfFortress

[Vorthon]

Copper is good for bronze, which is as good or better than iron for armor and weapons. This is assuming you can find cassiterite for tin, which I never have in .31.19.

On top of Cassiterite, if you find any Bismuthinite, you can also go one more by making Bismuth Bronze, which is worth more than Bronze but has about the same properties when made into weapons and armor. My favorite metal for starting builds since it allows for more bars per smelting (4 bars), but uses slightly more fuel to do so.

And it's bright yellow. Like a lemon.

Posting to watch.

[Lamphare]

silver could be nice for blunt weapon
otherwise, just harvest goblinite
and hematite is iron

or just train up an all crossbow force, with silver crossbows and any metal bolts you can get.

[Dynastia]

Does anyone here know any good uses for Lead?

Build a tower 10 Z-Levels high, construct a 5x5x5 wall out of lead bars, attached to a support. Remove all the temporary scaffolding and hook the support up to a lever.

Oh, and build your noble's living area directly underneath it. Out of glass.

[Vorthon]

Does anyone here know any good uses for Lead?

Build a tower 10 Z-Levels high, construct a 5x5x5 wall out of lead bars, attached to a support. Remove all the temporary scaffolding and hook the support up to a lever.

Oh, and build your noble's living area directly underneath it. Out of glass.

That, but put the Noble's living area on top.

[Girlinhat]

And another noble's room at the bottom.

[Vorthon]

And another noble's room at the bottom.

And one halfway to the top.

[ral]

I haven't had bad luck with copper, especially since it seems like goblins often have copper weapons. Then again I trained my military in a danger room and they're all legendary armor users, or close to it.

Should silver be a decent metal to make battle axes out of if you have no iron? Seems like silver should be harder than copper for better sharpness, and the weight should make it better for smacking things with the flat of the blade.

I've started requesting all metal bars of metals I don't have ore for on the map at max priority, and requesting metal trap components, weapons, and armor at max priority. This is really expensive, but if you can spam out enough crafts and stuff and collect enough leather loincloths and such from the goblins it's quite possible to buy all of the stuff and melt it down. You end up with a mix of iron, steel, pig iron, bronze, etc but all of that is better than copper (especially since you can make the iron and pig iron into steel if you have any flux).

[bucket]

Since the latest update, I've gotten into the habit of embarking with a handful of tetrahedrite. It's one of the cheapest ores and smelts into copper for extra picks and woodcutting axes. There's also a small chance smelting will produce silver, which is great for hammers and armor.

[Seriyu]

Copper actually has a higher solid density then iron (I think) and as such should make better blunt weapons. I haven't noticed any major difference, but they should be passable as blunt weapons at least.

[Lagslayer]

If you have to resort to silver for weapons, either use blunt weapons or crossbows. It is worse at cutting than copper, though copper also sucks. Any metal besides cotton candy makes good blunt weapons and bolts, but silver penetrates armor slightly better and steel has a slightly higher critical wound rate.

[bucket]

According to the Wiki, copper is one of the weakest metals - but it can be refined into bronze which is better than iron.

[Jordan~]

Bronze is better than iron? How'd that happen? Someone had better tell history.

[Flaede]

Bronze is better than iron? How'd that happen? Someone had better tell history.

They already have.
The switch to iron from bronze was because tin became scarce.
Steel got cheap enough by the time this leveled out that bronze was outmoded.