Pewter spikes

[killersquirrel59]

Pewter, for those who have never done any work with miniatures, is an INCREDIBLY soft metal. You can bend it and break it with your fingertips. It's incredibly malleable, which is why it works so well for making miniatures. 

 

With that in mind, how the hell are they making spikes of it? Pewter would never hold a functional point. You could work it into a vaguely sharp tip, but it would bend or collapse as soon as you tried to stab someone with it.

[A Joe in the Bush]

Do you know the Composition of the Pewter used to create Minifigs? Because Pewter can refer to a lot of different alloys. In Mistborn, Pewter is 91% tin and 9% lead. It could be that this alloy is harder than the composition of the Minifigs.

[killersquirrel59]

Ok, a little bit of research reveals an actually far bigger problem. 9% Copper is actually impossible. There is no known type of pewter that has that percentage. The tin simply won't absorb that much copper.

 

https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Pewter.html

 

The tin percentage is correct, and typical English Pewter (technical term, not a regional term) was 88-93% tin, as much copper as it could take, approximately 1-1.5%, and the remainder consisting of antimony.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_pewter

[A Joe in the Bush]

The Pewter Spikes are Tin and Lead, not Tin and Copper.

 

And from the First Link, we see this:

. . . The last type of pewter, known as "lay" or "ley" metal, was used for items that were not in contact with food or drink. It consisted of tin with 15% lead. These three alloys were used, with little variation, until the 20th century.

 

Modern pewters must contain at least 90% tin and be alloyed with copper, antimony, or bismuth to be considered a pewter. Lead is commonly not now permitted to be an alloying element.Older pewters with higher lead content are heavier, tarnish faster, and oxidation gives them a darker silver-grey color.^[

 

So in Mistborn they simply use an Older version of Pewter. I don't know enough Metallurgy to comment on the strength of the alloys, but the percentages are correct.

Edited August 28, 2014 by The Only Joe

[killersquirrel59]

But that is exactly the problem. The copper is a hardening agent. Without the copper, it is far too malleable to hold a point. Adding the copper is what allowed it to be used to make flatware.

[Voidus]

I do believe that certain alloys of purely tin/lead were still used, they'd hold enough of a point to pierce the skin if wielded by a determined inquisitor.

[Moogle]

And even if they bend, well, that's what the mallets are for. They'll get the spikes through the person eventually...

[killersquirrel59]

We have a catch 22 here though. If they're blunt enough that they won't deform when used, then they aren't going to be precise enough (it's noted again and again how precise hemalurgy is, how exactly the right spot has to be spiked).

 

And the alloys that did not contain a hardening agent weren't hard enough. That's why the copper or the antimony was added. 

[kinxer]

Does a hemalurgic spike have to be made entirely out of that one metal? If not, could you cast a tin or pewter spike around a steel core to give it more rigidity? If the spike is rigid enough and has some semblance of a point, it should be able to pierce someone with the force an Inquisitor can muster.

[killersquirrel59]

Does a hemalurgic spike have to be made entirely out of that one metal? If not, could you cast a tin or pewter spike around a steel core to give it more rigidity? If the spike is rigid enough and has some semblance of a point, it should be able to pierce someone with the force an Inquisitor can muster.

Hmmm. Good question. That could be a solution as long as just a bit of the pewter coating was left on the outside, since it has to touch the blood.

There is actually no real guarantee that hemalurgy requires the same metallurgic precision as Allomancy does. Note that it is extremely unlikely that sword that pierced Spook would have the exact percentage of carbon required for hemalurgy. Such precision is difficult enough to achieve when the creator is aware that it is important he is precise, let alone by whatever random steelsmith made the batch for that sword. It clearly wasn't created with intentional allomantic precision, since such metal would almost certainly be more expensive and would not be used for a base purpose like creating a sword. So perhaps the requirements for hemalurgy are less precise (or even just have different composition requirements) than those for Allomancy.

[Voidus]

A degree of difference wouldn't do too much, just weaken the charge, we know that impurities in Allomantic metals still work, they just give headaches and things like that, I'd be pretty confident that the alloys are all the same across the 3 metallic arts.

[happyman]

I find it extremely unlikely that the Hemalurgic metals are at all different from the other two arts.  That seems like an unlikely hole in a set of very nice, very compatible magic systems.