Godmetals in Shardblades

[Yumiya]

If the shardblades are spren manifesting as solid metal investiture, why do they look and act all alike?

Some spren seem to be purely of Honor and others purely of Cultivation and others a mixture of the two. Wouldn't a pure Honor-godmetal blade show some sign of being different than a pure Cultivation-godmetal blade and both of those different than an alloy? It feels like we are missing something here.

[NameIess]

It seems that putting enough Investiture into something will produce similar effects. Look at Nightblood and Azure's blade, both made from a completely different Shard from Honor, yet both sharing traditional Shardblade characteristics such as indestructibility and magically enhanced cutting, as well as appearance in the case of Azure's Blade.

[Rg2045]

9 minutes ago, Nameless said:

It seems that putting enough Investiture into something will produce similar effects. Look at Nightblood and Azure's blade, both made from a completely different Shard from Honor, yet both sharing traditional Shardblade characteristics such as indestructibility and magically enhanced cutting, as well as appearance in the case of Azure's Blade.

This along with intent seems to be key for what “highly invested” objects do

[Yumiya]

So I gather what you are saying is that even though each order's blades are technically a different proportion of god-metal, they all act and look the same?

I do think that Nightblood and Azure's blade are very distinctly different, in that they were normal metal infused with investiture instead of being the manifestation of pure investiture. That would make direct comparisons suspect. In particular, Nightblood's consumption of investiture is not shared by shardblades. Nor do non-living shardblades talk to non Radiants (yes, yes, Mara does talk but that is not normal), where as Nightblood was (as far as we know) never a sentient being before his creation as a sword. 

[SpinningSky he/him]

I believe the best way to test this out would bet to get some knights radiant to ingest a bit of their shardblade

A short time back I wondering about shardblades vs honorblades and someone brought up how, in WoB, Brandon explained that he sees honor blades -> shardblades -> nightblood as sort of evolutions of one another, so I see it this way:

Honorblades: connection to Honor, somehow tied to oathpact, not clearly tied to intent (we'll know more in SA5 probably)
Shardblades: Connection to spren, powers tied to oaths, thus directing the intent, more powerful than Honorblades
Nightblood: no particular connection(?), intent intrinsic in the blade, which makes Nightblood closer to a shard itself, or anti-shard I guess given what we saw.

Point being, I think that as Brandon presents them, we're just talking about highly invested metals with different levels of intent and connections and, to answer your question, the intent is tied to the type of Spren for shardblades, thus somewhat showing signs of the different "lights" they're made of.
I'm wondering now if a coppermind shaped like a knife and filled to capacity with investiture would also cut through things like the other invested blades, might make for some very cool feurochemical assassins.

God metals intended as the beads of Lerasium I think are just a different aspect of this and more tied to vessels themselves rather than the shard, given the names. Reading around I get a feel they might require a shard's willing action to be created, though of course that's a whole discussion with Preservation's plan in mistborn and Atium.
There was already a bit of retcon needed to make Atium work... I just think Brandon is keeping his options open on their mechanics for future development.