Can Wax kinda Compound? (AoL spoilers)

[TheAscendedDude]

Compounding is having the same feruchemical and allomantic metal ability, charging a metalmind and burning it, thus releasing greater power, right? Well, I had a little thought about how Wax could Compound.

An allomancer gains the most power if the composition of the alloy is right (for example pewter is 91% tin and 9% lead) , if he or she burns a metal with the percentages wrong, the released power is less and they might even get sick or die. A feruchemist can fill a metalmind more if it is closer to allomantic purity.

Wax can fill iron metalminds and burn steel. Steel is mostly iron with some carbon, in our world.

I couldn't find anything on the composition of allomantic steel, but let's say it is 98% iron and 2% carbon, while allomantic iron is 100% iron. What if Wax filled a metalmind that is 99% iron and 1% carbon and then tried to burn it? 

[Gizmosowner]

he probably wouldn't be able to burn it without getting sick at there isn't enough carbon to make it into allow antic steel or even just steel irl. I doubt he could actually burn it in the first place because it already has weight store in it which you can only store with iron so automatically it's not steel but iron. This is gibberish I know but hopefully you were able to understand

[king of nowhere]

interesting idea. since iron and steel have very similar compositions, maybe some partial compounding would be possible. We'd have to ask brandon, but my money is on "yes, but with great difficulty"

either that, or the requisites for allomantic purity are much more stringent than we assume

[Gizmosowner]

53 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

interesting idea. since iron and steel have very similar compositions, maybe some partial compounding would be possible. We'd have to ask brandon, but my money is on "yes, but with great difficulty"

either that, or the requisites for allomantic purity are much more stringent than we assume

The way I think it is is that if he can store weight in something thing it automatically makes it so he can't burn it since it becomes iron and he is a coin shot and if he can burn something it automatically is steel so he can't store weight in it

[Oversleep]

This is a WoB about melting down metalminds which is kinda relevant:

Quote

If you make it impure, you'll keep the investiture, but won't be able to get it out. If you make it back into the same thing, you'll be fine, and can access it normally. If you try to fill it, after changing the composition to make another viable metal, it will act a little like a computer hard drive with corrupted sectors. Some of it will work for the new investiture, but you won't be able to fill it nearly as full. (Depending on how full it was before you melted down.)

This holds for basic uses of the metallurgic arts. Once you start playing with some of the more advanced parts of the magic, you can achieve different results, which are currently RAFO.

source

Now, what if Wax filled an ironmind, melted it, added carbon and then tried to burn such metal...? How would "corrupted sectors" react when subjected to strong flow of Investiture when burned Allomantically?

Edited January 28, 2017 by Oversleep

[king of nowhere]

12 hours ago, Gizmosowner said:

The way I think it is is that if he can store weight in something thing it automatically makes it so he can't burn it since it becomes iron and he is a coin shot and if he can burn something it automatically is steel so he can't store weight in it

yeah, it is possible that if you store wheight into a piece of impure iron, that metalmind will become iron as far as the cognitive realm is concerned, and therefore won't be able to be burned as steel. or it may be that it would require an extra effort to convince youself that it is actually steel. It is even possible that if you take iron with some carbon, whether you can burn it as iron or steel depends on how the piece of metal sees itself. On the other hand...

Quote

 

If you make it impure, you'll keep the investiture, but won't be able to get it out. If you make it back into the same thing, you'll be fine, and can access it normally. If you try to fill it, after changing the composition to make another viable metal, it will act a little like a computer hard drive with corrupted sectors. Some of it will work for the new investiture, but you won't be able to fill it nearly as full. (Depending on how full it was before you melted down.)

This holds for basic uses of the metallurgic arts. Once you start playing with some of the more advanced parts of the magic, you can achieve different results, which are currently RAFO.

 

The boldened part make me think it is possible. Some of it will work for the new investiture, though you won't get as much as you could have otherwise. And the underlined part hints that there are uses that we haven't seen yet. maybe this kind of trick is possible not only for steel and iron, but also for other alloys.

[Spoolofwhool]

Another point. Mistings have more safeguards in place than mistborns when it comes to burning alloys. They won't get sick from burning poor composition alloys because they wouldn't be able to burn. Therefore, to make this work you would have to skew the composition of the metalmind very close to allomantic steel, which would probably "corrupt" most of the reserves.

[Oversleep]

2 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

They won't get sick from burning poor composition alloys because they wouldn't be able to burn.

I remember that @Yata theorised about it; but do we have a WoB confirming it?

[Yata]

@Oversleep you called and here I am:
Actually I received a WoB about in the Oathbringer Update 5 .

Quote

Q: Can a Misting hurt himself burning the wrong metals or a bad alloy ?

A: Not really, but they can swallow something they can't burn and end up with metal poisoning. Kind of similar.

Q: Thanks for the answers...So we may tell that a Misting's Allomancy is "safer" than a Mistborn's one. Maybe because it's the original/natural way how Allomancy manifest itself (without godlike interferences)
A: Sure, you could potentially say that. You can still make yourself sick, though, so I'm not sure. I guess it comes down to your definition of "hurt." But I'd call it safer, yes.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Therefore a Misting stops to feel a metal as burnable before the alloy become too bad and dangerous (for a Mistborn).

In the context of this topic, I think Wax will be unable to burn an alloy in the middle between Allomantic Iron and Steel (but here I may be wrong because the allomantic steel is quite near to the pure iron in composition).

I don't know how would the allomancy reacts to an Ironmind forged into allomantic compatible Steel, probably nothing will happen because while the metal's structure is wrong you will be no able to access it)

EDIT: Maybe I was too optimistic about the likehood between Iron and Steel, if the two metals' structures were so similar a Iron Misting would be able to burn (with quite nothing effect) allomantic avaliable Steel and a Coinshoot will be able to burn (with little or no effect) Allomantic Avaliable Iron....Much more a Mistborn will be probably be capable of burning all the range of Iron-Steel alloys to fuel his allomancy without too problems.
Unluckily I have no Metallurgic knowledge to say if a 1% is a lot or not

Edited January 28, 2017 by Yata

[cometaryorbit]

On 1/27/2017 at 5:57 PM, king of nowhere said:

either that, or the requisites for allomantic purity are much more stringent than we assume

They can't really be, since people in the Final Empire were able to reliably make allomantically-viable metals. Yes, the Final Empire was more advanced in metallurgy than their general tech level, but aluminum was still a huge problem for them, so their metallurgy was early 1800s at best. (Likely less - the ashmounts probably specially produced aluminum by TLR's design.)

[king of nowhere]

7 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

They can't really be, since people in the Final Empire were able to reliably make allomantically-viable metals. Yes, the Final Empire was more advanced in metallurgy than their general tech level, but aluminum was still a huge problem for them, so their metallurgy was early 1800s at best. (Likely less - the ashmounts probably specially produced aluminum by TLR's design.)

I tried to reason along similar lines to figure out how pure allomantic metals really need to be, but it's of little use because several metals can be obtained very pure even with ancient technology. Some 20 years ago they found the mummified body of a man from 5000 years ago in a glacier, and he had with him a copper axe that was 99.7% pure. If it was possible to obtain copper 99.7% pure in the stone age, then probably in the final empire they can get all allomantic metals at least 99.5%, and some of them over 99.9%. Unless we found as expert in preindustrial and early industrial metallurgy, those are the best estimates we can have for how pure those metals could be obtained. Note that while they place a higher boundary for how pure allomantic metals need to be in order to not get the allomancer sick, they place no lower boundary on how impure they can be.

[Spoolofwhool]

9 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

They can't really be, since people in the Final Empire were able to reliably make allomantically-viable metals. Yes, the Final Empire was more advanced in metallurgy than their general tech level, but aluminum was still a huge problem for them, so their metallurgy was early 1800s at best. (Likely less - the ashmounts probably specially produced aluminum by TLR's design.)

I don't see how their inability to obtain aluminum from the ashmounts is an indicator of their metallurgy level. Diving into a volcano isn't something they do for all metals.

[cometaryorbit]

6 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

I don't see how their inability to obtain aluminum from the ashmounts is an indicator of their metallurgy level. Diving into a volcano isn't something they do for all metals.

Because they wouldn't do the active volcano mining bit if there were an easier way to do it, so their metallurgy can't be that good.

8 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

I tried to reason along similar lines to figure out how pure allomantic metals really need to be, but it's of little use because several metals can be obtained very pure even with ancient technology. Some 20 years ago they found the mummified body of a man from 5000 years ago in a glacier, and he had with him a copper axe that was 99.7% pure. If it was possible to obtain copper 99.7% pure in the stone age, then probably in the final empire they can get all allomantic metals at least 99.5%, and some of them over 99.9%.

It doesn't work that way, since not all metals are equally easy to work with. Copper and gold are way easier since they are found naturally in metallic ("native") form, not just as ores. Otzi is "Copper Age", when working with native metals was known, but not smelting of ores.

[Spoolofwhool]

41 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

Because they wouldn't do the active volcano mining bit if there were an easier way to do it, so their metallurgy can't be that good.

Not really. In fact, looking at our history of aluminum, it was harder to obtain than gold and silver at the time periods of the same technological level as the Final Empire. The first inexpensive process for deriving aluminum required electricity, which did not exist in Era 1. Therefore, it seems to me that the block was a technological problem, not a metallurgical problem. Nothing indicates that their metallurgy wasn't that good. Also, you're assuming that there was an easier method of obtaining aluminum. It's possible that TLR made already existing deposit inaccessible, while at the same time making the Ashmounts have the only accessibly source. 

[cometaryorbit]

5 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Not really. In fact, looking at our history of aluminum, it was harder to obtain than gold and silver at the time periods of the same technological level as the Final Empire. The first inexpensive process for deriving aluminum required electricity, which did not exist in Era 1.

Yeah, but there's a big gap between "harder than gold and silver" and "as hard as delving into active volcanoes".

Before the Hall-Heroult process (the electric one) the process was expensive enough to make aluminum a precious metal, but I don't think the FE makes anything larger than silverware out of it, and that only for the richest nobles.

And it's not just aluminum. Even the Ministry didn't seem to know cadmium or chromium, both of which were discovered pre-1820 in our world. Yomen says there must be 16 allomantic metals, but even when Vin reveals duralumin he only knows what 14 of them are (and that's including atium/malatium). The plates mention electrum and malatium (and maybe duralumin?), and we know the Inquisitors had aluminum, but there's no evidence of cadmium/bendalloy/chromium/nicrosil.

[Spoolofwhool]

1 minute ago, cometaryorbit said:

Yeah, but there's a big gap between "harder than gold and silver" and "as hard as delving into active volcanoes".

Before the Hall-Heroult process (the electric one) the process was expensive enough to make aluminum a precious metal, but I don't think the FE makes anything larger than silverware out of it, and that only for the richest nobles.

And it's not just aluminum. Even the Ministry didn't seem to know cadmium or chromium, both of which were discovered pre-1820 in our world. Yomen says there must be 16 allomantic metals, but even when Vin reveals duralumin he only knows what 14 of them are (and that's including atium/malatium). The plates mention electrum and malatium (and maybe duralumin?), and we know the Inquisitors had aluminum, but there's no evidence of cadmium/bendalloy/chromium/nicrosil.

True, a big difference.  However, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that TLR did squash any easier methods of obtaining aluminum as that would've made it less rare, and therefore more likely to be discovered as allomantic. 

In any case, I still think the argument that they had to go into the Ashmounts for aluminum because their metallurgical skills aren't good isn't very strong. We've seen large cases of information manipulation and world manipulation so isn't stretch to say that aluminum had being and was being actively rendered more difficult to obtain. In addition, they were a fairly technologically advanced society before the Final Empire, nearly at steam power, and I don't see why TLR would remove metallurgical knowledge from the world when it's an important basis of his the society he created.

There's not mention of them because they were hard to obtain and TLR probably squashed any knowledge of them.

[Jofwu]

This would be an interesting thing to ask Brandon.

I would assume that Wax definitely can't compound. It dosen't matter that still is mostly iron. As far as Allomancy is concerned, a metal is within the acceptable ranges for a certain metal or it's not. Wax can't burn "mostly-iron steel" any more than a lurcher can burn "iron plus some stuff".

The interesting thing to me is about what happens with the stored investiture. As I understand it, if you melt down a metalmind, the molten (and reshaped) metal hangs on to the investiture. Split the metalmind and the investiture is split between the two. So what happens when you take that molten metalmind and alloy it? My gut says the investiture is going to be locked in there and inaccessible for a steel Allomancer AND an iron Ferring. The latter because he can't do magic with stuff besides iron and the former because the investiture is "tied" to the iron in the steel. Presumably if you could separate out the iron again, into something that could be called "iron", then it could be used for Feruchemy again.

But this raises some other questions:

Does the "iron-invested" steel act like an invested metal? Meaning, for example, it would be hard to push/pull on the steel because it is made from invested iron?

Could a Mistborn/Feruchemist store in one metal and then burn an alloy made of it?

Could a Mistborn do this with an unkeyed and/or unsealed metalmind?

[cometaryorbit]

On 1/29/2017 at 11:01 PM, Spoolofwhool said:

IIn addition, they were a fairly technologically advanced society before the Final Empire, nearly at steam power, and I don't see why TLR would remove metallurgical knowledge from the world when it's an important basis of his the society he created.

He wouldn't have had to remove any knowledge. They were early steam age, but pre-railroad, so something like 1780-1830 tech. Cadmium, chromium, and aluminum were all discovered in this time period in RL, so knowing one of them but not the other two fits perfectly.

[Spoolofwhool]

10 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

He wouldn't have had to remove any knowledge. They were early steam age, but pre-railroad, so something like 1780-1830 tech. Cadmium, chromium, and aluminum were all discovered in this time period in RL, so knowing one of them but not the other two fits perfectly.

He would've had to have removed the knowledge of aluminum so that it wasn't as easy to obtain, practically impossible.

[cometaryorbit]

On 1/31/2017 at 7:40 PM, Spoolofwhool said:

He would've had to have removed the knowledge of aluminum so that it wasn't as easy to obtain, practically impossible.

I don't know - there's a difference between being known to exist and being able to be made in usable quantities. Also the minerals available before wouldn't necessarily have been available when humanity was restricted to a small polar area.