Alloy Compounding

[Showman he/him]

So, Miles Dagouter was a compounder and was able to access his healing ability tenfold. Would that be possible for someone like Wax, whose allomantic power is an alloy of his feruchemical power? If Wax stored weight in iron and made it into steel, could he access that weight and multiply it?

[RShara she/her]

Sadly, it would not work that way.

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Neagor

What would happen if a Feruchemist fills, for example, a tin metalmind then mixes it to make a pewter metalmind? Does the stored attribute change? Is the Investiture gone when you melt the metal? What if he just makes it into a tin metalmind again?

Brandon Sanderson

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.

eSPiaLx

Similarly, if you were to soulcast a metal would it have similar effects of corrupting the investiture and making it inaccessible? Like if you turned a steel metalmind into pewter.

Brandon Sanderson

I've stayed away from soulcasting and forging in these types of discussions, as I feel my answers will dig too deeply and prompt more questions that, eventually, will lead to lots of RAFO type questions. I don't really want to go there--but I will say this. Changing invested objects with other magics is hard, and often requires such a force of investiture yourself, that it becomes very power-inefficient. Just like we can technically turn lead into gold right now--by spending way more money than the gold is worth.

BipedSnowman

So you could, for example, use electrolysis to dissolve a metalmind in water, then reverse the reaction later to get the investiture?

OR, better question, if you store investiture in one allotrope of iron, can your retrieve it off you change to a different allotrope?

Brandon Sanderson

I see no reason why these wouldn't work.

dce42

So would forging with the blood of a radiant(kaladin, dalinar,etc) work on a shard blade from a fallen radiant to say change who they had bonded, or how the bond was broken (to say death instead of giving up on the oath)?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

source  

 

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

That's a fascinating WoB, thank you for posting that.

However, I want to point out that in your WoB Sanderson does not explicitly refute the OP's theory. He doesn't say anything about what would happen if you burned the metalmind, just that you couldn't feruchemically tap it anymore.

He actually strongly suggests that there are some things you could do in this vein that would work:

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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.

So I am going to predict that burning steel that used to be an ironmind would do something interesting.

But not necessarily what you would expect it to do.

[Calderis he/him]

4 minutes ago, Drake Marshall said:

So I am going to predict that burning steel that used to be an ironmind would do something interesting.

But not necessarily what you would expect it to do.

Agreed. 

[MountainKing]

What I want know of a A pewter F tin Twinborn stored some hearing and them made some pewter and burned pewter would he get back compounded hearing.

[Calderis he/him]

1 hour ago, MountainKing said:

What I want know of a A pewter F tin Twinborn stored some hearing and them made some pewter and burned pewter would he get back compounded hearing.

I think he'd get back compounded something but I have no clue as to what. 

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

Something should happen since, when the metalmind was burned, the feruchemic charge would absolutely be released and a release of Investiture ought to do something. That said, when Vin burned Sazed's metalmind, the only benefit she received was a temporary ability to "feel" the Investiture in said metalmind. That's not nothing, and it has deeper implications, but it's not yet been shown to go anywhere valuable.

Note, creating a sample of steel that can't effectively be used as a metalmind could be useful in and of itself. If it even partially resists attempts to store/tap feruchemically it should also resist steel pushing and iron pulling to a degree.

[Scion of the Mists]

14 hours ago, hwiles said:

Note, creating a sample of steel that can't effectively be used as a metalmind could be useful in and of itself. If it even partially resists attempts to store/tap feruchemically it should also resist steel pushing and iron pulling to a degree.

I don't see why this would be the case.  There are plenty of metals that cannot be used to power Allomancy/Feruchemy, but they're all susceptible to pushing/pulling.  AFAIK, Aluminum is the only "immune" metal.  

[Calderis he/him]

30 minutes ago, Scion of the Mists said:

I don't see why this would be the case.  There are plenty of metals that cannot be used to power Allomancy/Feruchemy, but they're all susceptible to pushing/pulling.  AFAIK, Aluminum is the only "immune" metal.  

He didn't say immune, he said resistant. Filled metalminds resist pushing, and the more full the more resistant (see The Bands). 

If wax were to store in Iron, then forge that iron into steel that metal would be harder to push due to investiture interference. 

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

@Calderis

For fun, I would actually take the speculation a little further. I think if Wax stored weight in a piece of iron then reforged it into steel, the resultant hunk of metal might actually be more resistant to steel pushing than it was as an ironmind. My rationale is that the Investiture being in a rigid and locked shape within the lattice of iron/carbon atoms would do a better job of keeping external Investiture from being "pushed" in via allomany (or any magic system for that matter) than if the feruchemic charge were in it's normal and accessible state.

[Calderis he/him]

I knew this had come up recently. It's not in Arcanum yet, but from the BookCon event thread. 

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/68549-2018-06-02-bookcon-new-york-city/?do=findComment&comment=710482

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Dissentinel (paraphrased)

Would it be possibly to have a bunch of iron Ferrings store a bunch of weight into some iron, turn that iron into steel, and then use that steel to make guns as a cheaper alternative to aluminum?

Brandon (paraphrased)

Yeah but the guns wouldn't be immune--

Ravi (paraphrased)

But they would be resistant, that little bit of extra time could be enough to make a difference.

Brandon (paraphrased)

Yeah.

Dissentinel (paraphrased)

And the guns would be harder to see with iron/steelsight, correct?

Brandon (paraphrased)

Yes, they would be. Do keep in mind however that we get a very skewed perception of the world and how important stuff like this is because the main characters of the books are Allomancers. This just isn't something that is important to the average person on the street. But this does relate to some things later on in the series.

 

[Scion of the Mists]

1 hour ago, Calderis said:

He didn't say immune, he said resistant. Filled metalminds resist pushing, and the more full the more resistant (see The Bands). 

If wax were to store in Iron, then forge that iron into steel that metal would be harder to push due to investiture interference. 

Oh, I understand now.  I wasn't sure what "a sample of steel that can't effectively be used as a metalmind" meant; I assumed hwiles was referring to an off-nominal alloy (is there a proper term for this?).  

[Darth Woodrack he/him]

4 hours ago, Scion of the Mists said:

I don't see why this would be the case.  There are plenty of metals that cannot be used to power Allomancy/Feruchemy, but they're all susceptible to pushing/pulling.  AFAIK, Aluminum is the only "immune" metal.  

What about silver. Both Vin and Elend  couldn't push on it and they were two of the most powerful mistborn for hundreds of years. In fact it was stated by Vin that silver was completely immune to allomantic manipulation, and don't you think that the lord ruler would of mentioned that silver was just very resistant on one of his carved metal messages?

3 hours ago, hwiles said:

@Calderis

For fun, I would actually take the speculation a little further. I think if Wax stored weight in a piece of iron then reforged it into steel, the resultant hunk of metal might actually be more resistant to steel pushing than it was as an ironmind. My rationale is that the Investiture being in a rigid and locked shape within the lattice of iron/carbon atoms would do a better job of keeping external Investiture from being "pushed" in via allomany (or any magic system for that matter) than if the feruchemic charge were in it's normal and accessible state.

I do not believe that to be the case. Think of he resistant and immune metals as antidotes. If the antidote(resistant and immune metals) is pure than it cures the user from the poison or at least helps them fight it, but if you dilute it the strength of the antidote is slowly decreased. It would still help you but it would get increasingly useless. I believe that is the case if you make pure metal into a alloy.

[Scion of the Mists]

15 minutes ago, DarthWoodrack said:

What about silver. Both Vin and Elend  couldn't push on it and they were two of the most powerful mistborn for hundreds of years. In fact it was stated by Vin that silver was completely immune to allomantic manipulation, and don't you think that the lord ruler would of mentioned that silver was just very resistant on one of his carved metal messages?

Where does it say that silver is unpushable?  Are you sure you're not thinking of aluminum?  

 

18 minutes ago, DarthWoodrack said:

I do not believe that to be the case. Think of he resistant and immune metals as antidotes. If the antidote(resistant and immune metals) is pure than it cures the user from the poison or at least helps them fight it, but if you dilute it the strength of the antidote is slowly decreased. It would still help you but it would get increasingly useless. I believe that is the case if you make pure metal into a alloy.

I'm not sure I followed that.  Are you saying that you think steel created from an iron metalmind would be less resistant because its Investiture/mass ratio is lowered?  That seems reasonable to me.  

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

18 minutes ago, DarthWoodrack said:

What about silver. Both Vin and Elend  couldn't push on it and they were two of the most powerful mistborn for hundreds of years. In fact it was stated by Vin that silver was completely immune to allomantic manipulation, and don't you think that the lord ruler would of mentioned that silver was just very resistant on one of his carved metal messages?

I do not believe that to be the case. Think of he resistant and immune metals as antidotes. If the antidote(resistant and immune metals) is pure than it cures the user from the poison or at least helps them fight it, but if you dilute it the strength of the antidote is slowly decreased. It would still help you but it would get increasingly useless. I believe that is the case if you make pure metal into a alloy.

I'm afraid I don't understand your metaphor...in any case, silver can be pushed on; i believe you are referencing the scene where Vin is in jail and tries to swallow a screw or something only to find out she can't burn it because it is made of silver. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I don't think they say silver can't be pushed on, just that it can't be burned by itself.

[Calderis he/him]

Yeah. Silver is allomantically inert, as in it does nothing. If it were immune like aluminium, Hazekillers wouldn't have bothered with wood, silver was everywhere. 

[Darth Woodrack he/him]

2 hours ago, hwiles said:

In any case, silver can be pushed on; i believe you are referencing the scene where Vin is in jail and tries to swallow a screw or something only to find out she can't burn it because it is made of silver. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I don't think they say silver can't be pushed on, just that it can't be burned by itself.

Demoux said, essentially, can't remember the exact phrasing, 'Silver, quite an annoying metal for your kind, correct?' to Vin and she  thought that silver was completely alamanticaly inactive.

2 hours ago, Scion of the Mists said:

I'm not sure I followed that.  Are you saying that you think steel created from an iron metalmind would be less resistant because its Investiture/mass ratio is lowered?  That seems reasonable to me.  

Yes.

[MountainKing]

It was actually Yomen who said that line. Here's the full quote.

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“They’re made of silver,” Yomen said. “A particularly frustrating metal for Mistborn, or so I am told.” Silver. Useless, unburnable silver. Like lead, it was one of the metals that provided no Allomantic powers at all. “An unpopular metal indeed . . .” Yomen said, nodding to the side. A servant approached Vin, bearing something on a small platter. Her mother’s earring. It was a dull thing, Allomantically, made of bronze with some silver plating. Much of the silver had worn off years ago, and the brownish bronze showed through, making the earring look to be the cheap bauble it was. “Which is why,” Yomen continued, “I am so curious as to why you would bother with an ornament such as this. I have had it tested. Silver on the outside, bronze on the inside. Why those metals? One useless to Allomancers, the other granting what is considered the weakest of Allomantic powers. Would not an earring of steel or of pewter make more sense?”

 

[Darth Woodrack he/him]

I forgot his name, so I looked up Seer and Demoux came up.