What are half shards?

[Elsecaller_17.5 he/him]

My thoughts, based on this statement from the coppermind is that they’re just huge slabs of aluminum with the fabriel boxes on back being a red herring. What are your guys ideas?

Items can be Soulcast into aluminum.^[7] However, aluminum resists attempts to Soulcast it into other essences.^[24] Shardblades are unable to cut aluminum through magical means but would be able to cut it physically, like a conventional blade, if the aluminum were thin enough.^[25] Aluminum can block spanreed communication, and can prevent Soulcasting from being detected by others.^[26] Aluminum cannot be affected by the surges Adhesion or Gravitation.^[27] It likely can't be affected by any surge.

Edited July 2, 2019 by Truthwatcher_17.5

[CrazyRioter she/her]

IIRC the shields shatter like Plate does when they break, which is not normal behaviour from a metal.

An aluminum shield would bend and buckle when struck, it's not a very durable metal.

[Green Hoodie Mistborn he/him]

Pretty positive it's not Aluminum, sorry. The paragraph after we see our first one in Oathbringer T says: 

Quote

... There are legends of metal that can block a Shardblade. A metal that falls from teh sky. Silver, but somehow lighter. i should like to see that, but for now we can use these.

T's talking about Aluminum here. 

Though to be fair to the theory, it might actually work @CrazyRioter. 

In the climax battle, one of the Fused grabs Nightblood's sheath, made from aluminum per WOB, and used it to easily block Szeth's attacks using an unsheathed Nightblood and it didn't appear to suffer any damage. 

If an aluminum sheath can block Nightblood without any harm, an aluminum shield or coated shield might be able to block a regular shardblade without harm to itself I think.

[cfphelps he/him]

38 minutes ago, Truthwatcher_17.5 said:

My thoughts, based on this statement from the coppermind is that they’re just huge slabs of aluminum with the fabriel boxes on back being a red herring. What are your guys ideas?

Items can be Soulcast into aluminum.^[7] However, aluminum resists attempts to Soulcast it into other essences.^[24] Shardblades are unable to cut aluminum through magical means but would be able to cut it physically, like a conventional blade, if the aluminum were thin enough.^[25] Aluminum can block spanreed communication, and can prevent Soulcasting from being detected by others.^[26] Aluminum cannot be affected by the surges Adhesion or Gravitation.^[27] It likely can't be affected by any surge.

Didn't they use aluminum plates to block the screamers from detecting the spanreed, but it still functioned to communicate with its pair? 

[CrazyRioter she/her]

Just now, Green Hoodie Mistborn said:

Pretty positive it's not Aluminum, sorry. The paragraph after we see our first one in Oathbringer T says: 

T's talking about Aluminum here. 

Though to be fair to the theory, it might actually work @CrazyRioter. 

In the climax battle, one of the Fused grabs Nightblood's sheath, made from aluminum per WOB, and used it to easily block Szeth's attacks using an unsheathed Nightblood and it didn't appear to suffer any damage. 

If an aluminum sheath can block Nightblood without any harm, an aluminum shield or coated shield might be able to block a regular shardblade without harm to itself I think.

Nightblood's sheath behaves very weirdly for aluminum. Common joke is it's actually made of handwavium.  Realistically aluminium won't very effectively as a shield.

1 minute ago, cfphelps said:

Didn't they use aluminum plates to block the screamers from detecting the spanreed, but it still functioned to communicate with its pair? 

No they didn't use the spanreed at all, iirc. It wouldn't have worked through the aluminum plates.

[cfphelps he/him]

1 minute ago, CrazyRioter said:

Nightblood's sheath behaves very weirdly for aluminum. Common joke is it's actually made of handwavium.  Realistically aluminium won't very effectively as a shield.

No they didn't use the spanreed at all, iirc. It wouldn't have worked through the aluminum plates.

I'll be at that point on my reread soon and see what I was thinking of then. I think it was to hide the soul casting of food now that I think about it. 

Regarding aluminum as a shield:

I think it again goes back to thickness. Aluminum could be made thick enough to block the blade physically. Aluminum has no fatigue limit and is less stiff than steel, but it can be very durable when properly designed. We use it extensively in aerospace for structural applications. 

Edited July 2, 2019 by cfphelps

[Green Hoodie Mistborn he/him]

 

 

 

8 minutes ago, CrazyRioter said:

Nightblood's sheath behaves very weirdly for aluminum. A common joke is it's actually made of handwavium.  Realistically aluminum won't very effective as a shield.

Are there other examples of the sheath doing something weird for aluminum specifically? I know in Warbreaker it was constantly getting shoved through chests and that is super squirrely, but I don't think that's related to the aluminum per se.

I'm not sure why the realism of aluminum as a shield, thickness aside, has anything to do with its ability in the Cosmere to block an invested weapon?

We know that shardblades are also lighter than they appear, so it's not a giant steel sword striking down on an aluminum shield, but a light invested blade striking down on a presumably tested and well-designed shield that blocks investiture. 

So far as I know, this example in Oathbringer is the only one we have that shows the sheath interacting with a blade. Nightblood is far more invested than a regular shardblade. I don't see why if it can block Nightblood, that a less invested shardblade couldn't also be blocked by the metal. 

[CrazyRioter she/her]

2 minutes ago, Green Hoodie Mistborn said:

Are there other examples of the sheath doing something weird for aluminum specifically? I know in Warbreaker it was constantly getting shoved through chests and that is super squirrely, but I don't think that's related to the aluminum per se.

I'm not sure why the realism of aluminum as a shield, thickness aside, has anything to do with its ability in the Cosmere to block an invested weapon?

We know that shardblades are also lighter than they appear, so it's not a giant steel sword striking down on an aluminum shield, but a light invested blade striking down on a presumably tested and well-designed shield that blocks investiture. 

So far as I know, this example in Oathbringer is the only one we have that shows the sheath interacting with a blade. Nightblood is far more invested than a regular shardblade. I don't see why if it can block Nightblood, that a less invested shardblade couldn't also be blocked by the metal. 

Shardblades are light for their size, that doesn't make them objectively light. It's still a fairly heavy chunk of metal. This gets brought up in WoR when bridge 4 is training with one.

[Karger he/him]

50 minutes ago, CrazyRioter said:

Shardblades are light for their size, that doesn't make them objectively light. It's still a fairly heavy chunk of metal. This gets brought up in WoR when bridge 4 is training with one.

A thick aluminum alloy Mistborn spoiler

Spoiler

(like we see in Mistborn era 2)

should still not have any real trouble blocking a sword.

[cometaryorbit]

6 hours ago, CrazyRioter said:

Shardblades are light for their size, that doesn't make them objectively light. It's still a fairly heavy chunk of metal. This gets brought up in WoR when bridge 4 is training with one.

I think the difficulty/tiring nature of using them probably has more to do with length/leverage/awkwardness than weight. I mean, real-world swords are actually much lighter than usually thought - anything over 5 pounds or thereabouts was generally either ceremonial or used by unusually large and strong soldiers, like a zweihander - but that doesn't mean they weren't physically demanding to use.

[Pathfinder]

16 hours ago, Green Hoodie Mistborn said:

Are there other examples of the sheath doing something weird for aluminum specifically? I know in Warbreaker it was constantly getting shoved through chests and that is super squirrely, but I don't think that's related to the aluminum per se.

I'm not sure why the realism of aluminum as a shield, thickness aside, has anything to do with its ability in the Cosmere to block an invested weapon?

We know that shardblades are also lighter than they appear, so it's not a giant steel sword striking down on an aluminum shield, but a light invested blade striking down on a presumably tested and well-designed shield that blocks investiture. 

So far as I know, this example in Oathbringer is the only one we have that shows the sheath interacting with a blade. Nightblood is far more invested than a regular shardblade. I don't see why if it can block Nightblood, that a less invested shardblade couldn't also be blocked by the metal. 

As Karger put forward, an alloy would work better because aluminum is relatively weak/brittle on its own. So forget the slicing through anything property of shardblades. If you have a metal that is brittle, and you hit it with a blade, or punch the blade forward into it, it will penetrate. The aluminum would need to be reinforced through alloying it with other metals to increase its strength and durability.