Medieval Titanium Metalurgy

[Nymdok]

If your setting allows magic/powers, I actually took the time to devise a welding mechanic. Its not actually based on anything other than the DR/HP structure tables in the back of Campaigns with a little eyeballing.

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...ghlight=nymdok

Its simple and may actually work for making armor.

Nymdok

[Dj877]

Titanium would be good for armor but not for swords. Now this is why titanium even most of its alloys can not get as hard as good quality steel this means it will not hold an edge. It is also too flexible. In armor you can have twice the thickness for the same weight and it does not need to hold an edge. It also does not rust. There is a gold titanium alloy which os made at very high temperatures and exacting condition which is hard enought to hold an edge but you would need to weld it to a different alloy for the main part of the blade in say argon gas not co2 ( very difficult for a medieval blacksmith) a tungsten edge would be possible and good but would chip

[AlexanderHowl]

Tungsten would probably be a better miracle material than titanium, though you would need magic to forge it in a low tech environment. Even so, 2800 maraging steel possesses a strength around five times that of low tech steels, which is better than tungsten or titanium. Strangely enough, pure silicon is stronger, though it is more brittle, so it would make poor combat equipment.

[Fred Brackin]

As long as we are adding info to a necro-thread fro future search purposes we should mention Adam Savage's titianium Iron Man suit (Savage Builds 1.1).

It adds little in fo to the question of working it as the pieces for the suit were made by 3D printing butt he resulting suit was buletproof to at least 9mm pistol bullets. That makes it a minimum of DR9. A later test with explosions might increase that to at least DR10.

It was much lighter than steel. The whole suit weighed only 25lbs though the fauld and sollerets were one piece synthetics rather than fitted plates joined together. These were places where the original movie-makers had taken a short cut and Savage was using their CAD/CAM plans.

Even if you increase weight to 30 lbs to compensate for the short-cut that's still only half the weight of a good DR 6 suit of plate from LT. 50% more DR for 50% of the weight looks like the HT stats.

[Culture20]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Assuming a low tech society had access to pure titanium (very unlikely they could produce it), they couldn't work it. Titanium is not particularly ductile, has a higher melting point than steel, and is rather reactive at high temperatures (like aluminum, it forms a protective oxide coating; however, it ignites at 1,200C in air). It's normally processed in an argon atmosphere.

You can forge titanium with a charcoal forge, especially if you keep it cooler. There would be a lot of trial and error, but if a TL3 smith came upon a warehouse of pure titanium rods, it could be worked. They'd probably toss the lot though, thinking it inferior metal (doesn't do anything correctly at the right temperatures).

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Dj877

in say argon gas not co2 (very difficult for a medieval blacksmith)

I'd call that "impossible", actually. Argon extraction in quantity is done via liquification of air, which is a signature technology of TL6.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Culture20

You can forge titanium with a charcoal forge, especially if you keep it cooler. There would be a lot of trial and error, but if a TL3 smith came upon a warehouse of pure titanium rods, it could be worked. They'd probably toss the lot though, thinking it inferior metal (doesn't do anything correctly at the right temperatures).

A sufficiently curious smith, or a scholar with some knowledge of smithing (and/or money to hire some journeymen to do the work), might experiment with it, though. Extracting titanium from the ore might be a bit tricky (understatement) at TL3, unless magic or Weird Science is involved, but they might find titanium carbide to be useful, and you can get that from trying to smelt the titanium oxide ore with charcoal.

Using high-temperature alchemy or something like that to extract metals from ores that would normally be difficult or impossible to obtain otherwise could be an interesting plot point (and is used in one of the Yrth variants that I've occasionally worked on, but not posted - and obviously haven't gotten published, either).