Making a black blade

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

You need a furnace to have much of an effect on heat treatment. Maybe the hottest coals in a campfire but not an open flame.

Wouldn't a bellows-pumprf charcoal fire be hot enough?

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Wouldn't a bellows-pumprf charcoal fire be hot enough?

The oil and soot blackening treatments require nothing hotter than the flame from a small camp fire (you can get soot from a candle). It is nowhere near hot enough to effect heat treatment.

[Anthony]

You can also have a non-metal blade, though all such options tend to be inferior weapons. A wooden blade made of ebony will certainly fit the look, though, as will an obsidian blade, or a macuahuitl made from black wood and obsidian. At higher tech, carbon fiber, black ceramic, or black hard plastic will also fit the color. Or, if magic is available, the dye spell will work (it has no enchantment listed, but looks like the kind of spell that would be x100 to be permanent).

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Anthony

You can also have a non-metal blade, though all such options tend to be inferior weapons. A wooden blade made of ebony will certainly fit the look, though, as will an obsidian blade, or a macuahuitl made from black wood and obsidian. At higher tech, carbon fiber, black ceramic, or black hard plastic will also fit the color. Or, if magic is available, the dye spell will work (it has no enchantment listed, but looks like the kind of spell that would be x100 to be permanent).

In some worlds, illusion spells may also be useable for that purpose. It depends on whether they can be disbelieved by individuals. If so, when that happens, the individual realizes that the sword is actually not black but normal sword colour (a metallic grey?) but might (again, depending on the specifics of the magic system) still see that the illusion is supposed to be present (so that he knows it hasn't been removed from the sword) but knowing full well that it is illusion and be able to see through it.

The later is the case in my Ärth setting, but I'm not sure how illusions work in the magic system of GURPS Magic.

[malloyd]

Given all the ways to put a black coating on a piece of steel - paint, enamal, carbon from soot or this oil blackening, black oxide (heating with a strong base and a nitrate, I don't think this is a purely modern technique), an enchantment seems like ridiculous extravagance. Not that that is necessarily inappropriate given your aim is "coolness".

You might also want to look into jewelry techniques like niello - instead of blackening the entire blade, engrave and inlay a pattern of weird black runes....

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Given all the ways to put a black coating on a piece of steel - paint, enamal, carbon from soot or this oil blackening, black oxide (heating with a strong base and a nitrate, I don't think this is a purely modern technique), an enchantment seems like ridiculous extravagance.

It's the only way that will produce a black edge, or at least one that will last past a single sharpening. If you don't care about that, yeah, overkill.

[Peter Knutsen]

What about trying to achieve a black alloy, instead of putting a black coating over a steel-coloured alloy?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

What about trying to achieve a black alloy, instead of putting a black coating over a steel-coloured alloy?

If it's actually a metal, it isn't black.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Anthony

If it's actually a metal, it isn't black.

But with magic... An alloy no better than steel in "reality" but with so much myth surrounding it that it still costs more and instills fear in you enemies.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Anthony

If it's actually a metal, it isn't black.

I dunno - the mirroriness is a consequence of the metallic conduction band, but if you had some other ultra-fast relaxation mechanism other than re-radiation.... I can't think of one, certainly not that would absorb the majority of the light, and you probably need better than 90% to look at all black, but it doesn't seem impossible.