Are CARBON FIBER SWORDS possible?

[Music] greetings i'm chad and in this video i want to discuss with you the idea and the fun idea concept of advanced materials for swords because most swords well when i say most all real functional swords are made out of steel and the reason being is that this is actually a far more complex thing than you might realize there is an obvious caveat to add for you know anything else is that swords aren't using warfare anymore and if swords were actually on the main front of warfare if we could invent some type of advanced technology that could block bullets but not melee weapons i actually feel swords might come back onto the battlefield so if say they did and there are a lot of brains put onto this puzzle would we actually start to use other materials to make our swords out to get better performance better durability holding an edge for longer to produce far better cuts and so there are a couple of materials already you know thrown around on the internet and one of the more prominent ones is that of carbon fiber carbon fiber is said to be out our approach strengths ten times greater than that of steel uh in certain circumstances not in every you know in every iteration of carbon steel is that that much stronger but in many instances it is presented as being stronger than steel and it is incredibly light so if that's the case why are we not making blades out of it already well for a very significant reason and i actually can demonstrate this with you firsthand because this subject is something i have been interested in quite a while the idea of you know different materials to make swords and so i went online and had a look if there were carbon fiber blades available and i found this little interesting duvet online and so for the sake of science and research and you know this video i was intending to make i bought it and uh have it right here now what's interesting about this is that i've only ever used it once because the first time i used it had interesting results and that was cutting open one of those plastic blister packs and uh have a look at what happened to the edge i'm not sure if you can see it but if you look closely on the edge you will see dents and little chips okay hopefully the camera will remain focused if not i'll take a close-up shot and superimpose it and this edge got significantly damaged just from plastic and that's the massive floor with carbon fiber although it is impressively strong with its you know resistance to things like uh defamation everything like that its ability to hold an edge is utterly pathetic okay and that's actually the weakness that we come across in many many other materials when we're looking at a better substitute for steel this is the same with aluminium and titanium their edge retention is absolute garbage and retaining an edge is actually very significant important when it comes to a sword's overall function and utility now edge retention is just one property that you want out of good stored material the other materials is resistance of flex and i'm sorry to the scientists out there i'm probably not going to be butchering the specific types of names i'll probably even use defamation in the wrong context scientifically because you know they're actual proper defamations of elasticity defamation other things like that and i'm going to be butchering okay i'm not a scientist but i have you know a working understanding of functional swords and hopefully as i conveyed in a descriptive way you'll know what i'm talking about so you actually want a sword to be stiff as possible but generally the stiffer they get the more fragile they get and they will snap and so the best balance would be now to find with the best material so far that we're still working with steel is flexibility okay that it can actually bend but then flex back to true and that gives it far more resistance and durability in the uses that swords are put to now flexibility is not a universal thing that you absolutely want with every sword it's kind of the best of both worlds because materials will reach a certain point that overcomes their resistance and they will bend and so flexibility enables them to flex back to true but if you had a material that was so stiff and rigid that it took far more force than what you could generate just with your average you know arms and the way in which swords are used well it wouldn't need to flex if it can just simply not bend and it would take like putting it between two blocks and jumping on it to snap it or something like that well then we'll be in the realms of something that could really work well if it could hit the other properties that swords need and edge retention is such a big one because something like carbon fiber is really impressively strong but the other interesting thing about it is that it's impressively light and this is where we come into a bit of a misconception the idea that lighter is better when it comes to swords that's actually not true okay if this sword only weighed say 0.1 of a kilo the strength behind the cut would actually be reduced very significantly because there are natural properties and things that you just have to account for when it comes with swords for instance width okay so if we approach the camera every sword is going to have a certain width right there that's what we're looking at okay now when a sword strikes into something it isn't like the material just happily and magically moves out of the way no you're basically forcing a wedge into that material and that material needs to move out of the way for the sword to pass through and so the more resistant that material and the thicker the sword the greater the friction it takes and oftentimes there's not enough force behind it the sword will literally get wedged in the material cutting and that's when you see those attempted cuts and it's just stuck and you can let go and just hangs there in the material and so a sword's weight is actually a very crucial element to add greater inertia to the strike to force apart the material and enable it to pass through so simply put a sword needs weight so if you could have excellent edge retention and make this whole blade out of carbon fiber it's cutting capacity will probably be even worse a way to offset the loss in power due to its reduced weight is by making it thinner and in a magic world okay a perfect world if you could get the best material ever the most optimal properties for a sword to have would be for it to be a bit lighter okay the lighter it is the easier it is to handle move around redirect and the faster you can strike at your opponent it does give you an edge but to not lose out on the cutting capacity you want it to be very thin and then you would want it to be very sharp and be able to retain its edge retention and very very stiff to not break bend when you're you know using it but there's no such material that hits that but if we look at carbon fiber specifically come on get in get it get get in get there we there we go so if you look at carbon fiber specifically what kind of properties could we get out of it because i mean it's not a lost cause it's very light it's very strong and if it's stronger than steel that technically should mean we would be able to make it thinner we should make it even more life than what it already is right but we should technically be able to make it thinner and just as strong and carbon fiber does have flex and so it hits that thing where it's not so stiff and rigid that it won't bend but it will flex and flex is a wonderful kind of substitute to the limitational strength that swords have and to make it at least functional it would actually have to be a type of composite blade where the central part would be carbon fiber but the edge would need to be made out of something far stronger that would retain its edge for longer what would be the best material and this is where people sometimes say diamond okay diamond hardest material no demand or hardest natural material on demand that would work really well but there's a bit of a problem with that diamond is very very hard and therefore brittle okay the idea that diamond's indestructible is utterly wrong if you had a whole sword made out of diamond you hit something it would break diamonds can break absolutely but could we make the edges of this theoretical sword out of say diamond and the central part being uh being carbon fiber and yeah carbon fiber is up there but i mean what about titanium titanium is lighter it can actually have good flexible properties but again horrible at holding an edge maybe even a titanium blade with diamond edges well diamond has a big problem there is an assumption that a diamond blade will stay sharp forever no it's not going to stay sharp forever it'll say sharper for longer than average absolutely but to keep a very fine clean edge on it for a long time no in actual fact there are diamond edged razor blades that are produced and i looked into these things because again fun idea i've been doing a bit of research throughout past uh trying to figure out the possibility and the interesting result of these diamond you know edge razor blades is that even though really sharp and they retain their edges for longer the microscopic edge is actually a bit jagged okay and in use in actual shaving it in some instances did not produce a cleaner shave than steel because steel is easier to sharpen okay you can actually make the microscopic edge of it far more neat and even what am i talking about here when you sharpen an edge on the microscopic scale there are these tiny little like bevers and little ruts and things that cause the edge to look a bit like this and this is why when you sharpen steel you finish it off with like this leather strap or a leather kind of thing now that leather sharpening thing there's actually knife sharpening channels on youtube they're an interesting watch they will know more specifically what i'm talking about here so comment in the description if you have a video that describes is better than what i am but what the leather does from my understanding from these guys that i've watched is that instead of actually you know cutting into the metal movement or making sharper just cleans up the edge so instead of being a bit like this it makes it like that and that's when you get to the insanely as sharp as you can possibly get at sharp level and you can do that with steel because steel actually has enough give that you can manipulate the edge through sharpening the big problem with diamond edged blades razor blades they're basically impossible to sharpen and they do get blunted and so if we made this you know sword this wonderful incredible sword made out of carbon fiber with say diamond edge razor blades about this long running the length because we wouldn't want to we wouldn't want to be solid that'd be like a razor blade embedded into the carbon fiber you know core about that long that long that long so it could still flex and the problem would be once it gets blunted this was basically ruined okay so then what would be the best material to make the edges out of and you know what might surprise you i think it's still steel okay remember steel has a lot of different types there's low carbon there's high carbon but even in a high carbon category there's a lot of types as well and there's a lot of different alloys as well that give different properties and when you look at some of the hardest types of steels like tool steel you know the type that you have on the end of drill bits and stuff that can drill through metal and stuff like that they are actually ridiculously sharp now would you ever make a sword out of such material generally no they would be they'd snap okay they wouldn't it'd be so stiff and rigid that as soon as too much you know forces put onto them they would just snap in two but if we added it to a more flexible and perhaps resistant stronger carbon fiber with edges made out of this really impressively hard tall steel okay now we're far more within the realms of possibilities you can sharpen these a lot easier than diamond all right and they are insanely sharp the only types of swords that sometimes are made out of close equivalents not perfect one-to-ones of actual tool steels but types of stool steels are actually certain katanas because their blades are usually thick enough that they can resist the flex and resist snapping and bending as a result so there are you know swords made out of tool steels but not the extreme ones the ones that are insanely insanely hard and those are the ones that i think could be really interesting composites to be added with a carbon fiber or maybe even titanium blade but how would you insert these tall steel razor blade edges almost into uh into titanium very difficult but carbon fiber you could make the carbon fiber blade almost around these you know tall steel blades and oh my goodness you could potentially make a really devastating sword far thinner than what you could get away with at you know on average and so i wonder if you could actually make it like uh see this edge here uh this carbon fiber little knife it's about one and a half two mils thick okay um and if you could make a whole sword that had retained this thickness along its whole length with a tool steel kind of blades embedded that would be interesting there will be issues there'll be problems and difficulties to work with for instance if the edge was actually made out of this tool sealed things okay at uh there would be gaps or at least you know with the join between one razor blade to the another might not be perfectly smooth you get it you can get it to line up pretty good i think and so when you're drawing it through i wonder if those gaps could cause the blade to catch on anything or if it could actually make a saw like effect on the blade which is an interesting thought oh but i did say swords need a certain amount of weight to cut effectively but if you remember that is mostly to offset the fact that swords have a certain amount of width and you need that extra force to push apart the material that cut into and so with carbon fiber being technically stronger than steel in certain circumstances you should be able to get it away with the blade being thinner and if it was thin enough and sharp enough this sword could still potentially be devastatingly effective but you'd only be able to find out through testing it wouldn't you so who knows okay this would be my thought say if we the best kind of thing that i can think of of a sword made out of modern advanced materials would be a composite of say something like carbon fiber and really hard tool steel on the edges from my understanding of material properties my own research that i've done thank you very much for watching do share your thoughts in the comments down below i'm really interested in reading them and of course i hope to see you in the next video so until that time [Music] you

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 239,147

Rating: 4.9667253 out of 5

Keywords: sword, swords, medieval, fantasy, material, dnd, dungeons and dragons, d&d, carbon fiber, magic, composite, what if, blade, longsword, hema, make, build, analysis, steel, carbon steel, spring steel, katana, knight, samurai

Id: KoC-apkxDoc

Length: 15min 38sec (938 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020