You can do that. And they did do that. The issue is that in order to get aluminum you need one of two things:
1. Electricity to refine common Bauxite into Aluminum
2. Get obscenely lucky and find usable aluminum in the ground.
Needless to say given how I specified "Insanely lucky" native Aluminum isn't exactly common in nature, to the point that until VERY recently in the grand scheme of things it was more valuable than gold. To the point that until the actual refining process was found out, the 100 oz (6.25 lb, 2.835 kg) aluminum capstone at the top of the washington monument was the largest piece the world had ever seen.
There are chemical processes to refine aluminum; that's how they got the stuff for the Washington Monument capstone. Native aluminum is only found in nature inside of active volcanoes.
Mining aluminum was easy refining it was the hard part and why the metal, nearly impossible to find in a pure state naturally, was considered more precious than platinum.
Yep. Doesn't matter how potentially useful Alumium was, it was rare, shiny and expensive, so any idea of using it for anything other than spoons and cups and the like for the ultrawealthy was thrown in the bin.
I mean nowadays if we wanted we could easily clad the entire thing in aluminum
And the israeliteerly.
Just thought I should mention this one specifically.
Yeah, the reason I mentioned spoons and cups was because one of the most famous pieces of pre-industrial aluminum was a set of tableware Napoleon owned.
>What if you could teach medieval people to mine and use aluminum?
What would they use the aluminum for? Let's forget the difficulties in electrolyzing aluminum from bauxite. Aluminum is not a strong metal - in fact, it's a very weak metal, but it's also incredibly light, so light that you can build airplanes out of it, and all sorts of other thin, disposable products. An aluminum blade is very bad. Aluminum armor is very bad. Steel is strictly superior for any military application, and if we're using the aluminum in mass-produced goods than we're dealing with something far beyond medieval society.
The thing you're ignoring is strength-to-weight ratio. Meeting structural demands very nearly always weighs less to do with aluminum than steel, though with A LOT of caveats depending on use-case. While primarily-aluminum alloys are bad for weapons because of finicky details, it'd still be a godsend to armorers, and aluminum-copper alloys are MUCH better than bronze pretty much across the board.
Tungsten makes shitty armor/weapons since it's brittle.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah, and so is pure titanium.
No metals are used pure for almost any purpose - note that steel isn't pure iron, and pure Fe+C steel is only used for very niche purposes.
Tungsten steel makes very hard and sharp tools; it stands to reason the same would be true of weapons.
Arrows. Lots of arrows. A possibly siege munitions.
Imagine hollow Aluminum spheres filled with flaming materials or rotting corpses being fired into castles.
You actually want war arrows to be heavy. Shorter range but they hit harder.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah. Hard and sharp for a very specific usage. If you smack one of those bits against something it'll break.
Like there's a reason all those lovely tungsten carbide bits are like, no more than a square inch in size
8 months ago
Anonymous
>If you smack one of those bits against something it'll break.
Look into swordmaking. Swords would often have very hard alloys on their edges with a softer backing, the flex of the backing compensating for the inherent brittleness of the steel.
But look dude, I was just trying to think of a metal that's heavy and makes strong alloys. Tungsten is the only significantly heavy metal that's ever used for anything involving hardness. Don't read too much into it.
8 months ago
Anonymous
I work in manufacturing so I have to use the damn things everyday. And Tungsten carbide isn't actually an alloy but a ceramic.
8 months ago
Anonymous
Dude, at no point was I talking about tungsten carbide.
Tungsten steel. Steel with tungsten. Iron, <18% tungsten, <1% carbon, and usually a bunch of other stuff (cobalt and chromium are popular here, as there are in many other steels).
8 months ago
Anonymous
Remember how I said I work with carbide bits every day? Yeah I ended up kinda just assuming shit cause of that.
8 months ago
Anonymous
It happens! I have to contain my autism about statistics, which people get wrong all the fricking time.
That's why you read your post twice before posting.
8 months ago
Anonymous
I want to add that low-tungsten steels have actually been used for swords for centuries (by accident of course).
8 months ago
Anonymous
I imagine that the whole "Being able to reliably make the same type of steel" would have a bigger impact than fricking around with potential super alloys. Namely cause the ability to do that is kinda step one.
8 months ago
Anonymous
You can actually make stuff reliably without knowing what you're doing. You know that iron from a specific mine yields better steel for swords; you don't need to know its from the tungsten and nickel content. Some people added bones to their fires while making swords; they thought that they were imbuing the metal with the spirit of the animals, but that didn't stop the phosphorus from hardening the steel.
Arrows. Lots of arrows. A possibly siege munitions.
Imagine hollow Aluminum spheres filled with flaming materials or rotting corpses being fired into castles.
>You invented a furnace for bauxites directly, despite being unable to previously smelt them, but you never figured out how to make high-grade steel
There are plausible jumps in tech and then there is shit like your post, where the result somehow happens without the cause. What next? Inventing cars without ever inventing wheel?
There's one little problem: how will you produce aluminium without electricity?
points out, you need a VAST amount of electrical production for large-scale aluminum refinement, due to the Hall-Heroloult process being electrolytic. The furnaces for the bauxite to get the alumina out are also catalyzed and pressurized. Scaling these up is VERY infrastructure-heavy.
Compare Benjamen Huntsman's crucible steel to the Bessemer process. Mass production is QUITE the ways downstream from having a reliable means.
What would they use it for? Better carriages? You'd also need to teach them better production methods, probably mass scale smelting too.
You can do that. And they did do that. The issue is that in order to get aluminum you need one of two things:
1. Electricity to refine common Bauxite into Aluminum
2. Get obscenely lucky and find usable aluminum in the ground.
Needless to say given how I specified "Insanely lucky" native Aluminum isn't exactly common in nature, to the point that until VERY recently in the grand scheme of things it was more valuable than gold. To the point that until the actual refining process was found out, the 100 oz (6.25 lb, 2.835 kg) aluminum capstone at the top of the washington monument was the largest piece the world had ever seen.
There are chemical processes to refine aluminum; that's how they got the stuff for the Washington Monument capstone. Native aluminum is only found in nature inside of active volcanoes.
>There are chemical processes to refine aluminum
Which is incredibly inefficient, which is why that capstone was such a big deal despite its tiny size
Mining aluminum was easy refining it was the hard part and why the metal, nearly impossible to find in a pure state naturally, was considered more precious than platinum.
Yep. Doesn't matter how potentially useful Alumium was, it was rare, shiny and expensive, so any idea of using it for anything other than spoons and cups and the like for the ultrawealthy was thrown in the bin.
And the israeliteerly.
Just thought I should mention this one specifically.
so how would you smelt bauxite into aluminum using medieval technology / wizardry?
>00 oz (6.25 lb, 2.835 kg) aluminum capstone at the top of the washington monument
just the tip?
I mean nowadays if we wanted we could easily clad the entire thing in aluminum
Yeah, the reason I mentioned spoons and cups was because one of the most famous pieces of pre-industrial aluminum was a set of tableware Napoleon owned.
>What if you could teach medieval people to mine and use aluminum?
What would they use the aluminum for? Let's forget the difficulties in electrolyzing aluminum from bauxite. Aluminum is not a strong metal - in fact, it's a very weak metal, but it's also incredibly light, so light that you can build airplanes out of it, and all sorts of other thin, disposable products. An aluminum blade is very bad. Aluminum armor is very bad. Steel is strictly superior for any military application, and if we're using the aluminum in mass-produced goods than we're dealing with something far beyond medieval society.
>An aluminum blade is very bad. Aluminum armor is very bad.
but they aren't tho
aluminum is super light and tough.
The thing you're ignoring is strength-to-weight ratio. Meeting structural demands very nearly always weighs less to do with aluminum than steel, though with A LOT of caveats depending on use-case. While primarily-aluminum alloys are bad for weapons because of finicky details, it'd still be a godsend to armorers, and aluminum-copper alloys are MUCH better than bronze pretty much across the board.
Congrats. You basically described Mythril/Mithril.
You are now completely aware that mithril is nothing more than fantasy aluminum in every way and it always was.
Yep, known for a while. I've played around with lightning magic being necessary for the processing/creation of Mithril in several campaigns.
I always figured more like fantasy titanium, but sure.
And adamantine is probably fantasy tungsten.
Tungsten makes shitty armor/weapons since it's brittle.
Yeah, and so is pure titanium.
No metals are used pure for almost any purpose - note that steel isn't pure iron, and pure Fe+C steel is only used for very niche purposes.
Tungsten steel makes very hard and sharp tools; it stands to reason the same would be true of weapons.
You actually want war arrows to be heavy. Shorter range but they hit harder.
Yeah. Hard and sharp for a very specific usage. If you smack one of those bits against something it'll break.
Like there's a reason all those lovely tungsten carbide bits are like, no more than a square inch in size
>If you smack one of those bits against something it'll break.
Look into swordmaking. Swords would often have very hard alloys on their edges with a softer backing, the flex of the backing compensating for the inherent brittleness of the steel.
But look dude, I was just trying to think of a metal that's heavy and makes strong alloys. Tungsten is the only significantly heavy metal that's ever used for anything involving hardness. Don't read too much into it.
I work in manufacturing so I have to use the damn things everyday. And Tungsten carbide isn't actually an alloy but a ceramic.
Dude, at no point was I talking about tungsten carbide.
Tungsten steel. Steel with tungsten. Iron, <18% tungsten, <1% carbon, and usually a bunch of other stuff (cobalt and chromium are popular here, as there are in many other steels).
Remember how I said I work with carbide bits every day? Yeah I ended up kinda just assuming shit cause of that.
It happens! I have to contain my autism about statistics, which people get wrong all the fricking time.
That's why you read your post twice before posting.
I want to add that low-tungsten steels have actually been used for swords for centuries (by accident of course).
I imagine that the whole "Being able to reliably make the same type of steel" would have a bigger impact than fricking around with potential super alloys. Namely cause the ability to do that is kinda step one.
You can actually make stuff reliably without knowing what you're doing. You know that iron from a specific mine yields better steel for swords; you don't need to know its from the tungsten and nickel content. Some people added bones to their fires while making swords; they thought that they were imbuing the metal with the spirit of the animals, but that didn't stop the phosphorus from hardening the steel.
Arrows. Lots of arrows. A possibly siege munitions.
Imagine hollow Aluminum spheres filled with flaming materials or rotting corpses being fired into castles.
Aluminium was more expensive than gold, anon.
Boxites have been mined since early Iron Age, you dumb homosexual.
Smelting them is another story, as it requires an electric furnace.
If you can mass produce aluminium it means you can mass-produce high quality steel.
Sure, but you might not know that.
>You invented a furnace for bauxites directly, despite being unable to previously smelt them, but you never figured out how to make high-grade steel
There are plausible jumps in tech and then there is shit like your post, where the result somehow happens without the cause. What next? Inventing cars without ever inventing wheel?
I thought you were directly referencing electric arc furnaces.
Which IRL were in use for decades for other applications before someone thought about using them for steel.
As
points out, you need a VAST amount of electrical production for large-scale aluminum refinement, due to the Hall-Heroloult process being electrolytic. The furnaces for the bauxite to get the alumina out are also catalyzed and pressurized. Scaling these up is VERY infrastructure-heavy.
Compare Benjamen Huntsman's crucible steel to the Bessemer process. Mass production is QUITE the ways downstream from having a reliable means.
There's one little problem: how will you produce aluminium without electricity?