Creative Uses for Cuendillar?

[solarz]

What would you use cuendillar for?

 

Let's assume that you can create any amount of it, but it has to be craftable from iron.

 

Also keep in mind that the process of creating cuendillar fuses chain links together, so creating things with mobile joints would be tricky.

 

My ideas:

 

Arrow heads: simple and cheap to make, make the tip as sharp as possible to punch through armor.

 

Cannons: since cuendillar is indestructible, cuendillar cannon tubes can be made with a very thin iron sheet, making it a lot cheaper and light than bronze-cast cannons.

 

Building frames: theoretically, with cuendillar beams and supports, you could make a building as tall as you want.

 

Tanks: steam wagon + cannon + cuendillar armor plates = invincible war machine

 

Ships: think Ironclads... except in cuendillar

 

Submarines: no worries about deep ocean pressure

 

Space Rocket: cuendillar would be the ultimate material for space travel

[TheSociopath]

I wonder how well it conducts electricity?

There could be a lot of uses depending on the answer, whichever way it goes.

[agreddon]

Cuendillar parties, perhaps? 

[Wulf]

A sword as close to 1 atom thick as technology allows one to craft.

[Stevros]

If you're making an incredibly tall building you'd need cullendar nuts and bolts as you'd need to attach individual pieces of cullendar together. You can't make a infinitely tall piece of cullendar as first you need to make a piece of iron that big.

 

 

Then if I go super geeky. How do cullendar bolt threads strech when tightened? If they can't strech then you can't do them up so they wouldn't vibrate loose over time. Unless you get some sort of cullendar loctite...

 

 

[Forshookt]

Armour made out of the stuff would be light (cuendillar is as light as porcelain IIRC). Problem is you can't make it all in one go, as steel armour made of the stuff would fuse, like the Tar Valon chain. So maybe plate armour? With the links between each piece made of regular steel. The cuendillar pieces of the armour would be nigh invincible from all attacks.

[solarz]

17 hours ago, Stevros said:

If you're making an incredibly tall building you'd need cullendar nuts and bolts as you'd need to attach individual pieces of cullendar together. You can't make a infinitely tall piece of cullendar as first you need to make a piece of iron that big.

 

Then if I go super geeky. How do cullendar bolt threads strech when tightened? If they can't strech then you can't do them up so they wouldn't vibrate loose over time. Unless you get some sort of cullendar loctite...

 

That's an interesting point!

 

What if instead of nuts and bolts, the cuendillar pieces are interlocked? Could we make a skyscraper frame out of cuendillar legos? 

[Stevros]

On 17/04/2018 at 3:56 PM, solarz said:

 

That's an interesting point!

 

What if instead of nuts and bolts, the cuendillar pieces are interlocked? Could we make a skyscraper frame out of cuendillar legos? 

I like your thinking.... off the top of my head I reckon so. If you made the design so that it's dependant on compression then yes that works....

[Wulf]

Just build a ladder to outer space.

 

Make the base solid/wide enough so that it won't tip over, then there'd be no limit to how many vertical sections you could interlock and keep climbing.  As a bonus, assuming cuendillar never flexes, the pressure across the base would be perfectly distributed.

 

Bonus homework:  Calculate the forces involved when a 100kg man climbs a 10km ladder and leans back 0.1m.

[Wulf]

You could also dig down to the center of the earth, with no worries about cave-ins if you use proper cuendillar supports.

[Wulf]

Could you cuendillar the iron in a man's blood?

[wotfan4472]

No. The person would die. The body would treat it as a foreign element and eventually kill him or her as they exhaust itself

[TheSociopath]

still, thats an interesting enough method of murder.

[Wulf]

And would you end up with a liquid, completely unable to transport oxygen?

 

Or would it solidify the entire bloodstream, leaving you with a perfect model of the circulatory system?

 

I suspect the first, but if a chain fuses, then perhaps the second....

[TheSociopath]

if it only changes iron, then I think it would be closest to the first, a liquid similar to cyanide/arsenic, or some such.

[Spektre]

Would iron stay magnetic and/or conductive in cuendillar form? 

 

Cuendillar armour would proably be more useful than in weapons, because I do not remember any instance of ceundillar being shown to a better puncturing capability. True,  a cuendillar arrowhead would not break, but it's connection to the arrow shaft would be the weak point and it could still break off. I think cuendillar scale armour would be the best option.  

[Wulf]

2 hours ago, Spektre said:

Cuendillar armour would proably be more useful than in weapons

 

You're only thinking of making existing weapons out of cuendillar though.  Think what you could do when you're no longer concerned about the weapon's strength.

 

Take a 5 pound hammerhead.  Add a 1 foot long needle that's about 1 mm thick to the end of it.  Since that needle isn't going to snap off, imagine the puncturing pressure that thing is going to have if you swing it with any force.

 

Or a semi-disposable long spear with that same needle end, only add barbs to it.  Thrust that into somebody and just leave it in them, they're not getting it out on the battlefield and their mobility is ruined.

[solarz]

49 minutes ago, Wulf said:

 

You're only thinking of making existing weapons out of cuendillar though.  Think what you could do when you're no longer concerned about the weapon's strength.

 

Take a 5 pound hammerhead.  Add a 1 foot long needle that's about 1 mm thick to the end of it.  Since that needle isn't going to snap off, imagine the puncturing pressure that thing is going to have if you swing it with any force.

 

Or a semi-disposable long spear with that same needle end, only add barbs to it.  Thrust that into somebody and just leave it in them, they're not getting it out on the battlefield and their mobility is ruined.

 

Needles can't do much damage except pierce armor, and if you add barbs, that will only decrease its armor piercing ability.

 

It doesn't matter the strength of the material you use, any cold arm will be limited by human strength.

 

On the other hand, if you made cannons out of cuendillar, you would have an indestructible firing tube that weighs a fraction of bronze cannons. You would also have longer range and greater power since you can pack more gunpowder into the tube.

[Wulf]

1 hour ago, solarz said:

Needles can't do much damage except pierce armor,

Isn't that fairly significant though?

 

Any holes that you can poke in the squishy pieces protected by armor are going to be pretty significant.

 

Anything in the helmet area is going to end the fight, and pretty much any holes in the torso are going to cause some significant discomfort.

 

Maybe a clean in 'n out with a needle wouldn't kill somebody, but once it's in there'll be some twisting and thrusting.  Maybe give it a serrated edge for funsies.

 

A cuendillar piercing weapon would even counter most forms of cuendillar armor.  Armor's gotta have gaps or holes to be useful, and tiny weapons are better at slipping in there.

 

To take the idea to its extreme - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SharpenedToASingleAtom

 

I agree that melee weapons aren't the most destructive thing that would come from cuendillar though.  Simply the first.

[solarz]

1 hour ago, Wulf said:

Isn't that fairly significant though?

 

Any holes that you can poke in the squishy pieces protected by armor are going to be pretty significant.

 

Anything in the helmet area is going to end the fight, and pretty much any holes in the torso are going to cause some significant discomfort.

 

Maybe a clean in 'n out with a needle wouldn't kill somebody, but once it's in there'll be some twisting and thrusting.  Maybe give it a serrated edge for funsies.

 

A cuendillar piercing weapon would even counter most forms of cuendillar armor.  Armor's gotta have gaps or holes to be useful, and tiny weapons are better at slipping in there.

 

To take the idea to its extreme - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SharpenedToASingleAtom

 

I agree that melee weapons aren't the most destructive thing that would come from cuendillar though.  Simply the first.

 

Not really.

 

A needle would have to hit a vital organ in order to do any damage. During the rapier dueling days, there are many people who get run through by a rapier and still kept on fighting.

 

[Spektre]

On 5/18/2018 at 1:45 PM, solarz said:

 

Not really.

 

A needle would have to hit a vital organ in order to do any damage. During the rapier dueling days, there are many people who get run through by a rapier and still kept on fighting.

 

Very true. Also, if one had to forge the iron into whatever shape, making a large needle would be difficult. But if cuendillar could still be made the same strength out of casted iron, then maybe needles and such would become more viable. 

[TheSociopath]

drill bits. 

[Wulf]

You could create arbitrarily large forces by interlocking meter-long segments of cuendillar pipe and using it as a lever.

 

Attach a cuendillar container to the fulcrum and have a mile-long lever, and you could probably crush coal into diamonds.

 

If not, add more lever.

[solarz]

Just now, Wulf said:

You could create arbitrarily large forces by interlocking meter-long segments of cuendillar pipe and using it as a lever.

 

Attach a cuendillar container to the fulcrum and have a mile-long lever, and you could probably crush coal into diamonds.

 

If not, add more lever.

 

Now that's creative thinking! I love it!

[Wulf]

If cuendillar truly cannot bend or break...  Then pushing on one end will move the other end exactly simultaneously.

 

If it had any give at all then a large enough force could bend or break it.  If it had any give at all, it would behave like regular matter, and pushing on one end of a cuendillar stick would move the atoms that make it up infinitesimally closer until the pressure wave reached the end of the rod and restored it to its original size.

 

But if nothing breaks or bends it, then the atoms don't move closer when you push it.  There's not a pressure wave going down its length.  Every atom along its entire length moves in sync, staying exactly the same distance from the others.

 

You've got yourself a faster-than-light communication stick.

 

There's not a lot that could be used for that would impress people in the Third Age, but faster than light communication, even over short distances, could do some neat things for us.

 

Assuming we take everybody at their word on cuendillar's properties, anyway.