Thread:Barangolo/@comment-29773086-20180202195427/@comment-29773086-20180203203328

In regards to your points on the feasibility of a mithril sword- I am not knowledgeable enough to dispute them.

However: Elves could not make mithril swords, unless the Dwarves had already "treated" the metal for them.

''It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of mithril did not tarnish or grow dim. ''

The uses that Elves had for mithril, in its usual form, fall into the earlier category: beating it like copper, polishing it like glass, and generally using it for decoration- as with ithildin. The Dwarves were the only ones who could actually make it "light and yet harder than tempered steel". So, unless the Dwarves gave amounts of- let's call it "upgraded" mithril- to the Elves, which I deem unlikely, Elves were limited to the basic metal. Of course, the Dwarves did give items made of the upgraded mithril to the Elves- Bilbo’s mail shirt was going to be one such- but there are no indications that the Elves knew enough of its creation to reforge it into weapons. Besides, the Elves already could create weapons that could last for millenia, like the swords of Gondolin. It would seem an exercise in pointlessness to make a mithril sword, from the most valuable material in the world, when a steel one would serve.

Perhaps, say, the Dwarves could have made weapons out of mithril (they would be the only ones who could do so). Where, then, are these weapons? Surely, if Tolkien had imagined that the Dwarves woild create them, they would have logically featured or been mentioned in his works- an ancient weapon could have been mithril, like Durin's Axe. So, the Dwarves did not make them- and regardless of whether they did make them, Men cannot because the skill is far beyond them. So they shouldn't exist in the mod.