thought: steel is such a common material for tools because, primarily, of the abundance of iron; it's the most abundant metal. As such, a lot of research has gone into making tools and structures out of iron and iron-based alloys.

But what materials would tools and structures be made of if given an unlimited amount of any ores you want? (you have to smelt, alloy, and forge them yourself though) If iron didn't have the advantage of abundance, what would tools have been made of instead?

@Felthry

I heard that there's a titanium-gold alloy that's really good, and biocompatible even.

http://news.rice.edu/2016/07/20/titanium-gold-new-gold-standard-for-artificial-joints/

@Tathar titanium is quite annoying to extract from its ores, so even with limitless abundance I suspect this would be more expensive than steel--but still, with modern technology it's not that difficult.

@Felthry

In terms of number of steps, or in terms of needing specific stuff to extract it with? Because the latter is mitigated by limitless abundance too.

@Tathar Well, you need electricity to process it (it involves electrolysis, iwrc), so it's unlikely it would have developed early, and the titanium age certainly wouldn't have replaced the bronze age