The fingernail portion of this question piked my interest. Sure you could attach a blade to the finger that would look something like this
But could you really surgically replace a nail with a metal blade? As far as my googling can tell as this hasn’t been done before, which makes sense.
It’d be very impractical. Not cutting yourself or others during daily tasks, like cleaning yourself, intimacy, and scratching would require a lot of practice. On top of that I just don’t think it’d be a very good weapon.
The length required to really do any damage would be easy to break and further complicate the above problems. On top of that you’d have to get very close to the opponent, which is opens yourself up to injury. This becomes almost impossible against an opponent with a sword and shield. 477
A sword or a dagger would be more useful in every way.
But still is it possible to do this? I’ve done a little bit of research and as far as I’m able to tell this isn’t a super common procedure as nails grow back but I did find this study on prothetic fingernails .
Despite all efforts, surgical methods of replacement have not proven to be very satisfactory. Like artificial eyes, techniques for making an artificial fingernail of good likeness have been available for many years. The problem has been a satisfactory method of attaching the artificial fingernail to the digit and eventually that of making the artificial nail sufficiently thin.
So it does seem that this is difficult even in the modern day. I’m not sure how someone would be able to create a suitably metal nail replacement, much less how to attach it before modern surgical procedures. Perhaps it could be attached like normal false nails, the nail could be shaved down and then the metal nail could be attached using a similar glue. Still though, I believe the techniques and materials are A pretty modern development and even in the modern day acrylic nails usually don’t last longer than a few months.
The abstract then goes on to describe a modern technique that seems to work better, but due to my lack of education in the medical field I don’t really understand exactly what that technique looks like, maybe someone with a better understanding can parse this because it could be interesting if the procedure could be done in the medieval time period.
So i think replacing nails with a metal material would be almost impossible in the medieval era, and even if it could be done I don’t think it’d be very practical aside from the aesthetic of it. Removal-able claws or brass knuckles would do the job way better 523