User blog comment:WitchKingofMorgul/Black Arrow theory/@comment-216.82.243.88-20141025103127

Let's do a more thorough anaylsis here.

Let us examine a quote from the movie, The Hobbit The Desolation Of Smaug.

Balin: Girion, the lord of the city, rallied his bowmen to fire upon the beast. But a dragon's hide is tough, tougher than the strongest armor. Only a Black Arrow fired from a wind-lance could have pierced the dragon's hide. And few of those arrows were ever made. [we see flashback to Girion shooting a Black Arrow from the wind-lance, but it misses hitting Smaug] Balin: The store was running low when Girion made his last stand.

So what does this tell us? "A dragons hide is tough, tougher than any armor". Bear in mind dwarves are some of the best forges in all of middle earth and consistently produce some of the finest weaponry. Dwarves not only create some of the finest iron and steel weapons, they mine for various metals and materials. They even mine for Mithril. They have a long history of fighting off dragons due to their tendancies of hoarding treasure, and are noted to have armor that is very resistent to dragons. This suggest the material that would be needed to pierce a dragon would be very high grade and the dwarves knew that due to their history of fending them off. If I recall smaug wasn't the first dragon to come to Erobor, he was just the one that succeeded in taking it with ease. It drew other dragons attention, and more clues can be found in the first movie when Thorin informs them that a dragon is coming. It seemed like it was implied that they have delt with dragons before and it was a common drill.

The second clue we get is "ONLY a BLACK ARROW, fired from a wind lance could have pierced the dragons hide"

This obviously has to be a reference to the type of material it was made of, and since it is implied that wind lances were weapons decided in prepartion for attacking dragons and they have a history of fighting dragons with prior preparation, it can be assumed this material was specifically used for that sole purpose. Now if this was a common type of metal or material, would the dragon really have sat there for 150 years, undisputed? Couldn't anyone forge some iron arrows and fire them from a wind lances, many wind lances and arrows at that? No...because the second clue "and few of those arrows were ever made". Once again this is showing it is made out of a VERY rare material, most likely taken from an older middle earth. Obviously these arrows were valuable and could not be reproduced. It would of been fairly easy and cheap to create iron and steel based arrows for a wind lance, yet after centuries nobody produced any at all, despite the situation.

Now given the black sword and the black arrow do seem to contain some similairities in Tolkien lore, it is reasonable to theorize that perhaps these items were made from the same type of material.